Under the Dome - Going Home - Review: "Down The Red Door"

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Previous Episode: 2.06 In The Dark

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2.07 "Going Home"
(Directed by David Barrett, written by Peter Calloway)
Rating: 6.5/10 (C+)

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Next Episode: 2.08 Awakening

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With an overwhelmingly underwhelming season so far, ”Going Home” easily stands out as a good episode. An annoying crisis-of-the-week is nowhere to be found and there’s progress made by the end of the installment. While it doesn’t mean ”Going Home” is free of mistakes, it is a big improvement and arguably better than the last several episodes combined.

The episode starts with Barbie telling Junior about what happened to Sam in the tunnels. Junior’s adamant refusal to believe anyone in his family is capable of doing something bad is hilarious, given how his father killed Dodee and a couple other people nobody ever talks about and his mother faked her own death. What makes him so sure his uncle is a saint? Then there’s him locking up Angie just a few weeks ago but I suppose the show is trying to make us forget about that by painting him as the knight in shining armor who stays up all night to keep his friends safe. Barbie decides to climb down the pit to retrieve Sam’s body as proof but the situation quickly escalates when the anchor comes loose and after cutting the rope to prevent Julia and Rebecca from going down with him, he finds himself at a playground in his hometown, Zenith.

Sam reunites with his sister who throws a huge chuck of exposition towards us about why she left Chester’s Mill, Sam learns Lyle has made it out as well but seems to suffer from psychosis, doing nothing but repeat “Melanie” over and over again. In the same scene, there’s a close-up of Sam’s hand trembling. Might he find himself in a similar state sometime soon? Is this the consequence for escaping the dome? So far, Pauline has been able to predict most of what’s happening but she seemed genuinely surprised when Sam mentions that Melanie is alive again.

Barbie returns to his apartment to get cleaned up and gets ambushed by some guys for whom we was supposed to do a job for that would have made them rich. He’s forced into helping, double-crosses them and reunites with his father, Don (portrayed by Brett Cullen). We finally learn why nobody has come near the dome ever since the military departed and when Barbie asks for a favor, it becomes clear that Barbie has a strenuous relationship with him but Don eventually gives in and as both of them walk through the yard, we get a glimpse of a red door; the subject of one of Pauline’s paintings.

Back in Chester’s Mill, Big Jim’s God complex/ego/something in between reaches an all time high. “Why do you always have to make everything about you?” asks Junior. You and me both, buddy. You and me both. Struggling to find Barbie and being deflected by Julia, he stakes out the school and confronts Rebecca when Barbie doesn’t come out and she tells him that he met his demise in the tunnels. The producers refer to this season as “the season of transformation” and with 7 of 13 episodes aired, there isn’t that much time left. This act of Big Jim about how the dome let him live because he is meant to be in power was never really strong to begin with and it is getting thinner by the episode and while I’m aware he is doing it solely for appearances, it is just odd seeing Big Jim hold a memorial for Barbie. I can’t wait for Big Jim to find out he wasn’t let out of the dome while others were. Better hide that ego before it gets hurt.

Joe, meanwhile, points out that the tunnels weren’t always there and that they must be part of the dome’s grand plan that everybody keeps talking about without having any actual idea what said plan actually is. He attaches a camera onto a drone and flies it down into the pit but loses control of it rather quickly. Fortunately, the last frames of the short video reveal that Zenith awaits at the other side and when the egg emits pink stars that align themselves to form Zenith, the group becomes even more hopeful that there is indeed a way out.

Overall, this was a good episode and while it doesn’t provide too many answers, it laid out the groundwork for the rest of the season quite nicely and of course, Rebecca not talking about science (except for that awful line about the compass) definitely made this episode a little less terrible.

Other thoughts:
- The sheriff of Chester’s Mill changes more often than people [insert random daily activity]. Barbie is gone, time to hire a new sheriff.
- Hmm… So someone has to die for Joe to mention the drone to see what’s down there? Okay.
- “Something’s not adding up.” Thank you, Exposition Joe.

About the Author - Mark A. Ondo/LittleDreamer

20 y/o Austrian. Music lover, avid TV watcher, cheesecake muncher and pseudo writer. His taste in television is as eclectic as it gets and he dedicates more time to fictional characters than he would like to admit. He currently reviews Under the Dome, writes about various shows in Mark's Remarks and creates Best-Scene Polls for Grey's Anatomy, Once upon a Time, Revenge and Scandal.

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