Previous Episode: 2.01 Heads Will Roll
2.02 "Infestation"
Directed by Ernest Dickerson, written by Kelly Soulders & Brian Peterson
Rating: 6/10 (C)
Next Episode: 2.03 Force Majeure
One of the weaker aspects of this show is how nothing ever seems to have any real and lasting ramifications. Looking back at Season 1, the first handful of episodes made the show feel like the typical CBS procedural. There was a fire, a manhunt, an outbreak, a missile attack, the discovery of a miniDome and yet none of those things are relevant now. ”Infestation” brings back the dreaded crisis-of-the-week and it was unspectacular to put it nicely. Problems are solved as quickly as they arise and given that this show has 13 episodes per season, it should stop wasting its limited screentime on these little disasters that won’t be of any importance the following day which is probably due to the lousy short-term memory. It’s just laughable how much can change in one day on this show. Remember Barbie and Rebecca who were getting along just fine? Yeah, she’s jealous of the praise he has gotten for his plane stunt. People also seem to forget that Dodee's murderer is still out there but who cares.. Let's give the man we were willing to hang just a day ago a round of applause for saving the crops.
This episode’s crisis is an infestation of caterpillars. While the abundance of monarch butterflies is nice to look at (except for when they are covering Angie’s corpse), that’s pretty much the only thing it has going for it. Rebecca takes drastic measures and starts a controlled burn. To cover more ground, Big Jim suggests the use of pesticides. Despite everyone repeatedly pointing out how dangerous flying a plane would be, it is pretty clear that Barbie would remain unscratched. The show was unwilling to hang him on the gallows, so it’s doubtful he’ll go up in flames navigating a plane.
The townspeople of Chester’s Mill think of Big Jim as a hero ever since he was willing to sacrifice himself. It’s almost hilarious how self-involved and self-centered he has become since the last episode. He has finally emerged as a “man of the people” and the people’s almost cult-like response is somewhat unsettling. With Linda out of picture, Rebecca seems to have become Big Jim’s new henchman but it’s hard to tell where this duo will be going. She is clearly a lot smarter and more capable than Linda ever was, there is also an underlying darker side to this character as she insinuates that something has to done about the current population which, according to her, is too big for everybody to survive.
In the aftermath of Angie’s murder, Big Jim and Junior start pointing the finger at each other but the new girl Melanie quickly becomes the primary suspect and even gets locked up. Julia and Sam work together and find out her murderer was a man and they arrive just in time to prevent Joe from killing Melanie (yeah, like Joe has it in him to kill someone…). What could have been an emotional episode turns out to be flat and uninspired. Joe’s vengeful state of mind isn’t convincing and the only scene that is somewhat touching is the exchange between Joe and Barbie. At the end, it is revealed that Junior might have done it while he was wasted. Oh boy...
Alliances and relationships shift faster than on Big Brother, it took 15 entire episodes for Big Jim to understand that resources are limited (and yet there seems to be a never-ending supply of coffee available) and everyone talks about doing what the dome wants them to do even though they aren’t sure what exactly that is. Yep, just another day in Cherter’s Mill.
Other thoughts:
- I guess Rose and Linda aren’t important enough to have a funeral.
- "Neither of us would do something like this." Oh, the writing. It never fails to make me laugh.
- How has it never occurred to Julia that Melanie might be connected to the egg, especially after Sam shows her Pauline’s drawing? She throws the egg into the lake and minutes later a girl appears in the same spot and she doesn’t even think there might be more to it?
- So Sam is the only person in Chester’s Mill with medical training. What happened to Nurse Adams? Maybe she turned into a Giant Monarch Butterfly and layed all these eggs. That surely would make more sense than blaming the magnetism of the dome.
- Barbie mentions Sam during his argument with Julia. Brace yourselves, a love triangle is coming.
