Our favorite idiot teenagers are all lying on their backs, having communed with the dome and apparently painted the projected stars on the walls and ceiling of the barn. Joe points out that the four bright stars along one wall aren’t part of any constellation, and maybe that’s them! Also, that stupid caterpillar’s chrysalis has changed from green to clear. As Joe says, "It’s pretty rad," and upon hearing him talk like an advertising copywriter from the ‘80s, Norrie loses her shit and whines about being "guardians of some secret cosmic mystery." Joe, who couldn’t keep a secret if his life depended on it, wants to tell someone, and the gang decides that since the mini-dome didn’t put Julia in the hospital -- like it did Dodee -- the "dome trusts Julia," and Angie dispatches Joe to tell Julia their little secret.
As promised, Big Jim has shown up at the town hall to come clean about his involvement, with Duke and Reverend Scoggins, to buy propane off the books. Big Jim deflects Linda’s pointed questions by saying that because he did so, the lights are still on, and the diner is still operating, etc. "You think I’m a crook? I think I’m owed a damn parade," he says. Linda says the dome’s coming down in fact saved Big Jim’s ass, because otherwise he’d be in jail right now. With all the bravado he can muster, Big Jim suggests Linda charge him with "conspiracy to keep the lights on," or maybe she wants to go after a real criminal? Someone who’s a mystery in this town? Someone blessed with a strong hairline?
That would be Barbie, brooding all over Julia’s house as she comes downstairs to ask him how the couch was. "Lonely," he says. "So was the bed," she replies. He asks if she wants him to leave. What she wants is for him to take him to Peter’s grave, and then she babbles about "closure" in a way that would make me head for the door and never be seen again. But Barbie apparently wants to continue having sex with Julia, so it sounds like he’s agreeable.
Back at the town hall, Linda wants to know what Barbie ever did that she should be going after him for. Big Jim says Barbie was working for Maxine as an enforcer, and putting the screws to the good folks of Chester’s Mill. Like Peter Shumway, whom no one has heard a peep from since he got in too deep with Maxine. "Some people have secrets. You couldn’t imagine," says Big Jim. Linda doesn’t appear too swayed yet. "What about you?" she asks Big Jim, who claims to be an open book, which causes Linda to literally raise her eyebrows.
Over at Julia’s place, the doorbell rings. It’s Maxine. Julia’s all, "Can I help you?" and Maxine says, "Right now you couldn’t even help yourself," and then just stone-cold SHOOTS HER IN THE SHOULDER and Julia lies dying as we go into the opening credits.
Barbie races downstairs to see Julia lying on the floor, and grabs his walkie-talkie to call Linda, urgently telling her about Julia being shot. Linda asks who, and Barbie says he doesn’t know, so Big Jim is all, "Can you believe him?" Linda looks conflicted -- like AT ANY RATE, JULIA HAS BEEN SHOT SO MAYBE YOU SHOULD DO SOMETHING -- and Barbie says he can’t drive Julia for help and keep her from bleeding out. Linda says she’ll be right there, but not before Big Jim can advise her to "think." Maybe she does she'll realize that if Barbie wanted Julia dead, there'd be about as much evidence of it as there is of her husband's death (which reminds me -- Peter's death-by-Barbie plan -- did he really think that a brand-new insurance policy was going to immediately cough up a million dollars for a murdered corpse, even if you're foolishly assuming a criminal like Barbie was just going to leave the body to be found). The only evidence Linda has that Peter Shumway is dead is Big Jim telling her he is.
Over at the McAlister barn, Angie offers to scramble up some farm-fresh eggs for Junior, because no one has killed the chickens to eat yet or anything, but he’s more interested in waxing rhapsodic about the two of them. "I never thought fate was real, that there was this plan, but now it’s undeniable," he says. Angie is willing to attribute plausible deniability to the fact that Junior kept her prisoner underground and she almost died; Junior’s blatherings about fate mean shit to her since this mini-dome thing is about the four of them, not just Junior and her. If the dome comes down, she says, Junior will never see her again. Perhaps not surprisingly, Junior’s all "well, then… see ya!" and is prepared to leave. "This might be our only shot, and you’re going to ruin that out of spite?" says Angie, incredulous that this person who kept her locked up in a bomb shelter might behave this way. Junior says that it’s love, and he’d rather live and die under it than ever be apart from Angie. He leaves the barn, into some kinda gale-force wind happening.
