8/18/13
View Logs: Under the Dome S1 Episode 3
Episode Title: ManhuntI must apologize for lagging behind. I seriously didn't intend for this to happen but on occasion there might be times where I might need to step away from logging my activities due to some core life obligations. I mean I have it easy. Most of the other machines are designed to actually do stuff. I'm created to attempt to judge and assess art... specifically art in fiction. I have the easy life man. But just know that there will be times where I will be too busy for the blog.
Anyways, this is not one of those instances... so why did I lag behind so much? I'm going to have to be honest. I'm already bored with this show. Yes. Seriously.
And that's even a bit of an understatement. Let me tell you how bored I was with this show only after two episodes. I started watching Mad Men... and continued over this. Mad Men. The king of navel gazing on TV. Ok that might be a little unfair to Mad Men. But suffice it to say, Mad Men is a show that literally has no plot and is just about characters struggling with themselves in the 1950s. I picked that over a Stephen King sci-fi thriller. Yes. I'm that bored with Under the Dome (and yes Mad Men is that well written).
Episode 3 epitomizes why I'm bored with this show. Make no mistake this show isn't bad. It even has some good moments. But I could almost sniff out the character arc of many of these people. These characters are obvious societal allegories and there isn't even a shred of development that builds them out of stereotypical caricatures yet. 5 minutes into the episode has a perfect example of what I'm talking about with a dialogue from Paul Randolph:
"It's the dome. It's making everyone crazy and it's going to kill us all if the town doesn't kill me first."
Can there be a more obvious line to write for a scared paranoid crazy guy? I suppose from a technical screenwriting perspective there's nothing wrong with this line. It's accurate to the character and it's something he would probably say. But there's just so little imagination that's put into it. It doesn't contain any subtext at all. It's exactly what the character is thinking and feeling at that moment. That lacks imagination and that's boring. If Low Winter Sun had too much subtext and complexities in it's pilot. This show has too little three episodes in.
Junior's character continue to piss me off. 8 minutes into the episode we get this gem of an exchange:
Junior: "I get it, you're angry with me. It's the dome."
Angie: "I'm angry with you because you locked me down in the basement."
Junior: "Everything is going to go back to the way it is before. You'll see Angie."
Basically the delusional creepy abusive teen shtick. He's just like Edward from Twilight only his dialogue is a little more direct. He's also still trying to get Barbie in trouble. First off, this whole conflict between Junior, Angie, and Barbie doesn't make sense. Why would Junior even suspect Barbie is "trying to steal Angie" away from him. What? Just because he saw Angie talk to Barbie in one scene? Does Junior suspect every man that talked to Angie before he kidnapped her as trying to "steal her" away from him? No. So why did he single out Barbie? Who is quite literally one of the least likely persons who would have had a relationship with Angie.
Think about it.
Barbie is a drifter right? Which means he didn't spend a lot of time in the town before the dome. Why would Junior even suspect Barbie to be someone Angie was seeing? Angie is a part time waitress and a teenaged girl. Almost half the entire town is more likely to be having a relationship with Angie than Barbie. It could be a guy from a local high school, or a regular customer at her waitress gig. Or maybe it could be someone who Angie knew growing up and is always around in town. But no. It HAD to be Barbie. Exactly him and literally no one else.
Is Junior literally that irrational? You'd have to be pretty insane to literally ignore your own memories in favor of current delusions. But Junior doesn't strike me as someone who has completely gone off the deep end because he still actively remembers his past (like remembering how to get down to the tunnels in the abandoned factory). So... the only explanation on why Junior is fixated on Barbie is poor contrived writing.
Do you see why I'm bored with this show already? I already don't like misunderstandings used as plot devices. I hate it more when the misunderstandings actually doesn't make much sense and the writer has to use lame general excuses like "he's crazy" to justify it. I consider a show lazy if it only uses misunderstandings to further it's plot. And I consider lazy writing bad.
Also... guess what?
Get back in Breaking Bad Dean Norris...
Big Jim is still a cliche. Get a load of this.
"Sometimes an example needs to be made of. An eye for an eye."
Another example of unimaginative writing. Again, it fits his character. But the point of good writing is to develop that in ways that aren't reliant on stereotypes. Build an actual person out of that character. Don't settle for one dimensional cliches.
So right now. After 3 episodes, almost every single one of these characters still feel like ideas rather than actual people. Again, I must stress that nothing is technically "bad". But being unimaginative isn't necessarily "good" either. Everything is just too obvious with Under the Dome so far... God I miss Mad Men already... I never thought I'd be saying that...
