Under The Dome Review: “Curtains” (Season 1, Episode 13)

Despite providing plenty of nuggets of motherly advice tonight – what with all the predictions about the falling stars from the late Momma Rennie, and ghost Norrie’s mom instructing her on proper egg caretaking- the Under the Dome finale has me thinking of other words of wisdom: if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

If you’ve been gutting it out through the show’s first season and read all these reviews, you’ll have noticed they’ve gradually been growing shorter and shorter most every week. The reason for this is quite simple: Under the Dome isn’t something I’ve enjoyed watching since probably the third episode, and no amount of ironic detachment, or Natalie Zea will change the fact that the show simply isn’t for me.

And that’s okay. There are people -you might very well be one of them- that have thoroughly enjoyed most everything the show has had to offer, and if the previous twelve weeks worked for you, then this finale will probably float your boat just fine. Nobody died, but there was a lot of crazy dome-related phenomena going on, Barbie and Junior got in another fist (shoulder, really) fight, Barbie and Julia madeout, and a bunch of pretty lights streaked across the night sky, before the show faded to white for the season. Nothing about the finale stood out as anything less than you would expect from what it is Under the Dome has delivered thus far. If nothing else, the show has been admirably consistent.

But as has been an unfortunate discovery in the time since the once promising pilot, I don’t like that show. At all. Yes, watching Dean Norris get his sneer on (by now, it’s clear he’d be perfect for a Nolan take on The Penguin) provided some relief, but when trying to think of positives related to the actual storytelling elements that make Under the Dome a show, I come up with a big handful of dissolved dome dirt. The plane and truck crashes from the pilot still hold up nicely after watching them repeated, week after week during the prologue, but the budget constraints have only become more noticeable with every episode. How is it possible for so many plots to hinge on characters being on the run, when all of Chester’s Mill consists only of one patch of forest, a couple houses, a barn, the hospital, city hall, and a cement mine?