Under the Dome S03E12: "Incandescence"

I can't say that "Incandescence" followed in the tradition of prestige drama penultimate episodes being among the greatest of the series' run. And I won't say it. Because it wasn't, even with a bar so low you need a shovel to find it. "Incandescence" relied way too heavily on the actions of Chester's Mill noobs, characters that have only been around for a few days in the series' four-week timeline. The show killed Stoner Ben for these dopes? That is an outrage and I have every intention or saying angry things on the Internet about it.



At this point it's hard to tell whether Under the Dome knew it was coming to its end when it concocted whatever is happening in Season 3, because it seems like there's a lot left for the show to cover. Did we ever find out what was going on with Big Jim's propane smuggling? What was the deal with the butterflies? Remember the pink stars that were falling and the seizures that Joe and Norrie had? This is Lost all over again minus the 50-something hours of enjoyment I got out of that show and if it was just Season 6's temple storyline over and over again.

ANYWAY what the fudge happened in "Incandescence"? I don't know, but I'll try my best to figure it out. Let's do this, dome-breros!

When we last saw Barbulia, the husband murderer and the widow were running away from Barbie's baby because a bunch of guys with flashlights were coming close. This hit Barbie hard because he is THE BEST DAD. And Julia had to talk some sense into him.

Motive established. Barbie would stop at nothing to get his queen alien slime baby back, while Julia looked at him like he was some sort of doofus. It was a real clash of ideologies and made it hard to decide who was in the right. Barbie just wanted his half-human monster baby whose mother he dreamed he had a relationship with and whose instinctive goal was to rub goop all over people in order to inject them with pure alien energy and remove all their free will so they could serve the invasive species by suicide if need be. And on the other side of things, Julia was jealous. It was the stalest of stalemates, but if you put a gun to my head and told me I had to pick one of them to be right, I'd have to go with pull the trigger.

How was the plan going to develop a cure for the alien-slime-virus-infected people and save the world? Not great. The science team had to deliver the bad news that the cure they were working on to kill the alien slime virus actually made the virus much, much stronger and gave the infected superpowers, which was pretty much the exact opposite of what everyone except the viruses wanted. After getting a hot injection of "cure," Junior got super-strength, went psycho, and killed a few guys because Dr. Bloom (if she is a real doctor!) wasn't listening to simple instructions.

I get it, Dr. Bloom. Once my wife said to do something about all the dirty dishes so I smashed them all over the ground. She didn't specifically say to clean them, so that's on her. Sometimes people have to be more specific if they want things done their way. We can't read minds!

So how would they fix this royal f*ck up? Get the queen baby's stem-cell-rich umbilical cord and use a sample to concoct a NEW cure for the alien slime virus. But knowing how good at science "Dr." Bloom was, they should have used the umbilical cord to strangle her instead. And don't worry about the details of the umbilical cord, because they would never use it because who the heck cares. I think someone writing the episode did some research about babies and found out about umbilical cords and thought it would be a cool thing to throw into the episode.



Where was this baby anyway? Getting a lifeforce transfer from Christine so she could jam the baby in a cocoon, which was the aliens' solution for almost all of their problems. Buncha cocoon jammers, they are! She threw her arm into the dome and purple smoke and intestines came out, that's how we knew it was working.

Christine put the alien slime baby in a crib made out of sentient purple alien intestines and it was time for the alien slime baby to cook inside a cocoon until she was a queen alien slime baby.

Elsewhere, Eriq La Salle had the right idea. His plan was to just kill everyone, and I think all of us watching felt that was the best possible course of action to deliver the happy series ending we were all looking for. But Lily convinced Big Jim to talk to him about his plan and change his mind about mass murdering everyone in the show. Thanks a lot, Lily. You're new around here, why don't you shut your trap?

Next: Old people are the worst