Under The Dome Fleshes Out Christine's Plan, Which Seems To Be Organized Around Junior's Organ

At his perch (heh) on Bird Island, Big Jim studies the video of Christine's arm disintegrating or whatever the hell and wonders aloud (for our benefit), "What is she?" Then he hides the camera in a fuse box because he is as good at subterfuge as Eva: terrible!

Big Jim then busts out his binoculars to watch as Christine's run just "happens" to take her right past the field where the now-homeless Junior has pitched his tent -- or should I say, one of the tents he'll be pitching today, because as soon as Christine sees him, she peels off her sweaty t-shirt and asks him for one of his. She's really subtle about her intentions.

They both know Big Jim is totally spying on them, so Christine asks Junior how it makes him feel, because she's faking being a therapist based on what she's gleaned about therapy from comedy clichés of the early '90s, I guess. "Feel like my dad's gonna come after me?" offers Junior. No one cares how Junior feels about anything. After blah-blahing about what an important step he's taken in letting go of the past, she asks what he's planning to do today, and he says he's going to head into town. I'm sorry, why is this even a question? Literally what else is there to do? What did she think he was going to say: taking a road trip? Going to the farmer's market three towns over? FLYING A KITE?! THEY ARE IN A DOME. Then she gives him the sweaty t-shirt she shed, I guess so he can jerk off into it because she is a gross weirdo.

Big Jim is in the middle of muttering to himself that normally he'd be all for Junior getting a leg over a mare who's run a few derbies, but not "that woman...that thing...." when he gets swarmed by some guys in SWAT gear who are inside the Dome somehow? Sure, why not.

Talk About MOONING Over Each Other, Right?

After their night standing where they've been inexplicably drawn and staring at the moon with all the other cocoomites, Hunter and Norrie are full of energy! He's jumping in the lake and saying he feels like he's never going to have to sleep again! She's...less hateful toward the world than usual! She's demurring at his request that she get naked and join him in the water and compromising with a kiss when, wouldn't you know it, Joe rolls up. He was so worried about her, but now it seems like he shouldn't have bothered! "You obviously want your Matrix life back," pouts Joe. Hey: we're calling it the Cocooma now, get the knack. "Not me. Let's just end this."

NORRIE SURE FEELS BAD ABOUT ENDING THINGS WITH THIS KID SHE'S KNOWN THREE WEEKS.

Giving Manny A Handy

Alert Type: Sexual Manipulation Alert.

Issue: That sweaty t-shirt was only the beginning: Christine has decided to make Junior her pet project, starting by putting him to work dismantling Big Jim's old office at Town Hall -- literally, but doing so will have so much symbolic import, just like when he burned down Big Jim's house! (Officially, they're doing this in order to convert the space into dorms for all the people whose houses got crushed.)

Complicating Factors: Nothing Junior's ever done would give us reason to believe he has any construction know-how...

Resolution: ...but Cocooma Junior totally did, and he's retained the knowledge he gained then, even though he was only cocooned for like ten minutes. However, while his cocooma improved him in that respect, it hasn't cured his hair-trigger temper, and when this new guy Pete denigrates Christine in comparison to Big Jim -- to wit, "At least I respected Big Jim. Only thing I like about Christine is watching her walk away" -- and later gets into an argument with Junior about how to proceed with the construction, Junior kicks him off the crew. "Good job," Christine tells him. And not sarcastically!

Spoiler: That's not the only good job Christine wants Junior to do for her on this particular day.

You're Living In A Cuckoo Clock (In A Dome)

Eva has finally accepted that she's lost the camera and come to Christine's office to confess. Immediately, Christine asks whether someone saw her with it, and Eva yelps, "Why are you assuming it's my fault?" I mean, I get it? But it actually is her fault. Christine replies, "I am following the path set out for me in the alternate reality." Eva: "Do you hear yourself? You sound crazy." I have to assume that line made it in the script because it's uttered in this show's writers' room 5000 times a day.

If Food Be The Food Of Love, Julia's Screwed (And Not The Good Way)

Situation: Julia knows something's up with Barbie and Eva because he's being extremely defensive about not having come back to his and Julia's motel room the night before and refusing to talk about anything, but she's gone into town with him anyway (BECAUSE THERE IS NOTHING ELSE TO DO), spots Eva coming out of Town Hall, and manages to ovary up and make a friendly overture.

What makes it awkward? She's barely gotten a greeting out before one of the tents on the lawn in front of Town Hall catches fire and the kid inside requires rescuing. Then Christine shows up and starts handing out jobs, casually pairing up Eva and Barbie to go look around for seeds and stuff they could use to start some kind of urban farm situation. Julia takes it in stride. Just kidding! She makes a stupid face.

