Well, it looks like I have to retract a few things I said in my review of “Heads Will Roll.” First of all, Under the Dome is no longer a hate-watch. It’s getting legitimately good. Second, I don’t think Rebecca Pine is going to be Barbie’s new love interest – she might be Under the Dome‘s new villain. So way to go, guys, you surprised me.
“Force Majeure” continues season two’s streak of introducing new characters (which is natural for any show’s sophomore season, but a little problematic when the entire ensemble is hermetically sealed like this). This week we get to meet Dwight Yoakam’s creepy barber Lyle, who seems nice enough until he starts spouting rhetoric about the apocalpyse and the plauges of Egypt.
The plague is on everyone’s mind because the dome has just started raining blood. That’s, uh, not good. Technically, it’s an acid rain turned red by what Rebecca thinks is algae, but acid blood rain is way worse than regular blood rain. I learned that in my doctoral seminar on narrative structure. All jokes aside, the sight of everything and everyone in Chester’s Mill being splattered with blood is a very cool, very creepy visual.
Lyle could have been a run of the mill religious nut, but it turns out he worships a different deity: the dome itself. I like this idea a lot. It’s only natural that, given enough time, some of the people of Chester’s Mill would begin to fear and idolize the dome. But hopefully they’re not dicks about it like Lyle, who kidnaps Rebecca and, in a very tense scene, threatens her with a baptism by blood.
Joe and Norrie, meanwhile, are playing kid detectives at the school, with the mystery girl in tow. Norrie is being a sulky bitch, which is a shame because she’s a good character, Mackenzie Lintz is a good actress, and there are better ways for her to illustrate her mistrust of the mystery girl. Anyway, Joe fires up his Microsoft Surface tablet, powered by Windows, and discovers that he has a signal! Then Junior fires us his Microsoft Surface tablet, powered by Windows, to discover a message from his mother, who it turns out is still alive – and telling him to seek out Lyle.
Joe and Norrie do some more detective-ing and find the mystery girl’s name: Melanie Cross. Great, right? No, because they found her name and picture in a yearbook from 1988, right above a baby Trevor Dawson.
I like how Under the Dome is deepening its mysteries, and not confining them to Chester’s Mill. The once-dead Pauline Rennie is a promising development – remember the drawing that Sam showed to Julia, a twenty-year-old picture of Melanie. I have no idea where this is heading, but I sincerely hope that the show does, because this could all fall apart.
What I might be most excited about is Rebecca Pine. So far it looks like I was totally off about her character, who I thought was just going to make doe eyes at Barbie all season until Big Jim killed her or something. Not only does Big Jim seem to have a Big Crush on her, but she’s advocating “thinning the herd” to preserve resources. She even tricked the town into filling out a kind of census, all to make it easier to decide who stays and who goes. That’s good villainy, because it’s understandable.
Goddamnit, Under the Dome, if you were this good last season I wouldn’t have come locked and loaded with so many jokes. Now they’re useless, and all I have is this shitty ending to my review.
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