Under the Dome - Season 3 Premiere - Review: "What the Dome?"

Murder! Butterflies! Big Jim shooting televisions and yelling at a dog! Weird alien-like cocoons! An alternate reality! Under the Dome is most certainly back.

The third season premiere left me in a state of shock. Not because anything in the episode was particularly shocking, but because the episode wasn’t terrible. In fact, it was actually kind of OK, in its own universe (compared to most shows it was still pretty disastrous). And, better yet, we got some sort of answers! Granted, not many, and most of what we got was a mind-melting mess, but answers all the same.

My biggest gripe with the premiere came even before the episode started, as Mike Vogel’s opening voiceover ended with “but what if it takes us to an alternate reality?” WAY TO RUIN THE EPISODE BEFORE IT EVEN STARTS, DOME. Seriously though, how stupid is the show for believing its audience to be dumb enough to need to be told what’s going to happen even before it does. The twist itself was pretty interesting, by Under the Dome’s standards, and it would have been far more enjoyable to have realised during the episode just what was going on. Kind of like Lost, but with Domes, butterflies and Mike Vogel. Instead, Dome took that away from us... for absolutely no purpose whatsoever. The show benefited in no way from giving us this advance warning, which just proves its sole aim was to ensure we knew what was going on.

What frustrated me more was that figuring out that it was an alternate reality wasn’t difficult. What was confusing was working out what the heck Melanie was doing. She spent most of the premiere in the cave around cocoons that had all of the Chester’s Mill residents who entered the white space on ice and was able to watch them in the alternate reality as well as being able to kill whomever she wanted in the alternate reality by killing their real self in her cave. Confused yet? Anyway, Ben died (in both the alternate reality and real life) from being strangled by Melanie, which came after he had realised that there was something amiss with Chester’s Mill after the Dome ‘came down’. Oh yeah, the Dome came down in some weird purple explosion, kind of like what happened at the end of the season 1 finale, while Big Jim, Junior and Julia were all dead. How can that work? Isn’t this a show about domes? If only this was some sort of alternate reality...

Next thing we know, we’re in Yemen with Barbie and some other military types, and they were carrying out some rescue mission. Jump forward a few minutes and we discover that we’re a year after the Dome came down and Barbie has moved on (the title of the first half of the premiere, and which was used about five hundred times in dialogue) from Julia’s death and is with a woman named Eva, who also works in the military.

I won’t lie - I had completely forgotten all of the background that we knew on both Barbie and Hunter before I watched this premiere, and so I couldn’t work out whether this was a flashback or not at first. The realisation for me wasn’t quite as great as Lost’s “WE HAVE TO GO BACKKKKKK!” - in fact, Barbie certainly didn’t want to go back to Chester’s Mill for the memorial service for those who gave their life in service of bringing the Dome down/were killed by the Dome/managed to wrangle their way out of their contracts on this show and forget it ever happened.

Julia is then seen screaming for Barbie. Wait, isn’t she dead? Maybe Barbie’s living in some alternate reality or something. Anyway, Junior and Big Jim were also still alive, and continued with his mischievous ways by taking his son and Julia hostage. He then delivered a line that left me wondering when we were going to get Barbie back to Julia. “I may need you for repopulation.” Seriously, Jim? He’s moved on from his once-dead-turned-alive-now-dead-again wife pretty quickly, and has clearly had some temporary amnesia to forget that he killed a whole bunch of people and is hated by pretty much everyone, especially Julia. Well, unless this show has suddenly become Game of Thrones (Game of Thrones really needs some domes to make it more interesting). Big Jim let the pair go, and allowed them to take the ladder that they needed, because he’s just that nice of a guy. Or my amnesia theory was accurate. He didn’t let them go without giving Junior a taste of his own medicine however, putting a bullet into the kid’s left shoulder. There goes my amnesia theory. Drats.

He, Hunter and Eva all did go back to Chester’s Mill, where they were greeted by Joe in the Sweet Briar - including a Barbie-Joe hug. Because they were just that close, I guess? And Joe had gotten taller, which Barbie astutely notices. Here’s where the weird stuff began to kick into even higher gear. Both Barbie and Ben spot Melanie strolling down the street and wonder what the heck is going on, before Ben suggests to Barbie that the whole thing might not be real. Could he be right? I’m glad we didn’t get told before the episode started that this could be an alternate reality, or else I might believe him.

