The Good, the Bad and the Ugly — Under the Dome Season 1 Review

We take a look back and review the first season of Under the Dome and tell you what was good, what was bad, and what was ugly (hint that has something to do with farm animals)…

On Monday night the first season of the summer hit sci-fi series Under the Dome came to an end with a lot of questions still unanswered, but the ratings were big enough for CBS to pick up the Stephen King series for at least another year.

The source material written by King only lasted one book and in total just about a week but when the TV ratings started soaring, the dollar signs did too and so the show was renewed for a second season and the story extended.

To their credit, the producers behind Under the Dome — most notably showrunner and executive producer Brian K. Vaughan — have kept King in the loop the entire time, and he will be involved in the second season as well.

The new season will debut in the Summer of 2014, but for now we’re going to take a look back at the highlights of season one in a new segment we call The Good, the Bad and the Ugly this time around examining CBS’ Under the Dome. Don’t forget to scroll all the way to the bottom to catch our overall rating for the series thus far.

The Good

— Happy To See Hank Schrader Alive and Well

Okay, I know that Dean Norris is just an actor and not ACTUALLY Hank Schrader from Breaking Bad, but still just 24-hours after he met his demise on that wonderfully wicked show, it was nice to see him pop up in his other television role on Monday night. So often when a beloved character exits a show, we have to wait months or sometimes years for them to pop up in another notable role, but Norris wasn’t slowing down as Breaking Bad came to its end. Instead he booked a role in Under the Dome as bad guy ‘Big’ Jim Rennie.

As a villain, Norris played the role really well and excelled as evolving from good hearted town leader to an evil, manipulative demigod who actually wants the dome to stay over top of the small town of Chester’s Mill. His reasons are mostly selfish because he accidentally overheard Army forces from outside the dome reveal that they witnessed him killing Reverend Coggins earlier this season. If there was one issue with Rennie as a character it was his almost overnight turn from good to bad. Maybe this was a flaw of the show starting out as a miniseries only meant for 13 episodes, but it seems to watch the story unfold over multiple seasons it would have been nice to see Rennie slowly fade into madness. That didn’t happen here because by the finale he was building gallows and getting ready for a good old-fashioned town hangin’! He tried to kill Julia and Barbie about 15 times each by the time the finale was over, but he did manage to get his son Junior back on his side after they flip-flopped their relationship more than a soap opera characters. Still, Norris was spot on and it’s good to see him get another leading role so soon after Breaking Bad.

— Sort of Finding out the Purpose of the Dome

One of the key elements that Vaughan and the team behind Under the Dome had to deal with when creating the show was separating it from the original book from Stephen King if they wanted to extend this thing beyond one season. So from the very beginning there were major differences in characters, plot points, and the way the story unfolded. While I am a huge King fan, I never read Under the Dome so nothing was set up to disappoint me or ruined by the TV series. Being obsessed with spoilers, however, I did go and read ahead for the book’s finish to find out that aliens were behind the dome and they were essentially just messing with the townspeople in Chester’s Mill. Like an ant farm gone awry, these aliens were just bored and looking for something to do so why not drop an invisible dome over a town full of people and watch them go bat shit crazy!

This time around as we find out from the Lost-esque dead person that shows up when the keepers of the egg all protect it from Rennie and his gang of goons, this dome was dropped on Chester’s Mill to protect them not to punish them. The alien (we assume it’s an alien anyways) says that they have just now learned how to communicate with us, but they needed to send this message about the dome so we’d begin to understand it. Of course then ghost Courtney Rawlinson disappears and fails to expand any further on what the dome is doing there or what it’s protecting it from but let’s not forget — Vaughan was a writer on Lost for several seasons. He knows how to drag this shit out.

The Bad

— Oh the Acting

No show is perfect and even the best dramas on TV all have a weak link somewhere along the way. Even The Sopranos (which is the greatest TV show of all time, don’t try to tell me otherwise) had characters played by less than stellar actors and actresses. It just happens.