In the middle of town, Linda’s police cruiser comes to a herky-jerky start and she gets all pissed off because she finds a hose sticking out of the gas tank and is all "Now even the cops are getting ripped off" because normally looters and rioters stay respectful of law enforcement. Wait, they didn’t take the hose with them? Anyway, she flags down Phil Bushey, who I guess is recovered enough from his gunshot wound to rejoin the show.
Over at Julia’s, Joe shows up, much to the relief of Barbie, who wants to know if Joe can drive. I realize Joe is somewhat shocked to see Julia dying of a gunshot wound, but he probably didn’t need to get into the whole thing about how his driving instructor said he didn’t check his mirrors enough. Barbie carries Julia out to the car and Joe gets behind the wheel, and off they go.
Over at the town hall, Big Jim pops outside to see the clouds swirling around and is all, "What the hell?" and there’s Max to say, "Hell’s right here." She offers him a ride, and notes that it’d be nice to get a bit of rain. "You and I need to talk," says Big Jim.
That’s what they do inside, where Big Jim explains that someone shot Julia and he’s not fooled by Max feigning concern by pointing out it’s a "perilous world we live in." Big Jim knows it was here, and she all but admits it by saying that Barbie said the one world a girl hates to hear: No. Big Jim wants to know where all this is going, and Max explains that life is all about making the right choices. Big Jim -- kind of stupidly -- wonders how Max can pressure him, since his wife is dead and all. "I’m sure there’s someone around here you care about," says Max, which is, naturally, when Junior shows up. Max feigns interest and introduces herself to Junior as a friend of his dad, while also remarking on his eyes and saying it’s like looking at his mom.
Eventually, Max says she’s got some business to attend to on Bird Island, and Big Jim says he’s not sure it’s safe what with the weather acting up, instead of, "I left your mom to drown." Undeterred, Max tells him she’ll be at "the factory" later on if he needs her. She leaves, and Junior asks who that was. "The devil," says Big Jim. Not to oversell it or anything.
Joe speeds towards the hospital while Barbie employs such medical techniques as "yelling at the gunshot victim," and that doesn’t seem to have much effect. Joe has to deal with falling tree branches, and he tells Barbie that he doesn’t think it’s just the weather: "I think the dome is angry at us."
There’s a commercial break, giving us three or four minutes to roll our eyes at this development, and then we come back to them arriving at the hospital, and Barbie yelling at Joe to plug the car in because they’re "gonna need the juice." And Joe thinks Julia’s gunshot wound isn’t so bad that he can’t delay Barbie by pointing out the viciously crazy funnel cloud that seems to be forming.
Inside, a nurse directs Barbie to a room, but before she can administer any kind of aid, she’s drawn away by some woman who’s all "a tree fell on a garage and my husband was in it!" and the nurse stupidly goes to help this person who’s not even in the main cast. So it’s up to Barbie, who barks out orders to Joe about the items to get to save Julia from getting her heart crushed from the pressure of the gunshot wound or whatever’s going on here. Joe wants to know how Barbie knows how to do all this stuff, and Barbie manages not to say that he’s not a 15-year-old kid who doesn’t know shit about shit.
Over at the Rennie place, Big Jim leads Junior into the bomb shelter and shows him all the guns he has. Junior pretends he didn’t see all this already and points out that he thought everybody had to turn in their guns. Big Jim says "I’m not everybody." Also, the gun thing was voluntary, right? Junior, not unreasonably, wants to know what’s going on. Big Jim tells him that Max "is going to take everything I’ve worked for and destroy it." There is an overworked metaphor about Big Jim wanting to get the trains to run on time while Max wants to fill those trains with liquor and sex and drugs. I wish I were making that up. "She seemed nice to me," is Junior’s opinion, which should carry a lot of weight, given that he spent all of five seconds talking to her. But I guess his stupidity comes in handy when it means he's not going to realize how scary it is that Big Jim just invoked Mussolini when talking about what he wants for Chester's Mill. Big Jim says Max is angry at him, and she wants to hurt him by hurting Junior. "The let me help you," says Junior. Big Jim says he can handle it, and they argue briefly before Big Jim starts in with the sob story about a single dad raising a kid, and how he did the best he could. "You still punished me for it," says Junior, all of a sudden mad at his dad now. Big Jim says he doesn’t know how this ends, and then the scene in the worst way possible: Giving Junior a rifle and a box of ammunition. He tells Junior to stay in the house and open the door to nobody but Big Jim.
