An Outlander proposal,Under The Dome antics and Extant wraps up it's first season

Claire was back amongst the English on Outlander this week, finding that they were in some ways not that much better than her Scottish hosts.

She did have a chance of getting the garrison commander to send her back to Craig Na Dun but her outspoken nature and the appearance of Black Jack Randall nipped that opportunity sharply in the bud. I do have to give credit to Toby Menzies for his dual role as the modern day Frank and his vicious sociopath ancestor, who described the brutal flogging he gave to Jamie as a "masterpiece".

It was quite the chilling performance and even as someone who has read the book and knew what was coming, it was still a haunting scene to watch there.

Fortunately, McDougall was around to get Claire the hell out of there but in order to spare her from a repeat visit to Black Jack, she has to become a Scottish citizen. The easier way to do that is by marring Jamie, which suits more than one purpose, yet it does pose an interesting question-is it bigamy if your original spouse hasn't even been born yet?

 Then again, we do have extenuating circumstances here, not to mention a rather mutual attraction, so let's skip the philosophical debate for now, shall we?:

Meanwhile, things are truly getting tight Under The Dome, as the title trap is slowly but surely starting to close in on the town. That, along with Melanie's rapidly deteriorating condition, the need to retrieve the egg has become number one on the Chester's Mill to-do list.

Barbie managed to get his dad over to the Dome in order to negotiate a return and it does help that Melanie happens to be his long lost half sister(no joke and none of this was in the original book, so I refuse to blame Stephen King for such a left field contrivance there). Papa Barbara agreed to get the egg but had some trouble from his own men about that, yet another delay meant to drag the story line out, folks:

As an alternative way of treating Melanie was carried out, Big Jim got another major disappointment  as his reunion with Pauline was cut brutally short.

Lovelorn Lyle decided to fulfill his own prophecy by stabbing his beloved Pauline, with Big Jim only too eager to send him to "heaven" right after her. Granted, I didn't expect anything good to happen to these characters but this send-off is a tad too convenient for my taste.

 Don't get me wrong, I intend to watch the season finale next week but the "make-it-up-as-we-go-along" plotting is working my nerves a little. There's some doubt as to whether or not we get a third season, so it's best to repeat to myself, "This is just a show, I really should relax":

Extant finished it's first season last night and I hope that's it is not the last we see of this series. While the show's initial mystery had a few stiff moments, the overall plot logic was sound and the acting well done, particularly Halle Berry as the bedeviled astronaut mom who uncovered the conspiracies around her being unknowingly sent off as a potential host for an alien species.

As it is in most stories like this, the alien hybrid was vastly underestimated and proved to the greater threat but not without some reluctance. However, once we got into the who,what,where and why of the matter, the story really began to take off. The character motivations made sense,plus there were some well placed surprises along the way that kept you wondering what was going to happen next.

 Interestingly enough, the heart of the show was Ethan(Pierce Gagnon), the "humantic" robot child who made the ultimate sacrifice and turned out to be the most human of them all. At first, I thought he was going to be an annoying little kid-bot but he turned out to be very believable and engaging towards the end.

There is a open door left open for another season and with any luck, Berry and company will be able to step through it at least one more time. If not, then thank you, everyone involved, for giving us such a smartly written sci-fi adventure with heart this summer:

RANDOM NOTES:

MARVEL'S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D: Season two starts up next week and so looking forward to what this new version of the show has in store for us. Should be fun and I hope that Melinda May gets more to do(and plenty of ass to kick):