How is order restored? Violently! But we'll get there.

Clash Of The Shite-ans

Who called the meeting? Christine.

What's it about? Officially, she wants Julia's input on the dorm construction idea. Unofficially, she's box-blocking Julia from interfering in her agricultural matchmaking on Eva and Barbie's behalves.

How'd it go? Pretty informatively. Julia actually does two smart things in a row: while Christine steps away for a moment, Julia looks in her desk drawer and finds her recorder; then, when Christine comes in and catches her, she smoothly lies that she was a reporter and lost a recorder exactly like this one and was seeing if this was it. Christine says she uses it to record notes about her patients, and when Julia tries to wander away "forgetting" she still has it, Christine asks for it back -- so, if Julia isn't a complete moron, she'll take note of this and try to figure out how to get her hands on it again so she can listen to all the nefarious plans she's decided since yesterday Christine probably has. But since they're answering questions and Christine knows so much about the caves, she wonders if Christine can help her identify this artifact we saw her discussing with Barbie earlier that she found in the biggest and thus probably most important cocoon -- the one Melanie was putting the Egg on.

Christine laughs that it's an easy one to answer: it's her old ID badge from the University of Zenith, where she was an instructor! Julia seems satisfied by this explanation, but she's barely started leaving before Christine makes an oblique reference to what Barbie and Eva were doing together when he didn't come home. Doubt perfectly planted in the fertile ground of Julia's one-track mind, Julia wanders out and Christine enjoys her triumph.

Forgiveness Please

Who called the meeting? Christine.

What's it about? Joe and his whole deal.

How'd it go? Fine/whatever. After pretending to be sympathetic about his split from Norrie, and further pretending to agree with him that "something about them is just...off," she suggests that he might still want to try to work through his grief over Angie's death -- maybe by taking on one of the town's many needs and making himself useful, and maybe also by talking to Sam? Christine thinks Joe's really ready to forgive Sam and to "finally" move on from his sister's murder two weeks ago by a guy who's fully just walking around free even though he confessed. AND JOE AGREES! Could we at least get some indication that Christine is pulling off this master manipulation with actual alien mind control capabilities or something? Because otherwise this kid just looks like a credulous doormat! Which he kind of is, but not to this degree, particularly given how much he was blubbering about dead Angie in his cocooma, and THAT Joe was supposed to have had a whole year to process it! JESUS, THIS SHOW!

Oh, Nothing, Just Hanging Out

Big Jim vs. Science

So we still don't totally know what's happening with Big Jim, but this guy Malick, to whom Big Jim had previously given the Egg in exchange for getting his family out of the Dome, is involved, which means Aktaion is involved. They know he's been exposed to the Egg, and are surprised to find that apparently he hasn't suffered Egg radiation poisoning or anything. But mostly they just want him to tell them where the Egg is, so the head guy, Dr. Marston, authorizes Malick to torture Big Jim to get the information. Big Jim bides his time until he notices some nerd sitting outside leave his post to take a whiz or something, and then tells Malick he'll take him straight to the Egg. But it was just a ruse to get Malick to cut the plastic ties holding him to the chair! Once he's free, Big Jim easily gets the physical advantage over this much larger guy, and uses him as a human shield when Dr. Marston returns with a henchman! Except Marston DGAF about Malick and instantly orders his henchman to take the shot. "You shot your own man!" gasps Big Jim, as though two days ago he didn't just SHOOT HIS OWN SON! However, Big Jim has figured out that they probably won't kill him as long as they need him to lead them to the Egg, and after expressing this view, he scuttles out in a way I dearly hope is Dean Morris making his own fun with some physical comedy.

Marston agrees that they shouldn't kill him just yet, so?

Winner: Draw.

If You're Going To Be Evil, Learn How To Lie

Julia's moped out to a field where Joe is rigging up solar panels. Julia tries to compliment Joe and shit-talk Christine at once by congratulating him for taking this initiative without Christine's bossing him around, and Joe admits that, actually, it was Christine's idea. He also mentions the summit Christine has brokered for him and Sam, and Julia loses her shit: "That man murdered your sister two weeks ago. Why does she care? Why do you listen to her?" Joe cults that they all have to work together for the common good, get along, and help the kinship. Julia suspiciously notes that Joe doesn't usually talk like that, and Joe admits, "That's what Christine calls it." Julia, by now, has maneuvered herself around to one side of Joe's gear and notices something awfully familiar:

Since we've been given to understand that Aktaion is a pretty big company -- we saw its billboards in Zenith last season -- I have to assume Julia is the world's only sufferer of logo blindness, and it's an even bigger pity that she's stuck in this Dome since it means Oliver Sacks can't study her. But leaving that aside, how goddamn dumb is Christine to have said it was a University of Zenith ID badge? Why would she gamble that Julia wouldn't recognize what is, let's say, the equivalent of an AT&T logo? Julia just knows that cocoon was the biggest: she didn't notice that Christine was the one who came out of it! Why not tell the more plausible lie -- namely, "That's probably an Aktaion ID badge. I WONDER WHOSE IT IS"??? How lucky for Christine to have gotten interrogated by THE DUMBEST REPORTER ALIVE?!

