7/2/13
View Logs: Under the Dome S1 Episode 1
Episode Title: PilotI'm going into this one cold... I have to admit. So I must stress that I don't have the perfect perspective when it comes to this show as I haven't read the book it's based on. But I am a little familiar with Stephen King's work and I'm, unfortunately, very familiar with their screen adaptations. The only thing I even remotely found of value is Kingdom Hospital. But based on previous works of "groups of people trapped together by something weirdly supernatural", Stephen King seems to like to create microcosms of society in his stories.
This is normally fine... except in a lot of Stephen King adaptations cast either turns out to be complete stereotypes or just outright wacky... and wacky in a way that stretches my suspension of disbelief. Like... Junior Rennie. By the character's second appearance I already hate him... deeply deeply hate him. So within two scenes we establish that he's taken a page out of the Edward Cullen book of how to approach a relationship... and he's an angsty emo with a switch blade he probably got after watching Grease.
At the moment the other characters are stereotypes seen in other shows:
Dale "Barbie" Barbara is basically John Reece from Person of Interest
Howard "Duke" Perkins and his deputy Linda Esquivel are basically pulled out of Longmire
Julia Shumway is the Intrepid Reporter
"Big Jim" Rennie is the seemingly Corrupt Politician
Angie McAlister is the Small Town Girl who, of course, is our
See? Stereotypes. Now at the moment most of the characters don't bother me just yet. Only Junior... but towards the end of the episode he tells Angie that he actually "understands what's going on" and kidnapped her to protect her... given the Dome's nature this actually had me a little intrigued. But most of the scenes with Junior are just creepy loser obsessively abusive wannabie-boyfriend and it's pretty uninteresting. He even picked a fight with Barbie just because he saw Angie talking to him randomly. Yeah, actually I think based on the direction of the episode Junior might just be another Edward... my only hope is that the writer doesn't harp on this too much.
Beyond the characters the episode is fairly competent. The horror riffs when the dome wrecks havoc (and kills people horribly... like when cars drive head first into it since it's invisible) is surprisingly effective and, thankfully, used sparingly unlike in American Horror Story... The havoc that the dome causes to the town is actually surprisingly believable and reminds me a lot of Jericho. So a pretty competent show so far, which is actually amazing considering this is an adaptation of a Stephen King novel. I just hope the writers develop the characters in the subsequent episodes beyond their establishing stereotypes.
