‘Under the Dome’ Recap: Panic levels rise in ‘Outbreak’

After last week’s disastrous episode, Under the Dome rebounded tonight. While “Outbreak” still wasn’t anywhere near as captivating as the show’s pilot, the action did start to pick up and people in Chester’s Mill finally seemed to understand that the situation is pretty terrible.

We began the episode with Julia being super suspicious of Barbie after she found that map in his bag. Julia took the map and was planning on heading out to the location, but Barbie needed a ride. Lucky for Julia, when they left the house, a group of townspeople were outside throwing things at the dome and trying to demand answers from the military on the other side. Barbie wanted to see what was going on and Julia took the opportunity to speed away in her car.

Linda was doing her best to keep order, but Reverend Crazy showed up and riled the people even more. Big Jim was there as well and people turned on him just before Linda collapsed. Barbie and Big Jim took her to the clinic where Norrie and her moms happened to be along with Joe, waiting to get some tests run as the nurse explains that they are short on doctors.

Naturally, more and more people start to fall ill, including Phil, who Julia was questioning about Barbie. She arrives at the clinic and isn’t happy to see her houseguest there, but they’ve got bigger problems as the place is overrun by sick people and there’s nowhere for them to go and no one to treat them. Everyone is quickly diagnosed with meningitis, which can easily spread through the town unless the nurses can administer antibiotics.

But the antibiotics are missing. Big Jim deduces that Reverend Crazy stole them and he and Barbie set out to find him, but not before handing Junior a rifle and telling him to keep everyone in the clinic. As soon as they leave, Julia asks Junior to let her out, even though she’s showing symptoms, and since they bonded underground, he gives in after she calls him ‘James’.

While Big Jim and Barbie track down the reverend and take back the medicine he hasn’t had a chance to burn yet, Julia goes to the cabin where Junior mentioned he saw Barbie. She sees the mess and starts going through the cabinets. She finds some papers, freaks out and then collapses from meningitis.

At the clinic, Norrie and Joe are fine since they’ve had shots, but Norrie is bored and playing with her camera phone so they decide to hold hands again and record it. Nothing happens at first, but then they fall to the ground, chanting about pink stars and lines. But here’s the super creepy part: when they go to play back the video, Joe sits up, looks at the camera and makes the ‘shh’ sign in the middle of their joint seizures.

Junior manages to calm down the would-be rioting townspeople and it’s another creepy moment when Crazy Eyes is the voice of reason. But Linda is impressed with him and the two share a moment when she gives him a badge. Big Jim is almost impressed with his son and Junior walks away with a big smile. Then he does the right thing when Barbie demands the keys to his truck so he can save Julia.

Barbie goes to the cabin, brings Julia back to the clinic and sits by her bedside. She wakes up and tells him that Peter (her husband) had cleaned out their savings and their house is in foreclosure. She demands answers from Barbie. He admits that he works as an enforcer for a bookie, but he conveniently leaves out the part about Peter being dead; suggesting that he left town. Julia is furious and tells him to be out of her house by the time she’s better.

Reverend Crazy is waiting for Big Jim at his place and wants to give him his share of the money. He’s still going on about God’s plan and he’s got some serious crazy eyes going on too. Big Jim seems rattled and he’s ready to pour himself a drink when he hears noises coming from the bomb shelter. Angie had pulled on some pipes earlier and the whole place was quickly flooding. Big Jim opened the doors and seemed pretty shocked to see her sitting there.

But will he rescue her? I really, really hope so because this story has gone on long enough. There are only so many times we can watch Angie fail to escape as Junior insists that he’s doing her a favor and then creepily tries to recreate prom. But I’ve watched TV for a long time and things are usually not as simple as we need them to be. I’m worried Big Jim will cover for his son.

I’m also curious what’s going to happen with Barbie now that Julia has tossed him out. No one else in town has been overly nice to him, but it’s not like he can go far because of that whole dome thing. Speaking of the dome, the scenes for next week show the military planning to launch a missile at it…WHAT?!