TV Review: Under the Dome Season 2 Episode 4 “Revelation”

Oh. My. Gosh.

This is what I’ve been freaking waiting for since the beginning of this entire series! Some damn answers! The creators were right in naming it “Revelation”; this episode does that and so much more. We finally get a glimpse of the dome’s origins while uncovering buried secrets, the Pink Stars Group comes to the rescue right when things are about to get nasty, and we also get to know more about Dome Girl (or should I say Melanie Cross?).

So, continuing from the last episode, Big Jim and Rebecca are still riding on the idea of “thinning the herd” and for a science teacher, Rebecca really has some creative ways of reducing the town’s population. But Big Jim actually has a conscience as he doesn’t allow Rebecca to just dictate who lives and who dies; his argument is that he grew up with the people and he was chosen to lead them, not murder them. He can’t just “shake the tree” as Rebecca insists. This is definitely not what she wanted to hear since, apparently, she wanted Big Jim to be the one who took charge of this ghastly project. At one point in the show, the woman who was the first to give birth under the dome is considered collateral to Rebecca while Big Jim begs to differ. Coincidentally, this woman just so happens to walk into the café, when Big Jim and Barbie are discussing the “population reduction” thing, and is just a peach to Big Jim (like she knows that he plans to kill her and she’ll kill him with kindness).

Meanwhile, Joe, Norrie and Melanie Cross (Dome Girl) set out to uncover Melanie’s whereabouts and if she really is the girl from the 80’s yearbook. Fortunately, they come across Barbie and decide to trust him with their new information in hopes that he’ll help them solve the mystery of Dome Girl. However, tension arises even more as Norrie feels that Joe is falling for Melanie because she’s something literally out of this world.

Julia and Sam, on the other hand, are trying to put a stop to Rebecca’s plans. Julia is of the mindset that Barbie has turned against her and joined the Big Jim Regime since Barbie didn’t leave with her when Rebecca first suggested the “population reduction” plan. So Ms. Monarch and Sam find themselves breaking and entering into Rebecca’s place in hopes of discovering her evil plan for the town. From the evidence lying around, Sam supposedly puts two and two together and reasons that Rebecca is using the virus from sick pigs to poison the townspeople in hopes of distinguishing the strong from the weak. Still, I think that was waaaay too much of a coincidence. Does Sam know more about the dome and Melanie than anybody else in the town or anyone watching the show? Does he have evil intentions or honest ones?

Junior is also curious for some answers as he removes Lyle from his jail cell in exchange for information on his not-dead mother. Lyle takes Junior to his barber shop where he tells him that Junior’s mother knew all about the dome’s imminent arrival and thought that if she left town it would follow her instead of staying in Chester’s Mill and keeping her family and friends hostage. Junior doesn’t seem to be buying any of it as he tries to come to terms with years of rage and grief upon realizing that his mother is not only alive but had abandoned him. Lyle tries to expose Junior to the secret that he personally had going with her. Apparently, his mother was seeing more than pink stars. From the postcards that she was sending Lyle years before the dome came down, she saw every incident that was going to affect the town; the dome egg, the pink stars, the magnet, the acidic rain, everything! Then Lyle tells him about a journal she used to own and how that had more direct answers about what was truly going on.

While Junior is busy figuring out the mess his mother left him, Rebecca is focused on her mass murder project. She gets a hold of the key to a lab in the school and uses it to conduct her experiment on the virus. When it is perfected, she takes it and inserts it into eggs that she plans to distribute around town. However, Big Jim finds her in time and, somehow, she gets him on board with her plan (it isn’t too hard to manipulate Big Jim when you play up to his God-complex). Later, they agree to distribute the virus through the water.

Meanwhile, the Pink Stars group set out on an adventure to discover who exactly Melanie is (or was). With the help of the microfiche, they find an article in an old newspaper about Melanie’s sudden disappearance. And that she came from the same town as Barbie. They decide to go looking for Melanie’s old address and find an abandoned house whose owners were probably on the outside when the dome came down. Nothing seems familiar to Melanie except the room upstairs where she spots the pink stars she drew on the wallpaper when she peeled away the new covering. Somehow, this jogs her memory and she says that she used to watch the pink stars falling from her window. Joe (this episode’s eager beaver) says that that’s exactly where the Pink Stars Group found the mini dome and they should go there to uncover the truth behind Melanie’s past.

When they do venture into the creepy forest and find the exact spot where the mini dome used to be, Melanie walks right over to the spot and gets a shockingly clear flashback of herself, Pauline (Junior’s mom), Lyle and Sam discovering a glowing blue meteor. When the group touches the glowing mass of space junk, it bursts open to reveal the dome egg. At this point, I’m practically hyperventilating about the fact that I’m finally getting to see the origins of the dome egg! Still, it seemed like Melanie went off her rockers back then. She grabbed the dome egg and started to run off since she said that she felt like she needed to protect it. Before she could reach very far, someone hit her over the head and she fell back into the pit where the meteor was, hit her head against it and died. So, apparently, this is the big secret Sam told Lyle that was to stay buried. The group had probably covered up Melanie’s body and went their merry ways. But something is definitely off about Sam. Other than the fact that he used to date Melanie back in the 80’s. Yup! Dome Girl also has a hot flashback of her and Sam sharing an intimate kiss. I mean, I knew that Sam recognized her when he helped Julia pull her out of the lake, but what’s his deal? He’s so creepily involved in everything.

Anyway, currently he seems to be on the good side as he helps Julia track down Big Jim and stop him from spreading the virus through water jugs in the café. It turns out that Big Jim was given the dud and that Rebecca had the real deal and was about to distribute it in the holy water at a church. Why choose to distribute it at a church? Does she have some personal agenda against God? At one moment in the show, she did confide in Big Jim about her mother dying when she was young. She told him that for a long time she kept wondering why her mother had to die and how frustrating it was that people kept saying that sometimes there weren’t any answers to certain questions. She said that that was the main reason she gave her life to science. To find answers.

Thankfully, she doesn’t empty the virus in the holy water and Julia and Sam catch her as she’s walking off. They take both Big Jim and Rebecca to the police station and place them in jail cells. However, I find that that whole situation went down way too easy. I suspect that Rebecca did empty the poison into the water and that she was quarantining herself and Big Jim in the jail cells. I don’t doubt that a girl with that much vengeance would all of a sudden grow a heart.

On the other side of crazy town, Junior and Lyle break and enter into Sam’s cabin and uncover Pauline’s journal. Lyle’s crazy streak returns and not even Junior holding a gun to his head can make him relinquish the book. Instead, he wacks Junior over the head with some piece of steel and makes a hasty getaway. Later, the Pink Stars group come to Junior’s rescue.

The episode comes to an end with the two quarrelling lovebirds – Julia and Barbie. Barbie is trying desperately to get Julia to forgive him for a lot of things (murdering her husband should be at the top) but she just doesn’t want to hear it. However, she does invite Sam to stay the night but hastily turns down his advances. It’s also revealed that Sam has a very nasty wound on his shoulder that almost looks like fingernail marks…

Why oh why must they torture me like this and have me wait a whole week before I get to see a new episode?!

Rating: 9/10