This episode of Under the Dome revolves around an epidemic that seems to be breaking out in Chester’s Mill. We also have some big revelations with regards to Julia and Barbie’s relationship, and Junior and Angie. We also learn that the reverend is thinking about getting out of business with Big Jim, and even tries to give his share of the money back. Let’s get into this week’s episode guide for Under the Dome episode 4, titled, “Outbreak”. Josh provides his recap, and Violet will review this week’s episode of Under the Dome as well (in pink font), providing commentary as she feels it’s needed.
We open the episode with what appears to be a riot. Sheriff Linda is trying to calm the crowd, but suddenly becomes faint and falls over. Big Jim takes her to the hospital, to see what is going on. Alice also heads to the hospital to have her daughter and Joe looked at. She asks one of the nurses at the hospital to run some tests on Norrie and Joe to see if they can discover the cause of their seizures. Unfortunately, all of the doctors of Chester’s Mill are either dead, missing (dead really) or stuck outside the dome. This could be a huge catastrophe for Chester’s Mill, but we learn that Alice is a doctor. What kind of doctor you ask? A psychiatrist. Apparently she has done enough medical training that she feels she can handle testing these kids herself.
Doesn’t seem safe, but I guess Chester’s Mill has to use what they have, even though Alice probably hasn’t had medical training in quite awhile!
She begins testing the kids in an exam room, with various neural looking devices. Big Jim interrupts her though, asking for her help. She is brought to Sheriff Linda, who declares that there is an epidemic. She is unsure of what the disease is, but based off of the symptoms she is seeing, she guesses Meningitis. She isn’t certain of this, but she says that they do not have the proper testing equipment in that hospital to find out. Meningitis is apparently very contagious and dangerous if not treated with antibiotics, and they begin treating the epidemic as such.
How did that happen, considering the dome is sealing the town off from the rest of the world? Does that mean diseases can still get through the dome, or did it just happen to pop up within the dome somehow? Or maybe the dome triggered it in some way?
Unfortunately, the hospital is very limited on antibiotics though, but Big Jim seem to have a solution in mind for the problem. He asks Barbie to go with him to retrieve more. We learn that Big Jim and Barbie have been vaccinated for Meningitis, so they conveniently are not at risk of getting sick. To viewers, Big Jim’s other idea seems to be a massacre waiting to happen–he puts Junior in charge of quarantining all patients, so they do not infect others, and even hands him a shotgun to stand guard with. When Jim asks him to do this, Junior is dressing his hand from a wound he got from “chopping wood” (more on that later).
Junior in charge? With a shotgun?? That does not bode well for the people of Chester’s Mill… Also, he didn’t have to bring so much attention to himself and the fact that he had a gun and wasn’t letting anyone out. No one really seemed to notice him and the gun until he brought attention to himself and almost caused a riot.
Big Jim and Barbie head to the pharmacy, but discover a huge problem–it has been ransacked. Big Jim has an idea as to who took the medicine though, and they both head over to the Reverend’s house. Apparently now the Reverend has decided to take his own kooky “high road”, and has taken it upon himself to destroy all medicines. Talking crazy, he says that those people who die are meant to die. He begins chucking medicine into the fire, but Big Jim is able to salvage most of it before it is thrown into the fire.
Add the Reverend to the list of people going crazy in town…
Let’s get into the side stories as they begin to converge after the above events. Junior has Angie still locked up in the storm cellar. Angie has managed to steal a pair of scissors, and has attempted to cut the chains unsuccessfully. Junior walks in with breakfast, and begins to say how much Angie seems to be like the “old Angie” he knew. Angie tries to play this up in order to catch him off guard. I am not sure what her next move would have been if she was successful, but she attempts to shank Junior with the scissors. What would she do if she killed him? She may be trapped down there forever! Regardless, he only has a flesh wound on his hand. He says that she hasn’t changed at all, and storms out.
This puts Angie in a rage, and she begins screaming angrily and desperately for help. She climbs on the top bunk of the bed she is shackled to, and begins yelling into the vent. She loses her balance though, and grabs a water pipe. Her grip slips from that, and she falls to the ground, knocking herself unconscious. Meanwhile, the water pipe has broken open and the cellar has begun to flood. We see several scenes through the show later with her awake, and freezing, as the room fills with water.
Uh oh, hope she doesn’t drown down there!
As for Julia, she finds her husband’s car at Phil’s house. She knocks on his door, and Phil answers, looking a little worse for the wear. Julia demands to know why her husband’s car is at his house, and Phil tells her that it was sold to him really cheap by her husband. Phil then passes out, and comes down with what everyone else has–meningitis.
Julia winds up at the hospital, and begins to question Barbie regarding Phil’s house since that what was circled on Barbie’s map, that she “borrowed”, but she has also become sick, so their conversation ends. Given the new information about her husband though, she seems bent on finding him despite her horrible condition. She has a confrontation with Junior as he is standing guard over the quarantine area. She demands that he let her go, but he refuses. She tries to explain she thinks her husband is in trouble, and he may be at some sort of cabin. This prompts Junior to explain that she saw Barbie at a cabin. This makes her more determined, but he refuses to let her go. She winds up heading to her husband’s office, and steals a keycard, leaving through a different door.
Meddling reporters always seem to find a sneaky way to get where they want to go.
