'Under The Dome' Recap: Alice Dies; Joe And Norrie Find The Nucleus And The Dome Projects Visions

Another Under the Dome episode, another weird event: in “Imperfect Circles,” the dome somehow projected a vision of Alice (Samantha Mathis) so that Norrie (Mackenzie Lintz) could rush home and see her mother before she died of a heart attack.

The dome, it seems, has the power to communicate to people in need. Or could it just manipulating the humans inhabiting Chester’s Mill? Let’s start from the beginning.

Julia (Rachelle Lefevre) and Barbie (Mike Vogel) woke up together after a romantic night, only to be interrupted by Julia’s very pregnant neighbor who wanted to ask Julia for some yogurt – it’s the only food the baby likes, apparently, and Julia is happy to help. Barbie, obviously not one to stick around the morning after, uses Julia’s distraction as an opportunity to get out of there.

Though he refused the badge, Barbie still thinks Sheriff Linda (Natalie Martinez) could use a hand, and he runs out to the police station. There he meets up with Linda and Junior (Alexander Koch), who was just kicked out of his house by Big Jim (Dean Norris) and instructed, rather menacingly, to never approach Angie (Britt Robertson) again. Junior insists on going after the Dundee brothers (you know, the ones that clobbered Rose to death with a baseball bat and then tried to rape Angie) with Linda, leaving Barbie to patrol the streets on his own.

Back at Julia’s house, her neighbor leaves and then sees her husband, home from the war, smiling and waving at her. Is he real, she asks – her husband was deployed when the dome came down, and who knows where he is! But, it appears he’s in Chester’s Mill; the neighbor runs to him, collides with the dome, and her water breaks. The dome somehow induced labor! It’s too early, she says, but Julia tells her that the baby is coming and gets her in a car and off they go to the clinic.

On their way, they get stopped by the Dundee brothers – one holds a gun on them while the other steals their gas. Always a hero, Barbie arrives just in time to scare the brothers off and help the women. The car is out of gas, and Barbie informs them that the clinic is closed (why is the clinic closed?), so they decide to make their way to Joe’s house, where Alice, the psychiatrist/doctor is staying.

Alice is weak due to lack of insulin, but she insists on helping deliver the baby. Unfortunately, she doesn’t quite make it that far. Just as the baby is crowning, Alice feels it – she’s having a heart attack! Not wanting to distract from the baby, Alice takes a backseat and talks Barbie through delivering the baby – a girl, appropriately named Alice. She collapses right after, and it does not look good.

Meanwhile, Norrie and Joe (Colin Ford) were out doing some detective work. After trying to get the dome to speak to them – they speak to it, touch it together, they even make-out on it – Joe realizes that, if the dome is alive, and like a cell, then it must have a nucleus. Joe, brilliant as always, manages to map out where the nucleus might be and the young lovers take off into the woods. Right at the ‘nucleus’ they find a smaller dome hidden under a pile of fallen leaves. Under that small dome is a mysterious black egg-like object. Could this be the power source of the dome? Again, Joe and Norrie try talking to the mini dome. This time, when they touch it, a vision of Alice appears in the woods. Both Joe and Norrie see her, and somehow, they understand it means that Norrie needs to get home. They rush back to the house, and Norrie gets to say a tearful goodbye to her dying mother.

Joe waits outside, and, as Norrie says goodbye to her mother forever, Joe is reunited with his sister (finally!). Angie has come home after a day of burying Rose and cleaning up the diner. (She also had a run in with Junior, who killed one of the Dundee brothers and apologized to her for ‘everything.’) The nice sibling reunion is cut short when Norrie runs out of the house sobbing. Joe follows her to the edge of the dome, where she breaks down and begs the dome to give her mother back to her.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Under the Dome unless Big Jim killed someone in cold blood. This time, Big Jim goes after Ollie Dinsmore (Leon Rippy), his longtime rival who hired a big gun and took control of Big Jim’s secret stockpile of propane, effectively taking Big Jim’s only source of power over him. After a heavy afternoon of drinking, Big Jim goes to the warehouse at night and shoots the guard as he’s trying to steal a few tanks of propane for himself. Big Jim watches as the car goes up in flames, the man trapped inside screaming as he dies. The episode ended with him emerging from a crowd of townspeople looking at the explosion, as if he had just arrived on the scene. Is he planning on setting up Ollie as the town villain by accusing him of trafficking all that propane and keeping it hidden from the town?

Whatever his plan was, it looks like Big Jim and Ollie will come to blows in next week’s episode ‘Thicker Than Water’ of Under the Dome, airing Monday at 10 P.M. on CBS.

– Olivia Truffaut-Wong

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