But Under the Dome must have gotten a premium on buy three bad actors and get the fourth one free for this season of the show. Natalie Martinez was about as fearsome a police officer playing Sheriff Linda Esquivel as Barney Fife was to the town of Mayberry. In the beginning of the series, she was a strong right hand to Sheriff Duke Perkins before his untimely death, and it seemed like she was going to be a strong, independent female character. Instead she was reduced to a meek mouse pulled on puppet strings by ‘Big’ Jim, Barbie and anybody else who had an order to give. Then there’s Alexander Koch who played Junior Rennie, and based one what I’ve read from the books (well at least the Wikipedia page) he was a pretty important character. We probably don’t know that he has any kind of emotional range, however, given the one look we saw on Junior’s face the entire season.

Listen I’m not asking for DeNiro or DiCaprio but at least give me shades of good sci-fi TV acting. Check out Battlestar: Galactica or Firefly and witness how it’s done. I will say there were moments that Junior was tolerable, but they were few and far between and he didn’t get a lot of support except during those times when he leaned on pops to pull him through the scene.

— Is This Show Jericho or Independence Day?

The moment the dome dropped over Chester’s Mill and the people in the town were cut off from the rest of the world, the first thought that rolled through my head was ‘hey this is like Jericho!’. For those that don’t know, Jericho was a one-season wonder (the second season felt so rushed I hate to even admit it exists) that blended survival with science fiction and a good political drama all mixed together in one big melting pot of awesome. The story was based around the town of Jericho, Kansas after they are cut off from the rest of the world after a series of nuclear bombs explode all over the United States thus infecting the air, the ground and wiping out any semblance of a government. If you haven’t seen it go get the first season on DVD. You’ll put it right next to your copy of Firefly in the ‘shows cancelled after one season while Grey’s Anatomy somehow survived’ section.

I digress.

Under the Dome seemed like Jericho in many ways in the episodes where the town fought over food supplies, clean water and fuel, as well as the guns that would protect them in case of an emergency. We saw power plays and political end games at work. But then there is the supernatural element that gets tossed in as well, and that would be fine, but there was seemingly no middle ground between the two. The show shifted back and forth over the course of 13 full episodes with one foot in each world and never completely combining the two. If half the town was on the hunt for water, the other was passing out and talking about pink stars. Never did the two storylines seem to interact much and that was a disappointment. Outside of the one episode where a drought ends when the aliens open up the skies to rain, you’d never imagine these people were survivalists while hunting little green men.

The Ugly

— That Damned Cow

When the dome dropped down on day one during the series premiere, admittedly there were some cool effects dropped in there for dramatic effect. A plane crashes into the dome showing that no matter how high you fly, you’re not getting out. Cars smash into the dome, and Sheriff Perkins’ pacemaker explodes like a Jiffy Pop bag made out of foil in a microwave. One part of the dome dropping that we could not escape if we tried was the cow that got sliced in half in front of Barbie after he crashed his car and the invisible shield slammed to the ground. Episode after episode, highlight after highlight we had to see this cow get sliced up.

Now I’m not even speaking from the animal cruelty side of this argument because we all know it wasn’t a real cow. But we also know from biology and anatomy classes that this cow wasn’t even close to being made correctly when lopped right down the middle. It was just a bloody trick to show off just how powerful this omnipotent dome really was when shutting down the entire town. The producers couldn’t chop a person in half (The Bridge did that though!) but they certainly enjoyed the CGI they created when old Bessie got cut down. I’m all for good effects, especially on TV where the budgets are always smaller than TV, but we don’t need to see it during every episode. Ned Stark got his freaking head cut off on Game of Thrones, but the producers behind that show didn’t need to put it in a highlight package like Jordan jumping from the free throw line. My point being — come season two please let the cow rest in peace because I’m over it.

Overall, Under the Dome was an enjoyable watch for the biggest parts of the season. Could the finale have been better? Absolutely. There were way more issues introduced in that one-hour of television than almost the entire 12 hours prior to that, and they didn’t get us a lot of answers outside of the dome’s purpose, and even that was vague! Will I tune in for season 2? Yes, I will return and watch again. Will I go back and rewatch season 1? Yes again, maybe this show gains something by watching it all over the course of one weekend filled with pizza boxes and empty Mello Yello cans cut off from the rest of the world (dome not included). The show still has promise and now that season 2 guarantees a complete cut from the original book, it’s anybody’s guess how it ends, where it goes or what comes next.

On the Skolnick meter we give Under the Dome season 1 an overall rating of 3. Not bad for a freshman series, but by season 2 get rid of the cow, contemplate giving Junior an overhaul or at least one recognizable emotion and give up a few answers to keep us tuning in week to week.