Greetings! I have returned from my two-week dome-cation, during which I missed TWO episodes of Under the Dome. And a strange thing happened while I was away! The real world began to make sense. Memories of my childhood flooded back. The air smelled cleaner, the birds sounded happier, and the future seemed brighter. I was able to solve some complicated quadratic equations, and I even made progress the cold-fusion reactor I'm building in my basement. I cured cancer and AIDS, and totally whooped Bobby FIscher's ghost in chess. Life were great.



But then I caught up on the two episodes of Under the Dome that I missed and spent three hours looking for my sunglasses when they were on my head the whole time. I started listening to Pitbull and liking it. I joined the Jim Belushi Fan Club. Such is the mind-numbing brain-squishing existence that is Dome Life. Like Barbie, Sam, and Lyle, I got out from under the Dome for a little while and experienced a whole new existence, but the Dome pulled me back in. Damn you, Dome! If you're reading this and you someday find a way to escape Under the Dome, even for a little bit, keep running and don't ever look back. Ever. I made the mistake of coming back.



Of course, Barbie, Sam, and Lyle couldn't quite grasp that simple concept, so "The Red Door" was all about them trying to get back under the Dome. Yes, BACK TO THE DOME! And in order to return, they needed to find a red door because nutso Pauline drew one years ago, so the episode was a fetch quest wrapped up with some mystical mumbo-jumbo and little else. It's pretty amazing that an episode featuring magical portals, vision quests, super-powered eggs, and private security forces was incredibly boring, but that's Under the Dome for ya. I know that the show's writers and producers are probably super excited about this Zenith arc, but you know what? I miss the good old days of caterpillar infestations and dust storms. That was some honest Domin'. All the stuff about red doors and portal-hopping is totally bleh. Stop trying so hard, Dome!



"The Red Door" opened with Barbie in the custody of some shady fellas who were so obviously working for his dad that even the show couldn't even keep it a secret for more than a few minutes. Barbie's intimate knowledge of the Geneva Conventions pegged them as goons from a private firm, and a quick chat between Daddy Barbara and one particularly dumb thug confirmed that they were indeed employees of Daddy's energy company. Congratulations to all 100 billion of you who correctly predicted that Daddy Barbara was part of the Dome-spiracy. Daddy wanted the egg, but why, other than the fact that it's a glowing, purply egg? Daddy referred to it as a "power source," so it's a power source, I guess. Just as we thought 10 episodes ago. Another Dome mystery revealed!



Meanwhile, the original Junior Dome Squad—Lyle, Pauline, and Sam—were all like, "What's up with this prophetic drawing of a red door that Pauline drew?" Pauline solved the problem by digging into that art school brain of hers and informing us that Art Theory 101 says a "door symbolizes a way in somewhere." Yeah, so does basic vocabulary, dummy. Suspecting that the locker was a way out of the Dome, she and Lyle made the connection that the red door must be a way back in. And with that, the hunt for the red door was on, so the gang wasted a bunch of our time by visiting the playground where Sam, Barbie, and Lyle landed. There, they encountered two spooks who Lyle and Sam had to find a way to ditch and Pauline came across a red door!!!







Well, it symbolized a way in... to a children's playhouse. You really had to be there to absorb all the tension, though, because for a second we were supposed to be all, "OMG a red door is that THE red door what does it symbolize will they get back in the Dome?" even though it wasn't the red door that Under the Dome made a point of showing us two weeks ago. So It was just a normal red door. There was this kid who jumped out of the playhouse and shouted, "No grown-ups!" and he was cool. And then the camera hung on him swinging to kill some time and remind her of taking Junior to the park when he was a kid.







To summarize, the original Junior Dome Squad went to the playground for no reason other than to learn that they weren't allowed in the playhouse. Moving on!



Daddy Barbara wanted his hands on that egg so so badly, so he had Hunter the Hacker fix him up with some secret upload bandwidth, firewall mega-encryption services, and a streaming vlog attachment file so he could send a video message to Julia inside the Dome. But it was all chicanery! He told Julia that he needed the egg so that he could trade it for Barbie's freedom, which was a bold-faced lie marking the first time ever that something on the internet wasn't true.



That put Julia in a big-dill of a pickle: Should she give a magical glowing purply egg-thing to her boyfriend's dad in exchange for her boyfriend's release, or does she keep that oval-shaped mystery trinket and let her babe rot in some Dome-free city? Julia struggles with this kind of decision whenever she checks her email, and she has 60 cases of low-cost Viagra, a work-from-home job that pays $77/hr, and plenty of sexy singles in her area ready to meet her to prove it.

She also got to show off some cool Door Yoga (captions not necessary):



Melanie was like, "Hell nope we ain't giving Daddy Barbara that egg" because it's her egg-baby, basically. So she ran away and joined up with Junior, which set off my Melanior 'shipping alarm like crazy. Hold on, I'm getting ahead of myself here! Let me backtrack a bit.