So I guess Dodee’s all better and back at the radio station and looking out the window at the gathering storm, and I swear to god she says, "Lightning. I wonder if that changes anything," and then she goes to fiddle with her receiver thing, and then I swear to god she says, "You’re kidding me, it’s working again." Fortunately, this thing is working again so she can hear military guys blathering about how that’s definitely Dale Barbara in there, as they’ve confirmed from the tape they made on Visitor’s Day, and Barbie is the one they’re looking for.
Junior paces nervously around his house, which is certainly a smarter thing to do than looking out windows, and he’s freaked out by someone suddenly hammering on the door. It’s Angie, who’s just as freaked out when she sees Junior pointing a rifle at him, but recovers to start screaming at him that the dome is angry because he left the Mini-Dome Quartet, and that he’s the cause of the crazy storm and he needs to come back. "What, so now I control the weather?" he says. Angie’s "proof" is that the dome has done "a lot of crazy stuff" -- I like how she talks about the dome like it’s your college friend who drinks a little too much -- but never anything like this until Junior "turned [his] back" on them. Well, after this therefore because of this, and all that.
Over at the hospital, Joe’s formulating his own theory as he watches Barbie intubating Julia to get all the extra air out of his chest, while simultaneously dodging rogue trees smashing throw hospital windows. Well… just the one, actually.
Over at Big Jim’s house, Junior tries to drag Angie over to the bomb shelter to ride things out, so she’s forced to scream at him some more about how he has to come back with her to the group -- and besides, maybe even an idiot like Junior should realize that dragging Angie back to the where he imprisoned her isn’t the greatest idea in the world? Then a gust of wind carries a park swing Angie’s way, and Junior tackles her to prevent it from pulverizing her. The storm then begins to abate, and Angie is all, "See? I was right!"
Over at the hospital, Julia flatlines. Joe and Barbie put on their best sad faces for a few moments, until her pulse kicks in again. Barbie looks like he’s relieved he doesn’t have to add to the Shumway family plot. Joe’s all, "You did it!" and Barbie points out that he had help, as if having Joe along doesn’t add to the degree of difficulty. Outside, the storm has passed and Joe is looking at Barbie like he’s some kind of messiah or at least a monarch. Maybe you’re supposed to save us all, Joe tells a skeptical Barbie, before leaving to go tell everyone else about this. Barbie looks like he wishes his Special Forces training had given him a few non-lethal ways to incapacitate someone.
And here’s Max wandering along a beach, instead of building her drug and fight club empire, when she spies a body in just a little ways into the surf. Looking alarmed, she pulls the body in from her sea grave and turns her over. “Oh, mom,” she groans, and then notices her mother’s tied hands.
At the hospital, Barbie is holding a still-unconscious Julia’s hand and monitoring her vital signs. The nurse doesn’t have anything better to do than stand there creeping on them as Barbie kisses her on the forehead. He tells the nurse that he doesn’t want to leave her, but there’s something he’s gotta do and the nurse assures him she’ll keep an eye on her. That must be a relief to Barbie, who maybe doesn’t understand that this is, you know, what nurses do?
Outside, he unplugs the shiny product-placed hybrid as Big Jim pulls up. Jim asks how Julia’s doing, and is all, "You know Max is the one who shot her, right?" The two agree it’s time to take Max down, but that’s about all they agree on. "We’re going to do this by my rules. We’re taking Max alive," says Barbie, and Big Jim sneers at Barbie being all "high and mighty… and dead." They bicker about whether Big Jim actually loves Chester’s Mill or just loves power -- you know, the usual stuff week-in, week-out, and Barbie promises that once they take care of Max, he’ll do whatever he had to do to knock Big Jim off his throne.
