Catching Up On THE DOME

I gave up on Under The Dome when Max just magically appeared from the beauty salon. The show slipped into serious soap opera.  My feeling at the time was that the show was actually insulting out intellegence.  CBS seemed to think we would just believe and buy anything with Mr. King's name on it.

Time for a second attempt.

I watched the entire season last week on DVD.  What I found was that now, even episodes I'd originally been  more forgiving toward because I thought they were "going somewhere with this" were now pretty lame.  Junior chains Angie up in his basement, but later they're pretty cool with each other.  She has the amazing (AMAZING) ability not to tell everyone she meets what just happened.  You get kidnapped and chained up, and when you break free your first  thought it, "well, maybe if they let me run the local diner, I won't say anything about this.  After all, they chained me up for my own good."

Can Linda get any more dense?  If a new season can offer us anything, it would be her welcome demise.  But somehow I suspect the producers are pretty taken with her.  I'm sure we'll be expected to root and cheer when she finally figures out one plus one is two and Big Jim isn't really that nice a guy.  Of course,  by then it will have taken her over an entire season to put the clues together.

Should we despair the promise of more characters? Chesters Mill has plenty of room for more towns people to be highlighted.  What I hope they don't do is more magic acts where people just step onto stage and tell us they've been hiding out the entire time.

At times preachy and at times melodrama, Under The Dome is difficult because I so much want to like it.

Was that really a cliff hanger?  I've got to say, I have  not spent my time away from The Dome wondering if they would really hang Barbie.  But I do feel a little Annie Wilkes about this.  In Misery, Annie Wilkes rants about going to see Rocketman.  The episode cut off with Rocketman going off the cliff and his car exploding, with him in it.  When the next episode came, guess what -- Rocketman is shown quickly jumping out before the car goes over.

Annie says, "‘That isn’t what happened last week! Are you all too stupid to remember? Did you all get amnesia?’ And my brother said ‘You’re crazy, Annie,’ but I knew I wasn’t. And the manager came and said if I didn’t shut up I’d have to leave and I said ‘You bet I’m going to leave because that was a dirty cheat, that wasn’t what happened last week!’"

I'm not expecting the writers to cheat us with Under the Dome like with Rocketman.  But I do wonder if they really think we are on the edge of our seat thinking, "what will  happen to Barbie?  Will they hang him?"  Hey, I say -- give us a surprise and hang the dude.  What was a likable character iun the book is a thug in the miniseries.  He might be the only one able to stand up to Big Jim, but it odesn't change the fact that his own moral compass is seriously broken.

I guess what I'm wondering is -- where are  the producers going with this thing?  They run down different plot avenues, seemingly unsure what this thing is really about.  It's like watching a teenager with an identity crisis.  Can they pull this off?  King writing the first script gives hope, but once it falls into new hands, hope fades.  Remember Lost?  Started strong, but limped its way to the end.

By the  way, I do enjoy Under The Dome, but I don't have confidence in where this is going.  More characters are being introduced, meaning there will be a lot more deaths.  Will the Dome have  a logical explanation?  I hope so.  Will it be better than the book?  It's already lost that potential.  Is it fair to compare the book to the show?  Of course it is! Because the novel was so incredibly strong both with characters and plot, it is fair for us to expect the same from the show.