Marg Helgenberger joined the show (weirdly, as a recurring cast member, while Kylie Bunbury’s Eva was given a series regular status) as Christine, a trauma specialist, and her first order of business on-screen was to try to convince Joe to accept his offer to go to Caltech and say some words about Angie at the memorial. Next up for her was dealing with Sam, who is in prison and taking part in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and is happy to remain where he is to “make amends for what (he’s) done.” That involves getting Joe to talk to him and forgive him, which is the primary focus of his conversation with Christine, alongside an attempt to get Sam to pass on a message for her to read at the memorial. Sam later admits that he deserves to be where he is - the most logical thing to emerge from the conversation. The fact that Sam even thinks that Joe might be able to forgive him for murdering Angie baffles me. In only her second scene, Christine managed to become a strange character. This is her exact dialogue. “You did a terrible thing, Sam, but that one terrible thing doesn’t have to define you.” I’d love to know what kind of crime would actually bother this woman. Axe murder? You’re fine. Attempting to infect the town with a virus? No big deal.

It was then time for Barbie to meet the no-care-shrink, and she wanted him to say some words about Julia at the memorial. She seemed to be asking everyone to speak, probably because Christine seems far too happy in a town that went through a weird and traumatic experience and her joy would mean that she doesn’t get a good recommendation and she doesn’t get another job in the next town that suffers a traumatic event. Or because Angie and Julia were the main characters who ‘died’ and because people like Ann Ferrin and Evelyn Wylie were just background characters that we never actually met, it’d be pretty uninteresting to hear their family members/friends/boyfriends who came along and killed their husbands and ended up sleeping with them speak. I like to imagine it’s the former.

The memorial itself consisted mostly of Joe giving a sad speech about Angie and Barbie talking lots about belonging and Julia. The emotion in both speeches failed to impact me, which was quite disappointing. At the same time, Ben arrived at the memorial while being watched by Melanie, only to choke to death as his actual body was strangled by her without even knowing what his alternate reality self was up to. Damn, Melanie. You’re committed to the Dome. Maybe you are the Dome. I don’t know. Either way, Ben was dead and Melanie continued her killing streak.

Back in the real world, Julia and Junior (who seems completely unfazed by the gunshot wound he suffered about 15 minutes before) used the ladder to get to the other side of the huge hole in the ground of the cave. Well, Junior did. Though, while he was climbing across, a butterfly came along and bit him, even though some quick Googling shows that they don’t actually bite. Sigh. While Julia was climbing across the ladder, a whole bunch of butterflies came up and made her drop her flashlight, before knocking her off of the ladder in a scene that defied the laws of physics almost as much as this scene did. (Thanks tv.com for the gif)

While Julia hung on for her life (and quickly managed to recover), Junior disappeared completely. Where did he go? He was being chased by the thousands of butterflies deeper into the cave! But how do you fight a butterfly attack? Junior thought the best way to do it was to light a flare and try to... hit them with it? I really don’t understand what he was attempting to do. Whatever it was, he failed, and the butterflies somehow managed to knock him unconscious. Again, normal logic doesn’t apply to this show.

As part one of the premiere came to a close, Julia managed to stumble upon a bunch of cocoons that were not only purple, but contained the bodies of those in Chester’s Mill who followed Melanie into the white light, including Barbie. Julia’s face did this.



The opening minutes of part two see Melanie discover Junior, who is completely fine with the fact that she “was brought here”. Junior’s gullibility and some weird sweet talking from Melanie resulted in her kissing him, which somehow transported him to the weird white area where Barbie went. Then he got caught in some slime, and Melanie said some stuff about having to “fix” him.

Julia then ran into Melanie, and didn’t quite succumb to the same fate Junior did. The Dome really picked the wrong person to have ‘help’ Julia - had it been Barbie there, she’d have kissed him instantly and would have ended up in the weird white place and caught in some slime. Stupid Dome. Anyway, while Julia tried to work out what was up with the cocoons and Melanie attempted to dissuade her from doing such a thing, Julia felt some pain in her leg. So she decided to hold her left leg - which didn’t get injured.



Sigh.

Melanie decided she needed the egg, so Julia drops to Junior levels of gullible and agrees to help. Unfortunately for them, Big Jim is roaming the streets of Chester’s Mill and scares off a dog, claiming that everything in the town is his. Look, we get that you’re in charge, Jim, but there’s no need to go around scaring innocent dogs. Especially because you don’t want any other living thing to intrude on your power.