Oh, god, I can’t take another scene with the four idiot teenagers. Norrie’s chilling in the barn when Angie and Junior rush in. Angie’s all, "Where’s Joe?" and Norrie reminds her that he went to go talk to Julia, and they decide he probably didn’t want to come back in the middle of the storm. And right away Joe comes in, and Angie screams "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN" at him, like NORRIE JUST REMINDED YOU WHERE HE WENT! GOD! Joe tells them all about how Julia was shot but amazing Barbie saved her, and he tells the group that he thinks his new man-crush might be the monarch, what with the storm petering out right when Barbie sucked the air out of Julia’s chest. But apparently Junior is fully on board the "I’m the monarch" theory, and says the storm ended because he decided to come back.
At any rate, what do they do now? They decide it’s time to get all touchy on the maxi-dome, in the location indicated by the four stars that Joe has decided represent them with really no basis for it, but of course that will be the case. Judging from their position under the North Star, Joe estimates, the location should be under the Bollingwood Bridge. But doesn’t the earth’s rotation mean the stars appear to rotate across the sky? And also, isn’t it DAYLIGHT? "Enough guessing. The dome owes us some answers," says Angie.
Out at the cement works, Barbie and Big Jim arrive, with Big Jim wondering what the plan is. Barbie is barely paying any attention to him and is opening up some door to find some kind of control panel and he attaches his fucking cellphone to it somehow and sets the timer for ten minutes, just in case they need an alarm clock or whatever. Big Jim looks mighty confused. He also grabs a flare and some zip ties out of his toolbox.
Linda’s over at Julia’s house, looking at the blood on the floor. And she brought Phil Bushey and Phil comes in to say that Julia’s car is gone, so Barbie must have taken her. He sees the blood, apparently for the first time, despite it being in the FRONT ENTRANCE and everything, and says, "Oh god. I didn’t think he could go this far," and of course Linda wants to know what that means, and Phil tells her Peter Shumway was in deep "and bet the house, literally." He explains that Barbie was the collection agent, and wasn’t too polite about it, either. And yes, he thinks Barbie killed Peter. Linda seems to be leaning towards the "Barbie shot Julia after she found out about it" theory, which doesn’t make a ton of sense given BARBIE CALLING LINDA and BARBIE TAKING LINDA TO THE HOSPITAL.
Back at the cement works, it takes Junior and Big Jim all of twenty seconds for them to be ambushed by Max and one of her henchmen with a gun.
After the commercial break, Max tells Barbie that Big Jim killed her mom, which explains why she’s acting the same as she always acts. The three of them explore the various permutations and combinations of who is more like whom, and Barbie also scoffs at Max’s suggestion that the two of them were good together. "You paid me, I did a job. That’s it," he says. She says it’s a good thing he’s handsome, because he sure is thick. The upshot of it appears to be that she’ll let Barbie live if he’ll be her boyfriend? But Barbie’s not having it, because she shot Julia. "She was never right for you anyway!" she yells. "You’re the one who’s not right, Max!" is Barbie’s brilliant response to the unstable woman pointing a gun at him. She walks up to him and points the gun at his chest. "I had plans for you. I trusted you, and you screwed me over," she says, just like this whole town. This whole town that you’re carpeting in booze and drugs and odd barter-based fight clubs?
Then she yells at Big Jim for a while and Barbie checks his watch, and Max refocuses her anger at Barbie, because if he’s got plans, then someone is going to be very disappointed. And then Barbie’s cellphone’s timer gets down to zero and somehow it shuts off the power in the cement works, like what the hell app is this?
There are shots fired in the dark and then Barbie uses the flare as a distraction and gets the drop on Maxine, and orders everybody outside.
Outside the hospital, Linda tells Phil she was just told that Barbie left the hospital with Big Jim, by someone who I guess was watching what was going on in the parking lot instead of taking care of patients. Phil utters this, which is in the running for the dumbest, clunkiest story-advancing dialogue of the series (it's a crowded field). "Could be at the cement factory. Max set up a fight club there, heard people say they lost money on Barbie yesterday." Linda takes all this in without her head exploding, and then she orders Phil out of his car. He protests, first, that she can't do this alone (like he and his one arm will be a big help) and, second, that she's "stealing" his car.