It had been a few minutes since Junior had a change of heart about his dad, so he hung out with Big Jim with forgiveness on his mind. In the process of being a total idiot, he told his dad all the secrets he had, including the fact that the egg was back! So then Jim wanted the egg really badly, too. Everyone in this episode really wanted to get their mitts on an egg or a door.



Big Jim finally decided to communicate with the outside world by writing messages on a notepad and showing them to the guards outside the Dome. Let's all take a moment to appreciate Dean Norris's awesome handwriting and his amazing egg drawing.



And you know what happens whenever a TV character holds up a piece of paper with writing on it? That's right, MEME TIME!



Make your own and post 'em in the comments! Here's your template:



Anyway, Big Jim found out that the egg was in Angie's old house because the military or whoever these people were had a powerful Egg Detector.







But when Big Jim went to Angie's house, it was gone! That's because Junior had already taken it, and he and Melanie decided to become the new Keepers of the Egg because that's probably what the Dome wanted. I'm not totally sure what was going on here, to be honest. Junior decided to hide the egg from Big Jim by hiding it "right under his nose" in the bomb shelter. Melanie found the bomb shelter awfully cozy, and totally propositioned Junior for some hardcore spooning. Remember, this was the place where, just a few weeks ago, Junior held Angie captive in one of his sick psycho-sexual bondage games, and you could just see the pervert wheels turning in Junior's mind as he resisted every urge to chain Melanie up and slowly eat her flesh bite by bite.







They cuddled on the bed and it was really creepy. Given her propensity for ending up in out-of-the-way places with creepy guys, it's no wonder Melanie has already died. What IS a wonder is that she hasn't died more often.



Meanwhile, over at the big door hunt, Barbie escaped his capture by performing a picture-perfect Reverse Afghani Chainbreaker on his Daddy's security guard. Pauline met up with her hacker friend, and it was Hunter! Small town, this Zenith place is. Pauline, Hunter, and some random, dopey-looking dude were behind HoundsofDiana.com, the one-stop shop for Dome-spiricists to shed light on what the government doesn't want you to know about the Dome. Have you Googled "Hounds of Diana" yet? It's a totally top-secret website full of riddles and mysteries! 2 Broke Girls, Criminal Minds... what do these clues mean!?!?







And what treasures are inside this website? A Joe vlog, of course.







Fascinating stuff. If you have a few hours to kill or you simply hate yourself, I recommend you spend some time on the site. #DomeTruth



Anyway, Barbie showed up at the Hounds of Diana clubhouse somehow and the Hounds of Diana decided to do some sort of Google Maps image search for all the doors in Zenith and then picked out all the red ones. It was a great peek into the future of door-identifying satellite software, but it was ultimately meaningless because Barbie recognized the door from Pauline's drawing: It was a door to the basement in his old house that we saw a couple weeks ago! Whoa, I guess. Using the dopey computer guy as a decoy, Barbie and the grown-up versions of the Junior Dome Squad (minus Melanie who died but came back to life in the bottom of a lake and is still young and totally egg-crazy) went through the red door and found a secret Dome tunnel that blew spirally smoke in their faces and made them trip balls back to some past memories. What the fuck is happening on this show, guys?







Sam saw Young Junior, who wanted Sam to save him from his dad. Barbie flashed back to his childhood and Melanie was there because her mom wanted her to meet young Barbie while Daddy Barbara looked on. Should we just assume that Melanie is Daddy Barbara's kid from outside a marriage? Sure, why not. Pauline had a vision she was back at the egg landing spot and also saw Melanie, who said, "This is where it began and this is where it ends, for all of us." And then everyone—except Lyle, who is MIA again probably because Dwight Yoakam decided he was too cool for this shit—appeared in the lake back under the dome! Mission accomplished.



Everyone decided to go their separate ways and "The Red Door" ended on this thrilling encounter:





I wasn't planning on being too interested in this reunion but the music indicated that I should be, so... wow! Mind blown!



That's it guys, I'm really glad to be back covering this show and I'm sorry I have no idea what's going on. Hopefully next week it rains really hard in Chester's Mill or some other meteorological micro-climate problem arises because this Zenith stuff is the pits. Bye!







ADDEN-DOMES





– A big thunderclap high-five to Jen and Kaitlin for suffering for me in my absence. I have spoken with both, and they are slowly regaining their cognitive functions. Kaitlin can still only communicate with "ooohs" and "ahhhhs" and is currently in the middle of an According to Jim marathon, but Jen is further along and can almost tie her shoes.



– The best part of this episode was when Sam yelled at Pauline after she asked whether he killed Angie. His response: "Your journal made it seem like those kids were somehow making it happen!" And then he forgot Junior's name and had to think about it for just long enough to make it obvious that he couldn't even remember who the fourth kid was. Haha, so good.







– Big Jim to Rebecca the Science Teacher: "Build an Egg Detector or something."

– What the hell is Lyle's purpose on this show? He looks so disinterested in every single scene he's in. I don't blame him.

– Hunter said he didn't have a vision when tunnel-porting into Chester's Mill. Bull crap, dude! I don't trust you one bit, you mole!