Back in the alternate reality, Barbie went to see Hunter about Ben. Little did he know that he was interrupting Hunter enjoying the company of a woman. You go, Hunter! Barbie was much more interested in showing him Ben’s phone, which he had taken off of his dead body. That’s pretty low, Barbie. And I’m sure if Julia was there, he’d have been far more interested in her than what was going on. Turns out that a cop, groundskeeper and delivery guy were all the same person. Not only that, but the same guy appears later in the episode as some random person in a green shirt and Barbie realises that he’s the same man whom he killed in Yemen. Weird freaky. What if this is an... alternate reality?!

Junior shows up at the diner - which is weird, because he’s dead, right? Nope. Barbie checks the memorial and wouldn’t you know it, James Rennie isn’t listed. Since Barbie is the lead character and like every lead character in a situation like this, his spidey-senses are tingling and he knows that Junior was listed on the memorial because he found the body. Melanie’s mind-control powers clearly don’t apply to Barbie, and as a trope that I generally hate, I wasn’t a fan of this revelation.

Christine meets Junior, and after another mention of the memorial, convinces Junior to try to show the town that he isn’t like his father. So how does he go about it? By going to set his house on fire. It’s a shame that the alternate reality hasn’t given Junior any intelligence, though it did give him a cool looking leather jacket.

Melanie and Julia wrote on the Dome asking for the egg in the hopes that Don Barbara was watching and saw the message, and thought that it was a good idea to return the egg to the Dome. Apparently he did, as he emerged from the lake with the egg and saw his daughter for the first time in about 20 years. She responded by strangling him. This girl needs anger management therapy, or at least anti-strangulation therapy. Do they have those? They should have those.

This all happened while Julia slept; she awoke to Big Jim pointing a gun in her face. He showed her Don’s body, she immediately blamed him for killing old man Barbara, to which Jim was offended. Do any of these characters have any perception of anything that’s happened in the last three weeks, or has this alternate reality fried their brains completely? The pair had a shouting match about pretty much everything that has happened since Melanie came into the Dome, and Julia punched Jim.

Before Melanie could do whatever it was she wanted with the egg, Julia showed up and wasn’t having any of what Melanie told her. She got slapped in the face by Melanie, and just when things were looking bleak, Jim showed up and destroyed the egg. That led to everything in the alternate reality freezing, before everyone begun to emerge from their cocoons - including Eva and Christine! Wait, what?

It seems that the alternate reality storyline didn’t last beyond the premiere, which will probably be a bad thing in the long run, especially if we return to the ‘catastrophe of the week’ episodes. What will be the more interesting things to find out in the coming episodes are:

1. How and why Christine and Eva came into the Dome when they weren’t in it to begin with (or were they?)
2. What Melanie is and what the Dome is using her for (because that’s blatantly what’s happening)
3. Whether or not any of the alternate reality stuff (e.g. Barbie’s love for Eva and his child, Hunter and Norrie’s weird thing towards the end of the episode, Sam’s stabbing)
4. Whether the show will ever consider applying logic to any scenes

That was Under the Dome’s season three premiere! It was yet another exhibition of ridiculousness, but it came across better than almost all of season two did, which is a positive. Could Under the Dome be on its way to salvation? It really is going to have to start answering questions soon, because endless mysteries that make no sense are definitely not a good thing. But for now, let’s see where it goes.


Notes from the Dome:

• When Barbie first went into the white light, why did he keep his flashlight on? Was it too dark for him?
• “Evil is shooting your own son.” “Well, he shot me first.”
• If Barbie and Eva do still care about each other and still have a baby, and Hunter and Norrie’s weird moment isn’t erased, we’re going to have two love triangles on the show this year. Way to make the show worse.
• I wasn’t really sure how to approach reviewing this show, so for the moment, things are a work in progress. So don’t be alarmed if I change the format/layout of my reviews over the next couple of episodes.

So, what did you think of the episode? Let me know in the comments below!

About the Author - Bradley Adams

16 year old based in England, currently Senior Staff at SpoilerTV. Most of his posts are news/spoiler based, though he is currently the reviewer of Person of Interest, as well as being in charge of the yearly 'Favourite Episode Competition'. A big TV fan, his range of shows are almost exclusively dramas, with some of his all-time favourite shows including 24, LOST, Breaking Bad and Friends. Some of his current favourites include Person of Interest, Arrow and The Walking Dead. He also runs an Arrow blog, ArrowFansUK, and aside from TV, is a keen cricketer. Get in touch with him via the links below or via email bradley@spoilertv.com

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