To me, Under the Dome is starting to feels a little like Once Upon a Time... I mean that's not surprising considering that both premises involve a really small town... However, there's a deeper similarity between the two than just their locations. Once Upon a Time is a show about all these fairy tale characters becoming trapped in a real world small town. Due to the nature of this premise... most of the characters are just caricatures and cartoon characters. But that's fine for that show. The issue is Under the Dome is starting to feel more like that.
See, Once Upon a Time actually has more leeway with caricatures and on the nose dialogue because it's source material (the fairly tales) is a lot more simplistic. That makes it pretty limited as it has to maintain some form of simplicity for the sake of maintaining recognition with the fairy tales. (Although the show does push it's luck on shallow characters at times but that's for another thought...) Under the Dome doesn't necessarily qualify for that exception. Sure, it's a fantasy science fiction premise, but Under the Dome sets itself up as an actual drama. As much as Once Upon a Time claims it's a drama, it's really not. It's just a slightly more complicated and "upgraded" fairy tale. For an actual drama, there needs to be strong characters and too many of them in this show just relies on stereotypes.
Can someone please just shoot this guy?...
I said I hated Junior in episode 1 and the second episode hasn't really made things any better. I know I'm suppose to hate Junior but something about his character just feels too cheap. To be specific, I hate him and I hate the way he's written. I'm going to bring up Joffery...
... Yes this abomination of an organic being... See, I see a big difference between Junior and Joffery despite both being purposefully despicable because there are a lot of moments in Game of Thrones where Joffery feels like an actual character. While most of the scenes surrounding Joffery involve him being the spawn of Satan, there are moments where he shows a different side and it gives his character dimensions. On top of that, his dialogue is imaginatively written at times and it makes me more curious of him as a being.
Junior... on the other hand... says things so expected of Edward emo loser obsessive stalker that it gives no dimension and I just end up suffering while watching him. Here's a couple of golden lines from Junior in episode 2:
"She belongs to me."
"You love me. And when this thing comes down you're going to love me again."
Seriously? Could this be any more expected from an obsessive stalker character like Junior? Oh but it also gets worse. In Episode 2, Junior convinces himself that Angie has been sleeping with Barbie. Who, by the way... Angie doesn't know and only met him for the first time in Episode 1 asking for a cigarette. Junior interrogates her about Barbie and, because she's pissed off, she lies to Junior about enjoying fornicating with Barbie to try to get under Junior's skin. Because Junior's deranged, he takes this as a confession and goes after Barbie. Obvious... misunderstanding... plot... and this isn't even a normal misunderstanding. This is a misunderstanding because Junior is just crazy. I seriously could not imagine a more undramatic misunderstanding plot. This is so incredibly frustrating to watch that any confrontation I see on screen between Junior and Barbie I just want to end as soon as possible.
But then it gets a little worse... a new character is introduced in this episode and it's Paul Randolph...
In concept there's nothing theoretically wrong with this character. But really what get to me is how extreme he got in this episode in such a quick time period. I understand that everyone is different and people deal with stress and fear in different ways... often times in very self-destructive ways. But Paul just seemed too crazy and unstable too quickly, especially for someone who's a cop and (supposedly) has training in stressful life or death situations. Again... he's a cop... not some redneck conspiracy theorist neighbor next door. So at the end of the episode he freaks out about the Dome and ends up killing one of his fellow officers.
I understand what the writers were going for with this character. They are slowly trying to set up this town eating itself alive. I get it. But this was done too quick and, like Junior, just done a little too easily. I buy that even the most "civilized" people can become animals given the right circumstance. I don't buy how Paul became an example of that based on what I saw in episode 2. The issue isn't the philosophy behind the character but rather the execution. But beyond Junior and Paul, the other characters are still fairly normal. Most of them are still stereotypes (oh and Duke died by the end of Episode 1... so... no more potential development for him...) but nothing seriously flawed or bad about them.
So, already, I'm starting to see some Stephen King cliches. As I stated in the prologue, he likes to create these a microcosms of all the extreme elements within our modern Western society and have them trapped in a pressure cooker. That's ok, that can be interesting. But sometimes the lengths in which the characters are pushed to can seem a little contrived and forced and I definitely feel that way about Under the Dome after two episodes. I hope this is the worst it gets and that the writers won't feel the need to further force extreme situations. The setup is good, now just develop these characters more and you can start to have something really great.
