Ashley Knierim: A Good Old-Fashioned Shootout

Note: Do not read on if you have not seen Season 1, Episode 8 of CBS' "Under the Dome," titled "Thicker Than Water."

Some fathers and sons have problems getting along. And some fathers and sons threaten to kill each other during a huge shootout over the last water well in town. Or maybe that's just Junior and Big Jim.

This week's episode opens with Rennie grabbing his bedside gun in the middle of the night after he hears an intruder in his house. Fortunately, it's only Junior. Unfortunately, Big Jim no longer considers Junior his kin and tells him he has to get out of the house immediately. But before Junior leaves, Big Jim makes sure to throw in some painful references to Junior's dead mom ("You sound just like your mother did in the end!"), and piss off his wacko son even more.

Meanwhile, Norrie is still trying to cope with the loss of her mother. Like most teenagers (and women, according to Julia), Norrie says things she doesn't mean out of anger and tells Joe her mom's death is his fault. He wanted to go find that weird black egg, remember? Since they saw the hologram of Alice while they were in the center of the forest, Norrie assumes it had something to do with it.

Scorned by his mourning girlfriend, Joe ends up accidentally telling Julia about the black egg under the mini dome that he and Norrie stumbled upon. No surprise, Julia forces Joe to take her to their discovery. When they arrive, the egg is no longer black but "pink" (personally, I think it looks more purple but tomato, tomato). When Julia touches the dome that surrounds the glittery egg, she sees a Joe clone who tells her, "The monarch will be crowned." Spooked, Julia and Joe head back, determined to figure out why the dome keeps pulling a Will.i.am circa the 2008 presidential elections.

While the crew at Joe's house is dealing with dead mothers, pink stars falling and monarchs apparently being crowned, Big Jim has a pretty big mess on his hands. Even though the dome can produce rain, apparently it was only a novelty, because the water supply is dwindling and the only well belongs to Ollie. As we already found out, Ollie was not taught how to share when he was a tot, so despite Big Jim's efforts, the water is on lockdown. After a not-so-nice chat between Linda, Barbie, Big Jim, Junior and Ollie, Junior pulls a Benedict Arnold and ditches "the good side" for Ollie.

In order to get the water back from Ollie, we are given two possible solutions. First, Big Jim suggests that he get the townspeople together, hand them guns (when did giving very hungry and scared people free guns become a good idea?) and head to Ollie's property for a good old-fashioned shootout. On the other side, we have Barbie's much more thought out plan. He figures out that if they were to blow up Ollie's well, it would force the water to return to the town's other wells and no one would die. Guess which one happens?

I haven't been keeping a death count the whole season, but Chester's Mill lost five more residents this episode. Ollie is equipped with a whole brigade of helpers that shoot at Big Jim's team when they arrive. Bullets fly, townspeople go down and Barbie still manages to whip out his high school chemistry and concoct an explosive that wrecks Ollie's well.

Afterward, Big Jim is inside Ollie's house and Junior has a gun to his head. Here's where things get really intense. Junior accuses his dad of lying (true), Big Jim says he lied to protect his son (maybe true) and dad sheds some tears and proclaims his love for Junior (probably not true). After a heart-to-heart in which Big Jim admits that Junior's mom committed suicide, Ollie storms in and ruins the Hallmark moment. Instead of shooting his weeping, seemingly apologetic father, Junior turns the gun and shoots Ollie dead. Problem solved.

Everyone loves a good Western-style gun war, but Barbie tells Big Jim it wasn't necessary -- his plan worked, and the water was forced back after the explosion. Rennie doesn't care though, because now that there's no gun to his head, he's back to siphoning as much power as he can.

By the end of the episode, Norrie hugs it out with Joe and apologizes for being mean to him. She also decides it's finally time to remove her mom's body from Joe's house and bury her in the expertly dug grave that Barbie has ready.

As the night comes to an end, Julia recalls the pink egg/monarch discovery for Barbie as we are shown a close up of a butterfly tattoo on a woman's back. As the camera pans to show Angie's smirking face, we are left with the notion that Angie may be the "monarch" that will be "crowned."

Extra Notes

• Angie told Norrie that she frequented the reform camp that Norrie never made it to. We're learning that Angie was a pretty messed up teen.


• Big Jim paid Duke to cover up his wife's death and make it look like an accident instead of a suicide. What else did he pay Duke to cover up?


• Angie and Norrie partook in some homemade therapy and bonding by smashing Angie's snow globe collection against the real-life snow globe.


• Junior claims that he only went to Ollie's side as a "Trojan horse" and had a plan all along. Had Ollie come out on top, I doubt he would've said the same thing.


• Last time we saw a hologram, it was connected to a death. This week, Julia saw fake Joe, which can't be good.

