Episode Report Card Daniel: B- | 59 USERS: C- YOU GRADE IT Touch Me, I'm Sick
By Daniel | Season 1 | Episode 4 | Aired on 07.15.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.It's what, day three? The episode opens promisingly with the townspeople spray-painting the dome and raising a ruckus over what appears to be the army pulling out (Ollie has gone from "don't worry, the feds will save us" to "can't trust any gummint!" literally overnight) but then that just peters out and goes nowhere. It's like this place is a Sims-like game where the townspeople were given the task "riot" and it lasted a set amount of time and the experience points were earned and now they'll wander aimlessly until they're given something else to do (like come down with meningitis, I guess).
Yes: the Weekly Crisis this week is a meningitis outbreak, which has the good folks of Chester's Mill all coming down right at the same time. Well, they seem to come down in reasonably spaced intervals so they can be taken to the hospital in an orderly fashion. Alice (who we didn't see at all last week) volunteers her medical training (she's currently a psychiatrist), since she happens to be at the hospital to get Joe and Norrie, the seizure twins, checked out. The complication with the fire -- I mean the outbreak -- is that the hospital has no fire department -- I mean antibiotics. This leads to the forced sentimentality of Linda being given the hospital's last dose of meningitis medicine over her third-grade teacher, introduced to the show for the first time just so she can die because Barbie and Big Jim discover someone has stolen all the drugs from the pharmacy. The good reverend is going full religious freakjob now, and stole the drugs not to take them himself but to burn them because getting sick and dying is all part of God's plan, and he also gives Big Jim his share of the proceeds from their nefarious doings, since he's washing his hands of the whole thing.
Big Jim gives Junior the task of keeping everyone quarantined at the hospital. The best method the Rennies have is not "let's tell everyone how important it is that they keep the contagion within the hospital" but "give Junior the psychopath a loaded shotgun and have him stand guard at what is I guess the hospital's only entrance and exit."
But at least major plot points are advancing elsewhere. Angie's attempt to stab Junior and then presumably starve to death in the bomb shelter after killing the only person who knows where she is goes awry. But while Junior is out earning people's respect by not blowing them away with shotguns, she pulls loose a water pipe (she's pretty strong for an eighty-pound woman who's been shackled underground for three days) and almost dies of hypothermia. Fortunately, Big Jim hears her cries for help through his house's plumbing, and discovers her. I have no illusions that he's going to free her, but I'm looking forward to seeing this play out.
And in contrast to what I said in disparaging the show's subtlety last week, Barbie does already know Phil Bushey, who is the P.B. marked on his map. Julia follows the map to P.B.'s place, where she discovers that her husband sold his Beemer. Phil inconveniently comes down with meningitis before he can answer too many questions. Thankfully, so does Julia, and she manages to drag out a reference to the cabin, and then gets the location from Junior, who's all too happy to drive a wedge between Julia and Barbie. Julia manages to escape the quarantine and find the cabin, where she discovers that her husband has emptied their savings and the house will be foreclosed on. She collapses but is brought back to the hospital by Barbie, who confesses to being an enforcer collecting on Pete's gambling debts, but claims Pete must have taken off somewhere. Julia doesn't believe that Pete was a gambler. Fortunately, Barbie is a stupid enforcer and has incriminating evidence on his phone (a voicemail) that links him to the person he killed shortly after the voicemail was left.
Linda, impressed by the way Junior talked down a minor freakout by people quarantined at the hospital (and disregarding the way he first fired off the shotgun and then later left a loaded shotgun lying around a group of people who moments earlier were freaking out) and deputizes him. When the inquest happens, there's a lot of poor decision-making to ask questions about.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He's really impressed that Norrie is aware of such pop culture obscurities as Star Wars and X-Men. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Julia searches through the mess at the cabin, eventually finding some documents in an envelope that make her sigh slightly. "Peter," she whispers, and then she slumps to the floor, unconscious.
At the hospital, Norrie is wasting her phone’s battery by taking a hundred selfies. Joe strolls in, having scrounged up some sandwiches for them. They get to talking about the seizures, wondering about the fact that they started seizing up when they touched. Hey, maybe the fact that we had identical seizures right after we touched is significant, they figure, and decide to touch again, this time filming it. They set up the phone camera, get on their knees on the floor and clasp hands. Nothing happens, though, at least not until Norrie says she feels stupid. Then they both fall over.
Outside, Barbie and Big Jim pull up with the antibiotics. Junior meets his dad outside and tells his dad there weren’t any problems. Not at the hospital, anyway. Angie is still screaming in vain while the water rises higher and higher.
Barbie at the hospital finds a still-groggy-but-now-conscious Phil Bushey in the hallway, and asks him where Julia is. Phil’s not overly concerned with being too cooperative, at least not until Barbie gives his wheelchair a good kick. He’s unsure about what he told Julia, since he was swimming in and out of consciousness, but we learn that Pete came to Phil about a month ago asking about finding a hitman. And he knows Pete is "gone." I can’t figure out if he knows Barbie did it, though. He’s not acting like he does. So maybe he thinks Pete just actually left, since that was Phil’s advice when asked about the hitman.
Over at the cabin, a dying Julia hallucinates her husband standing over her…
…and back at the hospital, Joe and Norrie come to on the floor. You’re telling me Alice didn’t check on them once or had Carolyn do it? Joe grabs his phone and says he’ll "rewind" the video which is not a thing anyone has ever said about a video on a phone. They watch themselves seize up, with the twist that Joe sat up, put his finger to his lips and said "Shhhh" while looking right at the phone. He wonders if maybe it means they’re not supposed to tell anyone. You mean apart from Norrie’s moms and Joe’s idiot friend who already know? "The dome doesn’t want us to," says Joe.
Junior’s unloading drugs from his dad’s SUV when Barbie comes by asking after Julia. Junior revels in telling Barbie that he told Julia about the cabin where they had their little tussle. Barbie demands the keys to Junior’s truck, and Junior tells him where he can go, but is convinced when Barbie points out that Julia left the hospital under Junior’s watch and will die out there if she doesn’t get antibiotics (not to mention potentially causing another insta-outbreak). So he hands over the keys, and Barbie runs over to the truck and then amusingly stops the truck a good enough distance from the cabin that we can have a dramatic slo-mo shot of him carrying Julia (who calls him "Peter") out of the cabin.