After Under the Dome shit the bed with “Reconciliation,” I honestly thought there was no way to get this season out of its tailspin. But I was wrong. “Going Home” isn’t just the best episode of this season, it might be the best episode of the entire series. This was a perfect example of the shitfuck lunacy that Under the Dome should have been embracing from day one. I wasn’t just interested in this episode, I was riveted. What a nice surprise, having submitted myself to a tortuously bad episode of True Blood last night. I needed this. This was the most fun I’ve ever had watching this show.
The biggest plot point of “Going Home” is revealed through Barbie’s search for Sam’s body. Barbie tells Junior that Sam killed Angie, but Junior doesn’t believe him, so Barbie takes it upon himself to retrieve Sam’s body so he can show Junior the scratches on his shoulder. Apparently Barbie hates being called a liar more than Marty McFly hates being called a chicken. So Barbie gets all headlamp’d out to go down in the hole that Sam leapt into.
The best part about this abyss is that it leads somewhere – namely Zenith, hometown of Barbie and Melanie Cross. This is where showrunner Jack Bender really embraces his Lost roots, and he’s aided by energetic, propulsive direction from David Barrett (Arrow, Once Upon a Time) and editing by Quincy Z. Gunderson (who is a human, not a character in a Roald Dahl novel).
In Zenith, Barbie gets caught up with his old criminal buddies, who force him to do some MacGuffin of a job that’s not remotely important. But it does put him in the same room with the CEO of Aktaion Energy, aka his father Don Barbara (played by Brett Cullen of The Dark Knight Rises). Barbie wants his dad to use his connections to get him back to the dome.
Back in Chester’s Mill, Jim is throwing his weight around, buffaloing Rebecca after accusing her of lying to him. It’s Under the Dome‘s way of reminding us that, hey, Dean Norris is a really good actor. He clearly relishes any scene where he gets to play a villain, so why not have him do that all the time?
Sam is still alive in Zenith, following his plunge into the abyss last week. He tracks down Pauline at a mental hospital, and Lyle is there too, doing nothing but muttering “Melanie” over and over. I’m still on the fence about the whole Pauline subplot, but with her on screen and actually interacting with characters, there’s a little more narrative momentum to everything that happens. It’s better than watching Junior get Skype messages from her and the Hounds of Diana (who we still haven’t heard from).
This show has long since left the realm of Stephen King’s novel, and for the first time ever, I think it might be better for it. Not that I prefer the show to the novel – it’s not even close – but if Under the Dome can keep producing episodes like “Going Home,” it has a real good shot at becoming something like a cult favorite. Or, at the very least, its own entity.
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