"Under the Dome" airs Mondays at 10 p.m. ET on CBS.

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  Big Jim Rennie (Dean Norris)

  
  

  "Big Jim doesn't see himself as a bad guy. He thinks he's doing right, he thinks he is the chosen leader of the town. He does save the town a number of times. Certain people, if they keep the trains running, see themselves as the right person for the job even though the way they go about doing that isn't necessarily all that kosher. There's a side of him that's as dark as ever. He has moments where he'll go to the dark side like that, which is really the fun part about playing him. I would really like the audience to go, 'Big Jim's a sweet guy, he's not really a bad guy,' then all of a sudden, in a heartbeat, the reptilian part comes out."

  
  


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  Dale "Barbie" Barbara (Mike Vogel)

  
  

  "The dome is a device, it's a fish bowl, and you put a bunch of fish in a fish bowl and bang on it and you see how they react. You'll see some fish eat other fish, you'll have other fish fight the fish that are eating the other fish, but that's kind of what this is, an experiment. But, also, we're dealing with the added element of what is this thing, where did it come from, is it man-made, is it other-worldly? What are the limitations of this world in which we now find outselves?"

  
  


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  Julia Shumway (Rachelle Lefevre)

  
  

  "How do I play a character who is so determined not to examine her own life and her own choices and how far will I go in pursuit of a story to avoid that? The more my own life starts to fall apart in the show, the more obsessed I have to be with the dome and everything that's happening in Chester's Mill. We flirt with every possible outcome that thing could be. We examine it in many, many, many ways and it's still standing at the end of the day, so draw your own conclusions as to what that is, why that is, how that is, but as far as where we are in episode 10 right now, we're still perplexed and finding out some interesting stuff."

  
  


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  James "Junior" Rennie (Alexander Koch)

  
  

  "There are two sides to Junior, the public persona that his dad wants him to be, the town jock and bully jerk, and there's the broken child that is inside Junior that he probably is more connected to because of past history with family and losing his mother at a young age. He finds this thing in Angie that fills this gap that's missing in his heart. He gets obsessed and wants to keep that quality. He wants to keep that love as much as he can so he does what he does."

  
  


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  Angie McAlister (Britt Robertson)

  
  

  "It's not like we have a clear trajectory of where we're going. We just get to play it episode by episode, which is awesome. It's so much more fun that way because we're living it as the characters are. In a show like this, we can go at any moment. I'm not dead yet..."

  
  


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  Joe McAlister (Colin Ford)

  
  

  "I felt he was kind of simple, but because of his lack of parents (who are on the outside) and his sister isn't around, he has to grow up a little bit. He has to figure things out. So Joe does a lot of growing up in the first episodes. He goes on his instincts. Joe loves this. The dome may be a scary thing but it's also the most exciting thing that's ever happened in Chester's Mill. It's something to talk about, to think about; what is this thing and how can he figure it out? What does he have to do?"

  
  


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  Linda Esquivel (Natalie Martinez)

  
  

  "With Linda, what you see is what you get. As to why I stayed in town and why I became a cop, why I'm such a tough girl and I don't have parents, there's a story to be had there. But for the most part, what you see is what you get. It's very vulnerable, when you have somebody that doesn't have a clear past or history, it's like, Where are you gonna go? Who are you, really? Is the dome going to change you?"

  
  


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  Dodee Weaver (Jolene Purdy)

  
  

  "It's interesting where [the writers are] going; we make our speculations and we're totally wrong and blown away. There are some skills you have in life and in a crisis situation, they're heightened. [Dodee] gets a line to the outside world. Technology makes sense to her, people don't. Stepping out of the radio station and getting to interact with everyone, it's different. Because she doesn't necessarily trust anyone. She's keeping everything that she's finding pretty close to her and not really trusting everyone. She has some unique skill sets that she doesn't want everyone to know that she has."

  
  


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  Stephen King

  
  

  "A lot of times, network TV isn't notable for bravery because what happens is you have a lot of executives who feel like the concept is a Christmas turkey. This is the most beautiful Christmas turkey I have ever seen. Let's sit down and have dinner. And when dinner is over, we're going to turkey sandwiches, and then the next day we're going to have turkey meatloaf and the day after that we're going to have turkey tetrazzini, turkey soup until there's nothing left but the bones. There's a tendency to run things until they're threadbare. I have no idea how far they're going to go or what they're going to do with it. But the one thing I've said to all the writers and to the people, the executives who are involved with this is, let's be thinking ahead all the time about how we're going to button this up. Because what guys like me do is, I run the story. And there's always more surprise. There can always be another story. And if you like 'Under the Dome' well then maybe there'll be something else that will come along. Who knows?"

  
  

Follow Ashley Knierim on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ashknierim

via Entertainment on HuffingtonPost.com