Under the Dome recap: Breaking Point

The resistance force was in full effect on this week’s Under the Dome. And by full effect, I mean that Big Jim actually gets something done during “Breaking Point” while the rest of the group run into plenty of trouble as they try to accomplish their given tasks.

Rather than sitting around Bird Island, Jim, Julia, Joe, Norrie, and Hunter want to take action. Julia would like to use emotions to wage their war—Jim would prefer bullets. But he’ll have to wait, as Joe, Norrie, and Julia plan a reconnaissance mission into town while Joe hangs back to keep an eye on Hunter.

When they arrive at the entrance to the mines, they discover that Christine has awoken from her cocooned resting place. She’s drained the dome’s amethysts of most of their power, not just to heal herself, but to fake an apocalypse outside the dome.

Yes, the cataclysmic end of times vision appearing outside the dome was just that—a vision. Christine concocted it to bring the dome together and, in their brainwashed state, all the townspeople happily went along with the ploy. Now, she wants them to save the rest of the amethysts dying in the cave. She believes bringing them to the surface will help to recharge them (how or why that would work is left unexplained, leaving us to assume that, like Superman, the dome receives its power from the sun), and so she puts Barbie in charge of the recovery process while Eva (who has consummated her relationship with Barbie) is on lunch duty.

Julia uses this time to strike, luring Barbie away from the group, attempting to convince him that he won’t truly be happy with this group. As much as he may be programmed to think he belongs to Eva, to Christine, and to this version of the town, Julia wants him to believe he doesn’t. She leaves him to wonder where he stands while she goes off to radio Jim and tell him Christine has returned.

This kicks Jim into action, and he doesn’t mind leaving Hunter alone now that Indy has taken a liking to him. But he’s not going into town empty-handed. He and Hunter made connection to the outside world, to a woman named Lilly. She’s the new Hunter, and she helps Jim secure a care package of explosives.

Jim takes it into town to meet with Julia, promising that people may die, but they have to take action no matter who is in the line of fire. At first, that just means a single guard who Big Jim kills so that he can enter the mines and begin planting bombs.

And what is the grand queen Christine doing while her flock is put at mortal risk? She’s hoping to turn Sam, who she has locked up in the cellar where Junior once kept Angie. She’s going to make Sam a believer, make the kinship literally flow through him. She transfuses some of her blood into his body, hoping it will take the necessary hold on him. She leaves the final step up to him, and Sam leaves the bunker after looking in an occluded mirror and seeing… something. But whether he saw himself or the CGI mesh of an alien figure that Eva and Christine do remains a mystery.

While Christine attempts to suck Sam into the kinship, Norrie is fighting to pull her mother away from it. She and Joe arrive at the town hall and steal Christine’s secret schematic. They accomplish their mission, but are immediately sidetracked when Norrie decides it’s a good time to attempt to save her mother. She tries to break through with a range of emotions—she appeals to her mother’s nostalgia, she attempts to instill her with fear, anger, remorse, and even blames her for the loss of Norrie’s other mother.

NEXT: Jim attacks the kinship’s caves, but his mission comes at a cost…

But it’s all for naught. She’s trapped under the kinship’s spell, and instead of joining the resistance, she summons a force of fellow kinspeople to put Joe and Norrie to work. They’re forced into the mines, where Norrie expects they’ll die before ever seeing the light of day again.

Of course, that all changes when Big Jim and Julia arrive on the scene. Jim takes out one guard while Julia distracts the others, as the rest of the kinship is conveniently out to lunch. Jim heads into the mines to plant his explosives, but Barbie quickly arrives on the scene and heads in after him. Jim hides from view and makes it out of the cave only to run into Junior.

Another attempt to free a denizen of Chester’s Mill from the kinship then occurs. Nothing Jim says, however, does any good for his son. Junior tells him he no longer feels that familial bond to Jim, and the less-than-proud papa responds in kind by punching his son square in the jaw and knocking him out. He drags the body away from the blast zone and then books it back to the shore.

The kinship is faring similarly poorly underground, as Barbie stops one of Jim’s charges, only to discover the cave is littered with dozens of others ready to blow. Knowing his efforts are futile, he flees the tunnel, sounding a cry of warning to anyone who may be left down there. That just so happens to be Joe, Norrie, and Norrie’s mother (I guess not being a full kinship member doesn’t earn you basic union rights like meals), who attempt to escape the oncoming explosion. And the threat to her daughter’s life is exactly what Norrie’s remaining parent needed to free her of the kinship’s bind.

Sadly, it came at a cost—her life. She’s knocked down by a fireball, pinned under rocks and on the brink of death. While Norrie can’t stomach the idea of losing her second mother, she is forced to leave with Joe before they’re both killed by the crumbling caves.

They escape, as does Barbie, while Julie faces off with Eva in a showdown-at-gunpoint. Eva wants Julia to give up the ghost. She’s lost Barbie, and now it’s best that she just leave him to his new life. But Julia refuses to let go of her love for him. She will continue fighting until he’s free. Eva attempts to riddle Julia with bullets, but a momentary distraction from the caves allows Julia to escape.

She and Jim appear just in time to save Joe and Norrie from an encroaching circle of kinship members. They all escape to the boat that will bring them to Bird Island, but the once strong resistance is now in shambles. Norrie is in emotional duress, grappling with her mother’s death, which she and Joe blame in part on Julia’s decision for the resistance to interfere in town. Joe angrily gives her the schematic, as the team licks their wounds and attempts to head back to base.

The kinship is also left in a haphazard state. Before the caves collapsed, they only recovered one amethyst, and without power, the dome is beginning to calcify. That will eventually suffocate the entire town, so she has only one goal in mind—rid herself of anyone who stands in her way. And with a little help from Eva convincing Barbie that Julia only has bad intentions in her obsessed heart, Christine sets a plan in motion to kill the resistance force.

And while most of the force saw action during “Breaking Point,” Hunter was left to hold the fort, but made the most surprising discovery of them all. While talking to Lilly, she sends him an algorithm shortly before an unknown group begins pounding on her door. Whoever they are, they’re not friendlies, as she pulls out a gun and prepares for battle. But with who? Well, we’ll have to wait to find that out.