Crap on toast: Under The Dome is this Summer’s blockbuster thank you Stephen King

In an alternate universe, the words “based on a work by Stephen King” are your ironclad guarantee that the video you’re about to watch is of the highest quality.

Not in this universe, however. In this universe, the same man whose works have been adapted for The Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me and The Shining have also been plundered and pillaged for Cujo and Maximum Overdrive.

Add this year’s Summer blockbuster TV mini series, Under The Dome, to that latter ignoble list. The novel--which would probably rank somewhere in the low-middle in the King oeuvre, is basically pheasant under glass, if you replace pheasant with Lord of the Flies. It’s a morality tale (as are almost all his works) that follows what happens when a town finds itself segregated from the rest of the world by a mysterious dome that just appears one day. While the obvious question and story would regard where the dome came from and how are the people trapped within going to break on through to the other side (and whether Jim Morrison will greet them when they get there), the meat of the story surrounds how society within the dome collapses. In fact, in the novel, a few hundred words at the end of the book are hurriedly dashed off to explain where the dome came from. (In a reveal that left a lot of people less than satisfied).

The TV show based on Under The Dome has taken substantial liberties with the book. Stephen King has made it clear that the producers of the show came to him and asked if they could pick and choose elements of the book to keep (a dome comes down mysteriously), those they could change (good characters become more gray, bad characters become more gray, dead character become less dead) and those they could eliminate entirely (acceptable dialog and motivation). For reasons only known to his accountant, King gave them the OK.

Anyone for steak? The dome makes butchers obsolete.

King also gave the OK to extending what reads like a miniseries into a multi-year full blown TV show, ratings willing. And boy, have the ratings been willing. Under The Dome has been the most widely watched scripted new show of the Summer season. And while that’s kind of like saying Kim Kardashian is the Kardashian who came closest to winning the Pulitzer this year (Summer viewership numbers being what they are) several million viewers is still nothing to scoff at.

The show started off OK. In one of the opening scenes, the impervious dome drops like a giant cake cover on the town of Chester’s Mill, and you see a cow cut in half lengthwise (with each half falling down on one side of the dome--presumably dueling butchers prepared the the two sides off screen). That’s money shot one. Then a stupid truck driver drives his vehicle at full speed into the invisible dome, with the expected results. Money shot two. Finally, a plane flies into the invisible dome and crashes (money shot three). The money shots suitably disposed of, the show moves on to character development. Or at least, characters moving and mouthing words.

This is where the show starts to fall apart. Stuff blowing up and crashing is great. It’s easy to write: “Plane flies into invisible dome and blows up real good.” Dialog? Apparently not as easy. So you wind up with characters that exclaim their motivations and next moves, rather than real people who just do things--like, you know, happens in real life. “I am about to reveal your dastardly secrets and I am going to shoot you when you least expect it, now please leave while I turn my back on you.” If you wonder how that’s going to turn out, this is your kind of show.

"Big Jim" Rennie, two cops soon to die, and a JLo
Spokesmodel

Questionable dialog, acting, and motivation have all been recurrent issues with The Dome. But arguably, this last week’s show set new standards. The town has been under the dome for about two weeks, total, at this point. We are asked to believe that in two weeks, society has entirely broken down. Men are now fighting each other in the human equivalent of cock fights to win a 16 ounce container of Morton salt. Banks are abandoned with hard cash just lying out untouched on the counters. The townsfolk are siphoning the gas out of police cars. “Big Jim” Rennie, councilman and used car salesman, has taken over running the town in his best I’m-in-charge-now Al Haig imitation. And Junior, the dimwitted teenage son of Big Jim, is now a cop. When the show started--less than two weeks ago in story time--he wasn't a cop. Junior was just a dopey kid who had imprisoned his erstwhile girlfriend by chaining her to a pole in a fallout shelter, something he felt was justified because she told him their Summer fling was through. Your typical happy-go-dopey psychopath. But after the dome fell, one town cop died due to a dome-inspired pacemaker malfunction, and another cop went crazy in a “we’re never getting out of here alive!” rant during which he accidentally killed a third cop. When all was said and done, only one police office remained: Linda Esquivel, who is also a bad actress (but a hot spokesmodel for JLo). Lucky for her, the dome doesn't dislike bad actresses (or maybe it likes spokesmodels), and so she gets to live. But she needs help, and makes Junior into Officer Junior.

Junior and his captive girlfriend:
True love knows no bounds

Meanwhile pops, Big Jim, finds Junior's not-currently-a girlfriend in the shelter and lets her go--an unexpected act of benevolence from a man who we see has already or will soon kill several people in cold blood because they've become inconvenient. Big Jim, as it turns out, had his finger in some pretty illicit drug pies before the dome changed the game. He’s the heavy in this show, the evil that must ultimately be met and conquered in good Stephen King fashion. In the other corner: Dale “Barbie” Barbara. Decorated war hero turned bookie collection agent who had the bad luck to get stuck in Chester’s Mill when the dome fell. Oh, and who, when the dome fell, had just killed the husband of Julia, the hot redheaded reporter in town. And who, soon enough, is conveniently sleeping with Julia. Barbie’s your classic good man who’s done some bad things but who will apparently redeem himself, and who will need to rally the forces against Big Jim.

