Under the Dome (2013)

Watchseries; This show started out with promise. The SFX are good enough to be believable. The concept is interesting. (as a side-note, I have not read the book).

The problem is with the script, the characters, and the believability of the character interactions.

At least in the first few episodes, the lack of utter pandemonium significantly hurts show. Additionally, why are folks so easily able to quiet and address the masses. The crowds are far too manageable; far too docile.

Worse than this though, are none of the characters being likable. After five episodes, I just don't care about any of the characters. The front runners on the likability scale are Bushy and his engineer, Dodee. Considering they're peripheral characters, this is not enough. Barbie is next on likability. At least he has a modicum of depth and conflict. My wife and I now hope that they all die in the dome. The world would be a better place.

The show has become like a scab that you keep picking at. I'd like to know what ends up happening yet I'm becoming increasingly unwilling to stay on the ride to see.

This show started out with promise. The SFX are good enough to be believable. The concept is interesting. (as a side-note, I have not read the book).

The problem is with the script, the characters, and the believability of the character interactions.

At least in the first few episodes, the lack of utter pandemonium significantly hurts show. Additionally, why are folks so easily able to quiet and address the masses. The crowds are far too manageable; far too docile.

Worse than this though, are none of the characters being likable. After five episodes, I just don't care about any of the characters. The front runners on the likability scale are Bushy and his engineer, Dodee. Considering they're peripheral characters, this is not enough. Barbie is next on likability. At least he has a modicum of depth and conflict. My wife and I now hope that they all die in the dome. The world would be a better place.

The show has become like a scab that you keep picking at. I'd like to know what ends up happening yet I'm becoming increasingly unwilling to stay on the ride to see.

Under the Dome watchseries. As with every other Stephen King adapted miniseries this one started well, faded in the second round, and became formulaic by episode three. The characters are all two dimensional and been done too many times before. The dialog is trite and banal "it pays to be team player in this town" says the former high school quarterback. There is little suspense, little action, little romance and it's hard to get involved when there's 3 minute of commercials every 6 minutes. And yet the rating is hovering around 8 because of people voting after the first episode - If this was an ocean cruise I bet they'd have written on the voyage comment cards after the first night "Best time ever! I love the Titanic!"

I watched all seasons, season 1 was nice. The pace was very slow, but on the edge of tolerable. You could compare it with Lost. The progression of the episodes was logical, how about air, food, water etc? Then season 2 came, some key players disappeared and the book of tricks was necessary to fill in the gaps. This decision did the story not much good. Than season 3 appeared, broke with the first seasons by introducing some sf nonsense and the burden of a artificial created memory. The biggest fail in season 3 however is the introduction of new characters that impossible could have been there all the time. This mixed with the by now stupid story makes you want to skip this series as soon as possible. My advise, watch season 1, try 2 and stop then.

It is difficult to understand in this day and age, and given the author of the story and who its the progeny of (amblin and CBS)- that something like this could be ruined to the state of disrepair that the final transmitted version became. The book wasn't one of King's finest, but it was a good enough story, that looks like it was given to group of 6th grade kids as a community project to "improve." If I had seen this first I would never have read the book, so at least I got that right. I watched the series in growing disbelief at the dreadful story lines, the total revision of a decent plot and the turgid and often abysmal acting. Dean Norris isn't going to look back on this as his finest hour. It was like watching a train wreck, and being unable to turn away. Quite why anyone voted more than 3 for it astonishes me, its really, really bad. Please can it before it gets any worse.

This is an interesting show with an interesting sci-fi / fantasy premise. Unfortunately, the episodes' writers and production team themselves suffered from a "we don't know what the heck we're writing here, we're just gonna keep you entertained in each individual episode". There is a story that moves forward from episode to episode, but several nuances and even aspects that were very huge just a few episodes prior become completely abandoned and betrayed.

** SPOILERS BELOW **

For example, in one of the middle episodes of season one, the world outside put on a big show of "goodbye" which it turns out because the military would nuke the whole village, but this strange dome ended up protecting its contents. For the next couple episodes, as I recall, the whole area just outside the dome was, well, nuked, completely barren. But by the last few episodes, the whole town just outside the dome is back again, green and lush with the same neighborhood that was there before it was all nuked, as if nothing back then had happened.

The whole "the butterfly is the monarch!" thing followed by the "you're the monarch!" and "he's the monarch!" and "she's the monarch!" played like a horribly played game of duck-duck-goose.

Some of the main characters are utterly unbelievable as human beings. "Junior", a fully grown young man who jumps from insane and imprisoning a former lover, to sane and competent and entrusted with a badge. A female top cop gullibly believes everything one guy (Big Jim) says and does the most ridiculous actions no cop would ever do, like tell everyone not to touch an alien lit-up device but then she goes and touches it herself, for no reason, at her own injury.

The show retained my attention to cause me to binge-watch, but by the end of Season One I was mostly irritated I got suckered into such a stupid mess of sometimes-consistency-sometimes- betrayal-all-the-time-just-entertaining "whateverness".

What could have been an intriguing story has been ruined by a terrible script and even more terrible acting, not to mention a ridiculously over-the-top attempt at political correctness.

Chester's Mill, a beautiful town in the middle of nowhere with cute little houses and perfectly manicured lawns, is probably also the most diverse place in the entire world. This sparsely populated village that fits neatly under an invisible dome has Caucasians, African Americans, Asians, Latinos, Native Americans, and mixed race lesbian couples! The only group that seems to be missing is single Sri Lankan gay men.

Everyone seems to co-exist just fine, even though it's not clear if anyone in the town actually has a job, except for Beth Broderick, the local diner waitress who pours coffee all day, Natalie Martinez, the most incompetent cop ever to make it onto the force, and the dreadful Rachelle Lefevre as the local hard-as-nails journalist who spends most of her time skulking around through open fields and taking pictures of air. No wonder she lost her big city newspaper job and ended up under this plexiglass shield.

Once that darned dome comes down, Chester's Mill becomes a modern day Peyton Place and everyone's deep, dark secrets begin to surface. The problem here, though, is that none of the characters is compelling or sympathetic. We just wanna find out what's up with that dome, but instead, we're forced to watch these poorly conceptualized folks interact with each other with eye-rolling dialogue like, "So they say you're passin' through town. What are you runnin' from?" Every now and then, someone mentions they're worried the dome may collapse onto Chester's Mill. Frankly, my fingers are crossed that's exactly what will happen. No town this boring should be allowed to stay on the map.

Dome = 1 Chester's Mill = 0