Under the Dome

An invisible impenetrable dome descends upon the small town of Chester's Mill, Maine. The residents inside struggle to survive and discover the cause. Big Jim (Dean Norris) is the bully businessman trying to take charge. His son Junior is completely unstable. Julia Shumway (Rachelle Lefevre) is a local reporter who falls for mysterious Barbie (Mike Vogel). Norrie Calvert-Hill is the daughter of a lesbian couple who got caught while traveling through town.

This is a great premise from Stephen King. As long as it deals with the characters struggling with each other to survive, this TV show works great. When it tries to explain the dome, the show stumbles. Then it goes into that explanation where all those episode are fake memories. It's a bad move but the show couldn't write a good explanation anyways. It starts off as an 8 but it keeps sliding all the way to the end.

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.

I'm not surprised by all the negative reviews. It's one of the most frustrating series I've ever watched, the premise is fantastic, a wonderfully clever plot, but after the first few episodes it seems to lose the plot completely. Series one was pretty decent I thought, watchable, Series two was more of the same, but felt a bit lethargic, Series three was an abomination, and shouldn't have been made, it totally lost the plot.

The acting was patchy, it started well, then seemed to go off the boil as it went on. I think had it been a single series, with a definite explanation it would have worked better, the usual criticisms with shows like Lost, Walking Dead etc is they milk them until they kill them, and have no choice but to cancel, sometimes less is more, in this case it would have been.

Interesting at the start, a few good bits, but way too many missed opportunities, all I can remember thinking was if I saw that cow once more I'd switch off, however I saw it through to the terrible conclusion.

A waste.

Soo... The first season was pretty good: entertaining, with and interesting topic and relatable characters. I taught that the problems of being under a dome could have been better exploded, but still, the first season was good. Then the second season came, and it was soooo good. I really truly love that season, it was so intense, action-packed and I had all the feels! So after the second season, my hopes were pretty up. When I started the third season, I was so sad the show was canceled... until I actually watched the third season. In it's last season, the show turns ridiculous, and so damn confusing; but not confusing in the good way, I mean confusing like: "I don't understand a sh¡t, let's go watch something else." And I just don't know why to build a good plot in two solid seasons, to throw it all to the trash in the third one. I think the writers were in drugs or something when they wrote the last season; otherwise, I don't see how they could screw it up so badly.

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".