She heads to the woods in a rather bad state, a poor decision on her part. She finds the cabin, and begins looking around. She searches for a while, until she finds some documents. As she has finished scanning them, she passes out in the cabin.
As bad of shape that everyone else who’s sick is in, plus the hallucinations the disease seems to cause, it’s a miracle she was able to find a way out of the hospital, and all the way to the cabin safely. But I guess it was just in time before the sickness really kicked in.
Back to Joe and Norrie, who are still in the exam room they were left in. They are just chit chatting, and they grab some lunch from the cafeteria. They begin talking about their seizures , and they theorize that it happens when they touch each other. They decide to conduct an experiment, and see if this is the case. Joe sets up a camera, and they begin to hold hands. At first, it doesn’t look like anything is going to happen, but then they suddenly begin to seize.
After they come to, they examine the camera to see what happened. There is the usual “pink stars” phrase said, but Joe creepily gets up, “shhh”s the camera, and continues to seize. Joe says he doesn’t remember that happening however. Joe decides to take this as a sign they shouldn’t talk about what happened. Uh, why?!
Um, yeah, that was just weird and creepy. I would not take that as a message, and would definitely talk about it!
Meanwhile, sheriff Linda is laying in her hospital bed, and winds up next to her elementary school teacher. They have a conversation about how Linda was a problem kid, but she turned out great in the end, partially due to Duke, but her teacher tells her not to discount Linda’s own attitude. They both begin to take a turn for the worse, and Linda passes out. The nurses reveal to the teacher that they only have 1 round of antibiotics left. The teacher selflessly tells the nurse to give it to Linda. The teacher passes away due to not receiving treatment in time.
Now the stories begin to come together. Junior has kept guard, but the patients are becoming irate, demanding to leave. Junior shoots the gun in the air (hopefully no one was above him!) The patients become scared, but still demanding to leave. As they are moving in on Junior, the sheriff hobbles out with her IV. Junior sees her, and begins a rousing (yet pretty unbelievable speech considering his hidden character) about how they all need to do what is best for the city. Linda seems to appreciate his speech as well as Big Jim, who hears about it later.
That’s what I thought too, what if he shot someone above him?? But I think the hospital is so small that it might not have an upstairs. But yeah, his speech seemed a little out of character for him, and I didn’t really find it all that inspiring in the first place. I don’t know why Linda was so impressed. Probably still getting over her sickness.
Big Jim and Barbie have finally made it back with the medicine, and treatment begins for the patients. Barbie has a confrontation with Phil, who is still a little out of it, regarding what he told Phil. Phil is really out of though, and doesn’t recall exactly what he told her. He talks with Junior regarding Julia, and he finds out that Julia is probably at the cabin he was at where her husband died. He heads there, finds her passed out, and brings her back to the hospital.
Hmm, so what does Phil have to do with Barbie and all of this…?
At the hospital, Julia thanks Barbie for saving her, but demands answers. Julia also reveals that she is broke, as her husband lost everything. Barbie comes clean to an extent, explaining that he is a bookie, and that her husband was in pretty deep. Instead of finishing with the truth though, he tells her that he must have skipped town, which is what people in that situation usually do.
Yeah, I didn’t think he would tell her the truth. But I’m sure the truth will come out eventually… Oh, and Julia kicks Barbie out of her house. Where’s he going to stay now?
Big Jim talks with Junior, and offers him a position in law enforcement. That should be a great position for him. Meanwhile, Norrie and Joe keep quiet about their seizing adventure. Also, Alice’s girlfriend Carolyn attempts to steal insulin for her. Alice refuses to let her though, taking the noble high road.
Junior, a cop? Oh no… I fear for the citizens of Chester’s Mill with both Big Jim and Junior in positions of authority.
The episode finishes up, with finally a big reveal–at Big Jim’s house, Angie has resumed screaming for help. Jim hears faint noises, and tries to figure out where they are coming from. He determines they are in the cellar, and opens the door to see a cold, wet Angie sitting on a flooded bed mattress.
Wow, I did not see it coming that Big Jim would find Angie in the cellar! I figured he would see the flood, which coincided with what Junior told him in the first episode, that the cellar was flooded, and not think anything of it. What’s he going to do now?
Overall this was a entertaining episode. I still really cannot appreciate certain characters, standing out the most being Junior. He just seems like too much of an unbelievable character for me with his simple method of having two distinct personalities. The show feels a little soap opera-ish as well, with some of the weird drama going on between some characters. I will continue tuning in though, and hope that the show improves to really grab my attention!
I don’t understand why everyone seems to trust Junior so much. I guess it’s since they’ve never seen the side of him that we have. We’re finally starting to get some answers here, like who Barbie really is, and why he was in town. I want to know more, so I’ll keep tuning in. The most exciting part of this episode for me was the end, with Big Jim actually finding Angie. Now I want to know what comes next! However, the show is still just “okay” to me. I hope it gets better as we learn more about the people of Chester’s Mill and the dome! Oh, and one other thing that bothered me is that Joe still doesn’t seem very concerned about where his sister, Angie, is. He asked Junior this episode if he’d seen Angie lately, to which Junior obviously lied about, but other than that, it doesn’t seem like Joe is making much of an effort to look for her, even inviting Norrie and her moms to stay at his house!
