Upon airing, the episode was watched by 10.64 million viewers, and received an 18-49 rating of 2.4[2] Julia (Rachelle Lefevre) takes Barbie (Mike Vogel) to see the mini-dome and the egg, but they have both disappeared.
Later that night, Junior (Alexander Koch) finds the shelter at the house open, and sees Big Jim organizing a number of guns and the grenade from earlier in one of the rooms.
Junior brings Angie back home, where she finds out that she had the same seizure as Joe (Colin Ford) and Norrie (Mackenzie Lintz).
"[4] Darren Franich of Entertainment Weekly also commented positively on Natalie Zea's character, saying "Max immediately added a whole lot of plot momentum to the show.
She also revealed that she knew Barbie by giving him a very memorable smooch, and promised to tell Julia about the whole whoops-I-killed-your-husband thing...So basically, Max has only been on the show for an episode, and already she’s A) the most powerful enemy for Big Jim we’ve ever met B) the third corner of a Barbie/Julia romantic triangle, and C) established that she knows all the secrets of everyone in town.
"[5] Ted Kindig of BuddyTV gave the episode a positive review, saying "It's a relatively interesting evening under the dome this week, particularly as the show alternately explores Big Jim's sketchy past in illegal drug manufacturing and his present effort to reduce gun violence -- the former is a bit obvious at this point, but at least the story's moving now; the latter is most interesting on a meta level for its obliviously apolitical take on a hot-button issue, like an abortion-themed episode that politely acknowledges Roe vs. Wade but never engages with it.
Quibbles aside, I'll take a plot line that's interesting either in spite of or because of its faults over the silly pink star monarch gobbledygook any day.
"[6] Tim Surette of TV.com wrote negatively about the episode, saying "Since "The Fourth Hand" had such a huge to-do list, it sped along at lightning speed, hitting so many different micro-plots that it never spent enough time with any of them.
A month ago Under the Dome would have devoted an entire episode to the arrival of a new drug in town, or tearing up the Second Amendment, or the search for the mini-dome, but in "The Fourth Hand" these stories were all crushed together into visual bullet points and we were the bloody mess left behind.