CBS
It took a while but full-blown panic finally broke out in Chester’s Mill in episode 6. Being Under the Dome, a giant impenetrable hemisphere, trapped in close proximity to the kind of turds you’d amputate your own face to avoid isn’t most people’s idea of fun yet the villagers waited weeks to go apeshit. I mean Junior locked his wantaway fuckbuddy in an underground bunker but he wasn’t exactly the full shilling to begin with. That unfortunate abduction and false imprisonment has all been smoothed over with Big Jim offering Angie special access to his big box of stuff in exchange for her keeping schtum about his psycho son’s psycho episode. Don’t judge Angie too harshly for her choice. When you’ve been chained to a bed by your needsy ex-borefriend you get a new perspective on life and special access to Big Jim’s special stash could be the difference between life and death in Chesturd’s Mill.
Nor should you judge Julia for banging her husband’s killer. She’s merely following in the storied footsteps of Eirene from Rome, Mary Queen of Scots and Gemma from Sons of Anarchy who all jumped on their boo’s murderers like monkeys passing from one branch to the next. And bear in mind that Julia doesn’t even know that husbland Peeturd is dead, much less that it was Barbie who deaded him. Not that it would make much difference if she did. It’s not like she’s spoilt for choice in this shitbox and when you’re trapped inside a giant snow globe you make new arrangements.
Ollie Dinsmore is doing just that. Having struck the deal with Big Jim to allow the town access to his water well he makes a Nucky Thompson power move and commandeers Jim’s private stock of propane. Oh Big Jim don’t like that. He likes it even less when he tries to get to his fuel and the armed knucklehead Ollie charges with guarding it whacks him in the face with his rifle butt. Bloody hell. Big Jim is quite literally out of gas.
Being Under the Dome, a giant impenetrable hemisphere, trapped in close proximity to the kind of turds you’d amputate your own face to avoid isn’t most people’s idea of fun yet the villagers waited weeks to go apeshit.
Also having a tough week is Harriet, Julia’s heavily pregnant nausey neighbour who we haven’t seen before and therefore don’t really give two fucks about. Harriet hallucinates her navy husbland and in going to greet him runs right into the dome which gives her a shock that kicks off her labour. After getting petrol carjacked by the fugitive Dundee brothers, Julia takes Harriet to Carolyn and Alice‘s. Being a doctor, Alice delivers the baby like a pro but being a diabetic she has a heart attack and dies like a schmo. Chester Mill’s lesbian population just shrank by 50% which is a pisser because I thought their softball team was gonna RULE this year.
Chester Mill’s lesbian population just shrank by 50% which is a pisser because I thought their softball team was gonna RULE this year.
It’s clear from their seizure episodes that Joe and Norrie (most assume Norrie comes from her full name Eleanor but it’s actually a reference to brain drain Latino rapper N.O.R.E.) are connected to the dome somehow. He posits that it’s like a nucleus with invisible barrier representing the electrons or some shit. As speculative sci-fi goes it’s towards the primitive but, what the hell, it’s not like anyone else has got any better ideas so they go to find its core.
Sure enough, with the power of gravitity, polarity and trigonometry they find in the woods a little dome smaller than a baseball mound with an egg structure inside. Is it some kind of generator? We don’t find out but Norrie does hallucinate her mother much like nausey Harriet hallucinated her husbland so maybe the dome is a benevolent God after all? Norrie gets back just in time to say goodbye to her mother before she’s wormfood so *Paul McCartney thumbs up*.
Speaking of wormfood Junior and that cop kill the Dundee brothers and a pissed Big Jim barbecues Ollie’s knucklehead by firing into a propane filled truck so the power dynamic shifts once again. Can Big Jim keep his slippery grasp on the reins of Chester’s Mill? Will Joe ever get to bang Norrie? And just what is the egg (Egg, like an egg!) in the woods? I have no idea but for some reason I’m still liking this. It’s essentially a post-apocalyptic tale with ordinary people struggling to adapt to a new world with a pressure cooker atmosphere with death and teed stalking you at every turn like a really shit pop-up comedy double act.
You could do a lot worse. You could still be watching True Blood.
The verdict: Trouble in the Mill.
Marks out of 10: 7.5