And then you have four kids running around discovering a mini dome that appears to have something to do with butterflies and also causes the kids to have seizures. This plotline reunites Junior with the girl he formerly imprisoned in what can only be called a heartwarming very special episode, or else total nonsense. This kid-centric part of the plot is basically Goonies R Good Enuf, Part 3. No surprise, Steven Spielberg is an executive producer on this show. I can’t wait until Cyndi Lauper shows up.

Evil "Max" (nee "Jessica Rabbit") and Barbie

In the meantime, in this week’s episode, you have not one, not two, but THREE characters who make diarrhea of the mouth threats. You know: The kind of threat that basically says “I don’t know if you were considering doing something evil to me, but in case you weren't, you might want to reconsider”. First, you have the hot female baddie “Max” who suddenly appears out of nowhere several episodes in, and who’s behind the drug action in Chester’s Mill. Max has done nefarious business with both Big Jim and Barbie in the past, and threatens to bring bring those connections to light if they don’t let her basically turn the town cement factory (huh?) into a huge casino of illicit activity. She’s about as believable a character as Jessica Rabbit. I half expected her to exclaim “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way!” Anyway, she threatens Big Jim, and so Big Jim shoots her. He also kills her good-for-nothing mom. End of that problem. Just prior, Big Jim had enlisted Barbie to help with the Jessica Rabbit “situation”. Barbie had agreed, and then felt the need to toss this one out: “Well, OK, I’ll help you. But when we’re done with that, I’m going to take you down.” Because when you going out on a seek and kill mission with another guy, you want to make sure that guy knows that if you both come back from the mission, you’re going to destroy him. That’s not going to give him any ideas, right? Finally, the once and future fallout shelter prisoner girl tells the ever-unstable Junior that although she needs his help right now (with the mini dome, and with a hurricane within the dome--don’t ask), as soon as this is over, she never wants to see him again. Because it would be just too much to expect her to, uh, maybe not share that tidbit with him at the point where she still needed his help.

But the really good stuff took place elsewhere. See, as mentioned earlier, Barbie is now sleeping with hot redheaded widow Julia, whose husband he killed when he was doing his collection duties, (just minutes before the dome came down). And she has just figured out that Barbie killed her husband. Which means: Barbie slept on the couch last night. As he notes, in the understatement of the week, that kind of sucked. Probably not as much as being killed. But still, pretty sucky. Anyway, the widow has figured out  (by visiting the abandoned bank and finding documents in her dead husband’s safety deposit box) that Barbie kind of had to kill her husband, because the husband wanted to be killed so that an insurance policy would kick in and shower the still-hot-but-now-widowed redhead with untold riches. So the husband provoked Barbie on purpose and Barbie obliged. Little did the husband know that as soon as the dome fell, people would give up all hope of ever getting out, and would abandon any interest in money. It bites when you have yourself killed for nothing. Well, with that figured out, Julia holds out an olive branch to Barbie: Let’s go visit my husband’s grave. We’ll get closure and we can get back to having sex. The lesson being, and this is as old as the scriptures, but it bears repeating: If you killed your honey’s husband a couple of weeks ago and she finds out, offer to visit his gravesite so you two can put it behind you and get back to making love.

Barbie, hot redhead and unidentified extra

Oh, and before Jessica Rabbit bit the big carrot, she went to Julia’s home and shot her. Barbie rushes Julia to the hospital, only to find the resident nurse inconveniently called away to a union meeting about extending coffee breaks. This leaves Barbie in charge of attempting  to save hottie’s life, using only an ordinary fountain pen, a granola bar, and the advanced surgery techniques he learned in Fallujah. Naturally, he manages to bring her back from the dead. But in the meantime, Big JIm has spent quality time with the not dead (yet) JLo spokesmodel female cop, convincing her that Barbie is behind everything bad that has happened, including, but not limited to, the attempted murder of Julia and the mid season collapse of The Yankees. She buys it all and goes searching for Barbie, who ultimately winds up running away and on the lamb after narrowly avoiding being killed himself by Big Jim. Big Jim then takes to the local radio airwaves to announced that the framed Barbie is ‘armed, dangerous, and smells bad’ and more significantly, that he will be ‘found, tried, and if declared guilty, put to death.’ The clarity of vision here, with the charges and sentence announced before the accused is even located, is terrific.

Stephen King on the set of Under the Dome, apparently
thinking about what's in his wallet

That probably fleshes out most of the major plot points for this week, outside of the four kids on their Goonies adventure putting their hands on the big dome and seeing an apparition of Big Jim with blood packs squirting from every angle, bloody knives in their hands, and Ruth Chris menus in their back pockets--the apparent suggestion being that Big JIm would taste like really good aged filet. The previews suggest that next week the kiddies become cannibals, but we’ll have to see if that come to fruition.

In the meantime, it’s worth noting that outside the dome it seems like Spring has reappeared, even though a few weeks ago the government dropped the equivalent of like 100 A-bombs on the dome in an attempt to break it, and left the land outside the dome barren scorched earth. I guess the government paid some really good landscapers to replant everything in the 6 or 7 days since. See? Things aren't so bad under the sequester.

I can’t really say why this is the most watched show of the Summer. But then, I've watched every episode, and I continue to do so, despite it being a verifiable fact that my brain cell count has dropped by 2% with each episode. I guess we all need a few laughs this time of year.