Under the Dome Recap: "The Fire"

Kristina Carroll ’16/ Emertainment Monthly editor
One week ago an invisible dome landed over the town of Chester’s Mill, wreaking havoc on the community and unleashing a state of panic among the people. In the second episode of Under the Dome, “The Fire”, we see that there has been absolutely no progress made in the removal of the dome; in fact, problems have only intensified within the town.
The episode starts off with Barbie waking up in Julia Shumway’s house, after dreaming about killing her husband Peter (and no, she still has no idea that he’s dead). Apparently, Barbie the Army veteran was sent by his boss to collect something from Peter. It could be money, or it could be something else entirely…we’re still not given enough details to figure it out. Whatever it is, Peter doesn’t have it, and points a gun at Barbie. Barbie then charges after Peter, they end up wrestling each other to the ground, and the gun goes off…resulting in a very dead Peter. Upon waking up from the dream, Barbie realizes that he dropped his dog tags in the house where he shot Peter, and makes it his mission to find them before somebody else does.
He goes back to the house, finds his dog tags, and realizes that Junior (Big Jim’s psychopath son who is keeping his ex-girlfriend chained to a bed underground) followed him there. Junior begins shouting accusations about him screwing Angie, and Barbie has no idea what he’s talking about. Then, they get into a fight. Of course, Barbie wins, leaving Junior with a black eye and a very bloody nose. He threatens that if Junior tries to follow him again, he won’t stop next time. Is killing people a regular thing for Barbie?
Meanwhile, Linda is still traumatized by the death of her police mentor Duke, whose pacemaker exploded. She concludes that the dome is responsible for his death, and that it affects things that have batteries. It looks like this dome is much more dangerous than it seems.
Big Jim and Linda take the body to a makeshift morgue, where Reverend Collins is working on preparing Duke for his funeral. While there, she tells the two men that right before Duke died, he tried to tell her something about Chester’s Mill. Big Jim obviously becomes concerned, thinking that he was about to reveal the secret revolving around the propane tanks (another situation that we still don’t have all the details to). When she leaves, the Reverend and Big Jim get into an argument, and Big Jim tells him that the two of them have to clean up their mess. What “mess” are they talking about? Are they responsible for the dome? Whatever this big secret is, it seems like more and more people are getting involved with it each week. Sooner or later, it’s bound to be revealed to all of Chester’s Mill.
Later on, Linda sees someone snooping around Duke’s office, only to find that it’s Big Jim. He explains to her that he was searching for Duke’s will, and that Duke left her everything he owned, including his house. However, she won’t have the house for long, because the Reverend accidentally sets it on fire. Why? Because he went there to fix the “problem” that he and Big Jim are involved in. He burns a document related to the propane tanks, and unintentionally causes the entire house to go up in flames while he’s inside.
Eventually, the whole town rushes to the fire, which is getting bigger and bigger by the second. Big Jim knows that the Reverend is inside, but ignores his calls for help. Soon, Linda hears his cries, and she runs into the house to save him. She drags him out, and within seconds, the propane tank next to Duke’s house explodes, causing the fire to spread even more. As if the fire wasn’t bad enough, the dome is making it worse, because the smoke just keeps building up. Also, all of the firefighters are trapped on the other side of the dome. Therefore, the town is forced to create a makeshift assembly line, where they douse the fire with buckets of water. Obviously, this isn’t enough to kill the flames, so Big Jim takes matters into his own hands and uses a construction digger to tear down the house and lower the flames. This makes the fire more manageable, and the town eventually succeeds in putting it out.
However, there is still a giant cloud of smoke looming at the top of the dome. This causes Paul, one of the town policemen, to go insane. He begins yelling at the town, with a gun pointed at them, saying that they are all going to die and that the dome is never going to disappear. Then, he shoots at the wall of the dome out of pure rage. However, something terribly unexpected happens. The bullet rebounds off of the wall, and pierces through the chest of Freddy, another policeman of Chester’s Mill. But Freddy isn’t just a policeman, he’s also Rusty’s, Linda’s fiancée’s, brother.
Things aren’t looking good for Freddy, and we’ll have to see if he pulls through in next week’s episode. Although this episode was slightly less intense than the series premiere, there were two major developments that were made in regards to the dome. The first happened in the radio station, where Phil, Dodee and Julia (yes, she discovered that they were picking up military frequencies from outside) realized that the Army has no idea what the dome really. This debunks the theory that some of the characters had last week, which was that the military is responsible for this entire situation. The other development was a minor detail in the episode, but I feel like it will turn into something more important later on in the show. Joe makes a discovery that the dome is like a sieve, in that water can slowly pass through the walls. For now though, this just makes things more confusing. And one more somewhat unrelated piece of info to leave you thinking about: Joe and Norrie exchange glances at the end of the episode, and it seems as if they are interested in each other. Could there be some kind of romance there? I guess we’ll have to wait and see…
Tune in to Under the Dome on Mondays at 10/9c on CBS.