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Here we are, once again, blogging about the important things in life. This time around, it's CBS's Stephen King-adapted UNDER THE DOME. Next time, I promise to hark about some serious worldwide issues, such as Rice Krispie Marshmallow Squares: What flavour WILL they come up with next?!
UNDER THE DOME is a show that served as a summer mini-series for CBS. It's adapted from Stephen King's science-fiction novel of the same name and follows a small town and its folk as they become trapped...under a dome. THE Dome. The mother of all domes. Without spoiling anything for those who are leisurely strolling through the first season, it follows the plights of those within as they try to adapt to life...UNDER THE DOME. Bam, there you have it.
I feel it serves up a semi-adequate blog topic due to its surprising RIDICULOUS STORY AND CHARACTERS vs DECEPTIVE POPULARITY correlation. The truth is, the show is not great, has poor, poor, clumsy exposition-filled dialogue and senseless characters. Yet its ratings are good, very good. So good that it's been commissioned for another season. So, and this is the million-pound question, why...?
Audience Love-In
I haven't read King's original novel but I get, from common sense, that it's a lot darker than the TV show. Then again, this is a CBS channel and we're hardly going to see sex, drugs and rock'n'roll on the same network that provides us all with unhealthy dollops of 'Geeks Are Ridiculous & We're Going To Mock 'Em Silly' otherwise known as THE BIG BANG THEORY. So there's that, the show engages with a larger audience, embracing the prudes who turn their noses up at the likes of HBO, FX, Showtime and Walter friggin' White.
Hank Schrader
That being said, it's not short on its badass factor. The town's councilman, Big Jim Rennie (played by Dean Norris aka ASAC Hank Schrader), has evolved from ominously caring father figure to an eyebrow raisingly insane mass-murderer. Rolling off the success of BREAKING BAD, Dean Norris is in demand and his presence in a Stephen King associated sci-fi show will have no doubt brought in a few more viewers. It helps that he's, by far, BY FAR, the best actor on the show, the best character on the show, and the guy who seems most liable to take out everyone else, freeing us of their lunacy.
Brains-Off Approach
There's a lot to be said for those rare breed of TV shows, usually reserved for the cable channels, that engage an audience's mind. UNDER THE DOME isn't one of them, and that's mightily OK. Sometimes, you need a show to spell it out for you because, bluntly put, thinking is overrated and TV is meant to morph our fragile, tiny minds (thanks to the PTC for that one). This show is a gem at presenting subtle mythology in keen and creative ways and then following it up by surgically dissecting it for you in the form of clunky exposition and maddening dialogue. I say go for it - I've stuck with LOST for far too many years and I'm tired of having polar bears and hench, icy donkey wheels running through my mind all day.
Small Town Ambience
A sure-fire way to my heart, the show has this fantastic feel of community. Even better, it's an eerie community. Set apart from the rest of the world, no one can come in or out and everyone deals with their own problems together, as a team, an eerie team...
An element that this show has really nailed is that aspect of being alone in the world, properly detached from anything else resembling civilisation, built-up cities, commercialisation, Starbucks... This, of course, all culminates with Big Jim building his own gallows so he can hang those who do him wrong. Handy.
*Strawberry, I reckon
UNDER THE DOME is a show that served as a summer mini-series for CBS. It's adapted from Stephen King's science-fiction novel of the same name and follows a small town and its folk as they become trapped...under a dome. THE Dome. The mother of all domes. Without spoiling anything for those who are leisurely strolling through the first season, it follows the plights of those within as they try to adapt to life...UNDER THE DOME. Bam, there you have it.
I feel it serves up a semi-adequate blog topic due to its surprising RIDICULOUS STORY AND CHARACTERS vs DECEPTIVE POPULARITY correlation. The truth is, the show is not great, has poor, poor, clumsy exposition-filled dialogue and senseless characters. Yet its ratings are good, very good. So good that it's been commissioned for another season. So, and this is the million-pound question, why...?
Audience Love-In
I haven't read King's original novel but I get, from common sense, that it's a lot darker than the TV show. Then again, this is a CBS channel and we're hardly going to see sex, drugs and rock'n'roll on the same network that provides us all with unhealthy dollops of 'Geeks Are Ridiculous & We're Going To Mock 'Em Silly' otherwise known as THE BIG BANG THEORY. So there's that, the show engages with a larger audience, embracing the prudes who turn their noses up at the likes of HBO, FX, Showtime and Walter friggin' White.
Hank Schrader
That being said, it's not short on its badass factor. The town's councilman, Big Jim Rennie (played by Dean Norris aka ASAC Hank Schrader), has evolved from ominously caring father figure to an eyebrow raisingly insane mass-murderer. Rolling off the success of BREAKING BAD, Dean Norris is in demand and his presence in a Stephen King associated sci-fi show will have no doubt brought in a few more viewers. It helps that he's, by far, BY FAR, the best actor on the show, the best character on the show, and the guy who seems most liable to take out everyone else, freeing us of their lunacy.
Brains-Off Approach
There's a lot to be said for those rare breed of TV shows, usually reserved for the cable channels, that engage an audience's mind. UNDER THE DOME isn't one of them, and that's mightily OK. Sometimes, you need a show to spell it out for you because, bluntly put, thinking is overrated and TV is meant to morph our fragile, tiny minds (thanks to the PTC for that one). This show is a gem at presenting subtle mythology in keen and creative ways and then following it up by surgically dissecting it for you in the form of clunky exposition and maddening dialogue. I say go for it - I've stuck with LOST for far too many years and I'm tired of having polar bears and hench, icy donkey wheels running through my mind all day.
Small Town Ambience
A sure-fire way to my heart, the show has this fantastic feel of community. Even better, it's an eerie community. Set apart from the rest of the world, no one can come in or out and everyone deals with their own problems together, as a team, an eerie team...
An element that this show has really nailed is that aspect of being alone in the world, properly detached from anything else resembling civilisation, built-up cities, commercialisation, Starbucks... This, of course, all culminates with Big Jim building his own gallows so he can hang those who do him wrong. Handy.
*Strawberry, I reckon
