Tag Archive for: episode recap alaska

“Alaska”, Under the Dome’s fifth episode of Season 3 opens with Christine and Junior basking in the afterglow of what has apparently been the best sex of Junior’s life. He is eager to begin their makeout session anew but Christine is distracted by the amethyst crystals that are embedded in the cavern walls. They have begun to flicker and as she watches them, she looks a bit distraught and asks Junior to promise her that he’ll do whatever she asks him to do, without question. Firmly under her spell at this point, Junior readily agrees, assuring her that he knows “how to follow orders.”

We find out that Christine has a good reason to be distracted by those amethysts when she records her latest progress report and reveals that the flickering stones indicate that the Dome’s energy supply is beginning to fail — when Big Jim smashed the egg, he compromised their power source: “One amethyst died this morning; a second one is losing power, which is causing the amniotic fluid in the cavern to dry up. It’s only a matter of time before the Dome begins to calcify. If the kinship can’t come together, we will all suffocate…” Barbie interrupts at this point, storming into her office. I had to chuckle when Christine says, “Barbie, come on in, hun. Have a seat.” Is she trying a little Southern hospitality on Barbie to throw him off guard and get him on board with her mission? It doesn’t seem to phase him as he demands to know who the hell she is.

Christine is spared from having to answer his question by a loud crash and screams coming from elsewhere in the building. Barbie and Christine race through the building looking for the source of the crash. They discover that the ceiling has come down in the area where Junior took a sledgehammer to what he thought was a non load-bearing column. Two people are dead and several others are injured, some seriously, and as they set out to help people and to get the damage repaired so that people can move in soon, Pete, obviously not a Christine fan, takes the opportunity to loudly proclaim that this is Christine’s fault and to challenge her leadership. When she attempts to give him orders regarding how the repairs should be done, he lashes out at her in front of everyone: “Lady, you lost the right to tell me what to do when you let Junior Rennie take his toy hammer to that column. This is on you!” He storms off and Christine tells Barbie that Pete is a menace and she wants him out of the group. Barbie tells her he’s “got this” and pairs up with Pete to complete the repairs. The way Christine was watching Barbie when he walked off with Pete had me wondering 1) Is Pete another one of Christine’s distractions, this time to keep Barbie from coming back at her with the ‘Who the hell are you?’ question; or 2) Is Christine assessing him like she assessed Junior in the previous episode? Or is it maybe a little of both?

Christine next seeks out Eva, obviously having been rattled by Barbie’s suspicions. Eva immediately confronts her again about the necessity of keeping up the false identities that they were given in the alternate reality because she’s tired of lying to Barbie. Frustrated, Christine tells her “I’m doing this for your own good. You’re not ready.” After meeting even more resistance from Eva, Christine finally relents and promises that she’ll tell Eva the truth and sets up a meeting with her at the cavern because “that’s where the answers are.” Yeah, and so is that handy mind-altering Oxytocin goo. Well played, Christine.
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