Under the Dome Recap: “The Fourth Hand”

by Kelly M. Smith:

Under the Dome Recap: “The Fourth Hand”
Original Air Date (CBS): Monday August 19, 2013
Season 1 Episode 9

“Maybe it’s better to just say ‘screw it’.” -Julia Shumway

Julia Shumway, local news reporter and unknowing widower, takes ex-military officer Dale “Barbie” Barbara to see the egg with the mini Dome around it out in the woods, the egg that teen Joe McAlister and his girlfriend, Norrie Calvert-Hill, found in the previous episodes and the same egg that had made Norrie hallucinate her mother’s death and Julia see a vision of Joe saying, “the monarch will be crowned”.

When they get there, however, there’s nothing but an empty hole.

While they stand around, trying to figure out what the Hell happened to the mini Dome, new Sheriff Linda Esquivel radios Barbie to report shots were fired in town. (Barbie, in case you didn’t know or remember, is an honorary police officer until the Dome lifts from Chester’s Mill.)

Second Selectman James “Big Jim” Rennie stops by the diner, hyped-up and feeling very pleased with himself over having negotiated a food deal for goods and services with the farmers, who left the side of now-deceased farmer Ollie Dinsmore when Ollie found he didn’t have the monopoly over the town’s water supply anymore, thanks to Barbie.

Angie McAlister, Joe’s older sister and ex-girlfriend of Jim’s son, wants to keep the diner open though the owner, Rose, was murdered, and asks him for the deed. He’ll “think about it”, seeming to be forgetting their deal (he’d keep her away from his son and keep her happy so she doesn’t spill her guts about Junior keeping her hostage for nearly a week).

“For the first time in my life,” she tells him, “I’m gonna be responsible for something!”

Barbie and Linda respond to the shooting, which was deemed an accident, as Ted Utleywas (played by Raheem Babalola, who has been on several popular TV shows including Graceland, Necessary Roughness and Drop Dead Diva) trying to get an incensed townie off his porch. The crazy person is found out to be a young man named Larry (Evan Gamble, from appearances on The Vampire Diaries and other popular TV shows on antenna and cable TV), the town junkie, who’s hearing voices. he claims he is on a drug called Rapture that Reverend Lester Coggins sold him (Big Jim killed Coggins a few episodes back). It’s every drug combined, or so he says.

James “Junior” Rennie comes by the diner, and Angie tries to throw him out, saying that this is her restaurant now, and she reserves the right to refuse service to anyone, especially “psychos who lock up their ex-girlfriends”. He persists with the explanation that he only locked her up because the Dome was making her sick, which is what he’s been saying the past nine episodes. She says that the Dome has nothing to do with her when she suddenly begins to seize. She says the same thing Joe, Norrie and Joe’s friend Ben all have said when they fall into this petit mal seizure: “The pink stars are falling in lines.”

Cut to Jim coming home to find a beautiful woman (Natalie Zea, from Justified, Californiacation and The Following) in his house waiting for him. (Stalker much?)

Angie wakes up in the back of Junior’s police cruiser and does what any normal girl would do: sharts screaming for help and to be let out, but he’s only bringing her back to her home. She leaps from the car, frightened and a little bit confused. When she gets inside her brother Joe oh, so tactfully tells her she looks like crap. When she explains why, Norrie tells her she and Joe have had the same seizure, right down to talking about pink stars.
Norrie notices Angie’s tattoo and comments on it to Joe and Julia after Angie walks away, but Joe says monarchs are orange and Angie’s tattoo is blue and yellow, therefore making it irrelevant, but the look on Norrie’s face says she isn’t so sure.
Joe suggests borrowing Dodee Weaver’s device to try to track down the mini Dome. Julia says she’ll ask, as Dodee is a bit wary of the two kids ever since she saw them touch the Dome and make the frequency stop jamming on her device.

Back at the Rennie house, Jim talks to Max, the woman who we find out was making the drug calledRapture with Jim’s “secret ingredient”. He wonders if she broke through the Dome to get in and she laughs scornfully, saying she’d never waste her time trying to get into this Hellhole. She got trapped in town when she came to see him about the drugs. He assures her that former sherrif Howard “Duke” Perkins and Coggins aren’t problems anymore.

Linda and Barbie find Coggins’ stash in one of the caskets in his funeral home, along with a formula that calls for liquid propane as an ingredient, which they notice the town has a lot of. (Hello, everyone has been noticing that since episode one!)

Julia goes and asks Dodee to borrow her device to find a power source, but Dodee tells her it stopped working after Norrie and Joe touched the Dome. Dodee is still made nervous by the kids., but Julia makes her renew her promise that she won’t tell anyone that.

Back at the station, Jim suggests they confiscate people’s guns. He argues the Dome means they’re not part of America anymore, so the Second Amendment doesn’t apply when Linda brings it up. He suggests going on the local radio station (the only thing they can get in The Mill aside from random chatter on the frequency and proposing it as a voluntary program. Barbie agrees, but thinks Jim’s up to something. He only goes along to see what the man is up to.
Jim goes on the radio with his proposal, making sure he emphasizes that it’s totally voluntary and anyone who participates will get extra food and propane.