Oh, Norter, We Barely Knew Ye

Hunter comes on to Norrie too hard, and when she resists his overtures (which include chocolate), he tries to neg her by basically calling her a baby. It doesn't work and she leaves him alone with his blue balls, which he's lucky to get to nurse alone in this empty room in the middle of a town with a pressing housing crisis. Sure, why not.

Barbie vs. Julia

A barely verbal Barbie comes home to his dumb nagging fishwife, who's apparently spent the last several hours sketching the two logos she saw...

...even though she still has the ID and therefore doesn't need to DRAW IT when she can just LOOK AT IT? Also: it's the same logo. Why are we even having this conversation. Anyway, Julia's now beyond convinced that Christine is up to no good: "Eva too." "Don't bring her into it," warns Barbie, who's just spent the day flirting and reminiscing about their fun cocooma times together. When she asks what he was doing all night, he tells her, "This is complicated." It's really not. She says she's trying to understand what he's going through right now, but she does it in a very accusatory way -- which, to be fair to her (for once), she kind of has to because Barbie is not telling her shit. As he continues not engaging with her, Julia's hysterical accusations and recriminations get more and more shrill until finally...

"You need to leave," Julia chokes. Barbie grabs his gun and departs without a word.

Winner: Any still-extant Chester's Mill drywall contractor? And also, I guess, Christine, probably, since this blowout is exactly what she wants.

Barbie goes two doors down the hall to Eva's room, where she's very wisely put a couple of candles right there on the bed where they can easily topple over and start a fire that would kill everyone. After whining about how he's been walking in circles trying to figure his shit out and come up with nothing (and not mentioning the thing where he got physically threatening with his real-life girlfriend), Barbie starts putting the moves on Eva, which is when he notices the empty box from a pregnancy test on the bed -- conveniently also very close to the candles! She knows it's crazy, but her fantasy of a coma baby with Barbie was just so REAL that she had to see if she's actually somehow pregnant! Alas, when he looks at it where she's (disgustingly) left the peed-on test on the nightstand, Barbie has to tell her she isn't! She tries to put on a brave face, but she immediately crumbles! Good thing he's there and so eager to comfort her!

Julia tries to make like Big Jim and row away from all her problems, but with form like that it's going to take her a while!

Joe waits for Sam at the diner! But Sam has stood him up!

Because Sam is drunk! He caught Abby's sads! And now they're going to Do Sex To Each Other!

Big Jim runs around Bird Island, pursued by Hench! He runs right into Julia with her gun drawn, which, why would she kill him at this point? Anyway, he explains: "I promise, I'm not the bad guy here. They kidnapped me. They ran tests on me. They work for Aktaion." Julia decides to believe him and kills Hench! I kind of doubt she'd be such a crack shot in the dark with no experience, but sure! Big Jim doesn't question it and takes off!

Joe finds Norrie in yet another conveniently empty room! He snarkily asks why she's not singing "Kumbaya" like everyone else, since I guess all it took was Sam not showing up for their meeting for him to turn on Christine and her ways! He snottily mentions Hunter, and she apologizes for having been "crappy" earlier! He says he just wants to go to sleep, but she can tell something's wrong, and when she tells him about Christine's setup with Sam, she gets FURIOUS at the idea that Joe would even consider forgiving Sam: "I hate him! I hate everyone!" A smile of relief spreads across Joe's face: "This is you. You're back." Norrie blinks: "What the hell was wrong with me?" "I don't know," says Joe, "but I missed you." They start making out! He asks if he should get a condom! HE SHOULD!!!

And then Christine's bringing Junior, her "star pupil," into the cave! "You did well today," she tells him. "Perfectly, in fact. But not everyone is falling into line." She strokes her old cocoon, getting her hand all goopy, and tells him, "There's a solution....I have something special planned for you. In time it'll become clear. But for now, you're exactly what I need." A sex idiot?

Basically, yes!

I can't believe this is the best ambassador they could find up on Planet K-Y, but as long as she's into Junior less for his conversation than his crank? SURE, WHY NOT.