Episode Report Card Daniel: C+ | 27 USERS: D+ YOU GRADE IT Angie, You Can't Say I Never Tried
By Daniel | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 07.08.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.“This is a small town,” characters are told repeatedly in the third episode of Under the Dome, generally in the revelation that someone knows someone else's secret. Everybody in Chester's Mill has them, with some of them darker than others, and the darker ones, by and large, haven't bubbled up to the surface yet.
The town deals with the aftermath of the accidental shooting of Policeman Freddy, and the lynch mob that surrounds the town jail is the most excitable the residents have been since the dome came down. It's Big Jim who calms them down and urges them to let the law do its job. Not too well, presumably, given the headaches that would likely cause for him. And the residents get back to normal, which is being largely unconcerned about being trapped inside an invisible dome.
Paul seems to be remorseful about accidentally shooting Fred, but then tricks Linda by faking some sort of asthma attack or panic attack, and when she enters his cell to help, he jumps her and locks her in before stealing a rifle and fleeing, leading to the "Manhunt" title. Big Jim enlists some of the menfolk, urging them to take a break from being homophobic towards Carolyn so they can smoke Paul out of the woods. Barbie comes along too, although Big Jim and Julia are becoming increasingly suspicious of him; Junior has told both of them that Barbie beat him up for no reason, but Junior always kinda looks like he serves a punch in the face, so neither Big Jim nor Julia ask Barbie about it. Julia, becoming increasingly convinced that Barbie was in Chester's Mill for a reason, snoops in his stuff before finding a map of the area with a location on it. Big Jim, meanwhile, is becoming more concerned with being in charge, and — more important — being seen to be in charge. He's boring Barbie to death with football stories from his school when Randolph manages to get the drop on him, only to be felled by Linda, that hardest working cop under the dome or outside it. Randolph may have been helped by the fact that somehow Phil Bushey is narrating the manhunt over the radio in real-time somehow, despite phones not working under the dome. Good job giving away where the search party was over the radio, Phil!
Meanwhile, Norrie has snuck out to Joe's house, because she heard he has a generator, and she's hoping to avail herself of it, because without her tunes she's apparently not the ray of sunshine we've already come to know and love. She neglects to tell her moms where she's going, though, which seems pretty shitty of her. But Carolyn does arrive in time to see Norrie and Joe engage in some synchronized seizuring.
Elsewhere, Angie plays up to Junior and encourages him to check the cement factory where they used to have sex for a way out. Julia — puffing herself up mightily as the one, as a journalist, with the responsibility of finding answers about the dome — follows him, and then they get lost on their way out, giving Julia the chance to explain why she, clearly an awesome journalist, is in a backwater like Chester's Mill. The reason does not make her more sympathetic — in her zeal to take down a politician, she published damning documents that were fake, which she suspected they were. And she doesn't appear to have learned enough as a reporter to use a notebook or some kind of recorder when interviewing someone. Oh, and her news reports on the radio include such great muck-raking dirt as, "Presumably, [the authorities] will keep at it until they get some answers." Nothing makes for good journalism like making assumptions and placing unmitigated faith in authorities! Or maybe she was talking about the audience?
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. It's not that hard to portray journalists accurately on television. Not that Aaron Sorkin has figured it out either. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Over in the cement factory, Junior thinks he’s found a way out — he actually says “I’ve found a way out” — before running smack into the wall. His battery-operated flashlight starts vibrating, and he drops it. It continues vibrating, near the wall and he reaches for it. Julia can’t help herself. “Don’t!” she says, and he stops, right before it explodes. “You shouldn’t have followed me,” he says, menacingly.
After a break, he asks why she came down here, and she says she was just hoping he’d find a way out. Well, he’s sorry he let her down. “I hate this thing,” he says, putting his hand on the dome, and then he starts punching and kicking at it until he tires himself out and sits down. Julia asks if he’s OK. He’s actually freaking out, because the tunnels are dangerous, even more so with the dome cutting into it. Julia calmly talks about a story she wrote one time about trapped coal miners, and she lights a match, saying you follow the way the flame flickers to find your way out.
Linda is still traipsing around the woods. Something rustles some branches, and she points her gun, only for it to turn out to be a pig running around. Well, they’re not completely out of bacon yet.
Over at Joe’s house, a small contingent of hip teens are spouting lingo and charging up their various product-placed devices. Ben tells Joe that some guys have The Simpsons Movie “going on a loop” whatever THAT’s supposed to mean. “They totally saw the dome coming!” OK, ha ha. Joe just wants to know when he can ask people to leave, and that’s when a douche named Carter shows up, with buddies and beer, saying he used to go out with Joe’s sister as if Joe wouldn’t know this. Then again, he seems to have forgotten that he has a sister. Then Carter makes a joke about how he and Angie apparently used to have sex more often than actually go out, and hands Joe a beer and makes himself at home (announcing, “We’ll just make ourselves at home”).
Ben is quite excited about all this: “You have a house to yourself. You’ve become the most popular guy in town! You even got a girl out of it!” Ben’s one piece of advice — again illustrating that you should never, ever take advice from Ben — is that Joe not tell Norrie about the “funky seizure” he had, lest she think he’s a spaz.