When Julia goes back to Joe’s house to report she doesn’t have Dodee’s device, Norrie suggests they use the dog, Truman, to try to find it, since he growled when he was near it last time. She thinks he can sense it just like an animal can sense ghosts.

Angie goes to see Junior at the station, wondering if him saying the Dome is making her sick isn’t just crazy ranting, since her brother and this new girl have had the same issue.

Back at the diner, dozens of people turn in their guns (in need of extra food and propane), but Jim is disappointed that Ted Utley isn’t among them. His wife and child had been killed when the Dome came down and Jim says he’s “worried” about him. He arms up and goes to see him, with Barbie following, suspicious, though under the guise that Jim might need backup.

In the woods, Joe, Norrie and Julia begin to follow Truman.

Linda goes to check on the town’s propane supply. The local busybody, who lives across the street, comes by and tells Linda about all the suspicious trucks coming and going, like she once mentioned to Duke. Linda wonders why he didn’t say anything to her, his second in command and “daughter”. The woman also says she told Julia about it, and Linda should ask her for confirmation. Linda sees the security cameras are all dead and so she shoots the lock off and goes inside to see all the tanks of propane, all lined up neatly. Why?

Jim and Barbie pull up to Ted’s house and are formulating a plan of how to deal with him and protect themselves when he shoots at their windshield.

Angie follows Junior to his mom’s art studio, which has been unused since she died in a car crash (suicide) nine years ago. He tells her a few months before she died, Mrs. Rennie had had a dream about Junior and started painting frantically in the middle ff the night. In this dream, he was on a hill, looking up at pink stars, and that is precisely what the painting depicts.

At Ted’s house, Jim goes in the front door cautiously while Barbie creeps around back, to get a good vantage point. Jim finds Ted in his bedroom, sitting on the bed, surrounded by at least eight to ten rifles. Jim sits down to talk to him, with Barbie taking aim through a scope behind him. Jim purposefully blocks Barbie’s shot as he tries to talk Ted down, but Barbie sees that Ted is holding a grenade in his hands.

Ted is still devastated over the loss of his family and ignores Jim’s futile attempts to reason with him. He pulls the pin on the grenade. Jim, in act act of desperate self-preservation, throws himself on him, grabs the grenade and gets the pin back in before it goes off–a miracle and one heck of a close call. With the situation take care of, Jim takes Ted to the clinic for observation and possibly sedation and asks Barbie to pack up his guns. He also thanks Barbie for not accidentally blowing his head off, which Barbie was tempted to do.

At the propane storage, Linda scans through the surveillance footage and finds Duke taking an envelope of cash from Max. “Duke, what the Hell were you doing?” she asks the image on the screen in front of her, her heart shattering that he might’ve been involved with something unsavory.

At his mother’s studio, Junior is starting to sound less crazy and more logical. He thinks that his mom knew something was coming, like she could see the future, and maybe Angie could to during these seizures. The painting shows him standing outside a house with pink stars in the sky. He says to Angie, “It’s great ‘cuz we’re in it together.

Jim and Barbie are packing up the guns at the diner when Max comes sauntering in, congratulating him on a job well done. Jim starts to introduce Max to Barbie when she simply strolls over and kisses Barbie full on the lips. “We know each other,” she says smugly.

Joe and Norrie return to the house after dark, having no success in their search, and Truman takes off for the barn barking. Upon opening the doors they find the mini Dome is inside.

Barbie isn’t happy isn’t see Max. Him and Jim begin to argue, and she tells him “Girls, please, you’re both pretty!”, which was fairly comical. Max tells both men they’re working for her now or else she’ll reveal all of their respective secrets. Rounding up the guns was the first part and spreading the drugs is the second. Jim huffs, agrees and then leaves.
When Jim leaves, Barbie tells Max he won’t go along with her plan. She smiles and threatens to tell Julia he killed her husband, Peter; it is revealed that Max was the one he called and said Peter fought back and he had no choice.

Angie joins Norrie and Joe in the barn after getting back from Junior’s mom’s studio. Norrie and Joe are wondering how the mini Dome got there, when Angie says Joe brought it there. When both kids are confused–especially Joe–she explains that she saw him in the kitchen at 3AM (the Witching Hour for those who may not know) last night acting like a zombie and saying he was going out for a “walk in the woods”. Joe wonders why she didn’t try to stop him and Norrie wonders if the siblings are telling the truth.

Back at Julia’s house, she’s trying to convince herself to stop worrying about the mini Dome and be grateful for what she has, including Barbie, who is cuddling her on the couch. She thinks they should stop looking for answers, but she is still concerned with the Dome’s appearance and seeming permanence. He’s distracted listening to her, thinking about her dead husband, until she kisses him.

Junior sees the door to his dad’s fallout shelter open and goes to investigate, wondering who was there. He sees his dad stockpiling the weapons the town turned in and is shocked.

Back in the barn, Norrie wonders if Joe brought the Dome there because they’re the only ones who are supposed to know about it. She says not to tell Julia again, that maybe she wasn’t meant to have seen or touched it at all.
Angie touches it and it glows blue, which it never had before. When all three of them bend down and touch it together, a fourth, ghostly-looking hand-print appears on the dome. “It’s like this is a lock and our hands are the keys,” Norrie says. They need to find the fourth hand and maybe then they can unlock the Dome and be free again.