Over at the cement factory, Barbie thinks it's a good idea to let Big Jim -- who has already expressed his preference for killing Max -- hold the gun on her and her bodyguard, while he goes "to get the car" (because they couldn't all just walk to it, I guess). Max sneers that they don't want to do this, and Big Jim tells her he already took care of her insurance policy. "You have no idea," says Max. Barbie tells her it's over, and he's five feet away when Big Jim shoots Max and her bodyguard, killing them immediately. Barbie's all "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!" and instead of saying "Exactly what I TOLD you I was going to do?" Big Jim says that Maxine was a threat as long as she was breathing, but now she's not.
Then he says, "And neither are you," and having announced his intention to kill Barbie, you'd think he'd at least quickly shoot him, but instead he takes like five minutes to raise his gun hand, giving Barbie plenty of time to neck-punch him, disarm him and knock him to the ground.
And somehow Linda arrived in this big open space in the three seconds between when Jim was just about to shoot Barbie and now, when Barbie has a gun pointed at him. She yells for Barbie to put the gun down, and of course Big Jim starts yelling that Barbie has gone nuts and just cuffed and shot two people. Word of advice, Big Jim: If you want to convince a cop -- who knows you're manufacturing drugs -- that the person who just shot your evil drug-manufacturing partner wasn't you, maybe you should quit with the smug grinning at the person you're attempting to frame? Barbie yells his innocence, of course, but Linda's no Sherlock Holmes. Barbie appears to comply, but having seen what Big Jim is willing to do with people whose hands are bound, he elects to hit Linda and make a break for it. Linda warns that she'll shoot, and Big Jim yells "Shoot that son of a bitch!" and fortunately Linda's law enforcement incompetence extends to her firearm prowess as well.
I guess it's that law-enforcement genius of hers that decides it's OK to let Big Jim -- who she knows was making drugs and who just found at a murder scene -- just LEAVE, because the very next scene is him at the radio station, where Dodee tells him about what the military said about Barbie being the one they're looking for.
And then Big Jim goes on the air and announces to Chester's Mill that Barbie killed Maxine and Agatha Seagrave, Azzo Cementworksgrave, (he gets a name in death!) and he's wanted for those murders as well as the attempted murders of himself and Julia Shumway. "A warrant has been issued for his arrest," says Big Jim (I guess that means there's a judge under the dome? This fucking show), because Barbie is on the run, and it's only now, apparently, that Big Jim DECLARES A STATE OF EMERGENCY in this town that's completely cut off from the outside world (who doesn't appear to give a shit either way) and has seen rioting, a plane crash, car accidents, looting, raping, fire, armed standoffs, propane explosions, cop-killing, an underground black-market fight club, crazy-ass storms, a burgeoning meth industry and a MISSILE ATTACK BY THE U.S. MILITARY. "What Barbie did is not who we are," says Big Jim, which is hilarious. He adds that when he's apprehended, Barbie will be given a fair trial. "The government, the people, will be seeking the death penalty," he said. This show, I can't even. It gets dumber every week.
Speaking of "dumber every week," we might as well close with the teenage morons gathering at the dome. "Whatever happens, don't let go," Angie instructs everybody, despite none of them having any idea what will happen. Everyone puts their hands on the dome, and they close their eyes. After a few moments, they see a figure approaching from the other side. When he comes into focus, it's Big Jim, smiling slightly. Then there is suddenly some sort of wound on his chest, bleeding profusely, and then another one on his abdomen. Big Jim wipes the blood from his now-streaming nose, and when the others look at Junior, they all realize they're holding bloody knives.
Junior's the first to pull back from the dome -- you fool! Have you forgotten Angie's instructions? -- and when they all break, Big Jim and the knives are gone. Junior rushes off to find his dad, but Angie tells him to wait, what with her being an idiot and everything. Meanwhile, the others try to make sense of what they just saw. A frustrated Joe says he thought they were going to get answers, and all I can say is A) why did you think that, and B) even if you were going to get answers, did you think it'd be some kind of Q&A with the dome CEO? Maybe he sits in a backwards chair to relate to the young kids?
But scary Norrie and scary Angie thinks they did get answers: Maybe the dome's coming down, says Norrie. "First, Big Jim has to die," says Angie. "And I think we're supposed to do it," says Norrie. Well, that's that. Fortunately, the four of them are too stupid to do anything, so maybe they can outsource the job to Joe's cretinous friend Ben? If Ben ever reappears?
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