Seeing as we’ve just passed the midpoint of Under the Dome’s first season, it seems about right that we’ve reached the third of five stages that come when grieving a show that’s promise has been draining out of it since episode two, like gore from a bullet to the gut. Bargaining is the phase where you try to stop focussing on the show's flawed whole, and just start being thankful for when things go right on occasion. The more distance we get from those (probably unrealistic) expectations for what a show centered around a giant dome could possibly achieve, the easier it can be to enjoy parts of Under the Dome without feeling like you have to take the experience with enough grains of salt to kill a farmer’s field.
I love Pacific Rim. Like, really love it. Its flaws are as easy to spot as any of the film's lumbering, gargantuan beasties (Kaiju, to the uninitiated), but that hasn’t stopped it from being my favorite blockbuster released since The Dark Knight. At a time when the summer movie season means you can expect plenty of remakes, comic book movies, and a nasty undercurrent of cynicism waiting for you in theaters, for Pacific Rim to not just exist, but be as overwhelmingly entertaining as it is, is to have a grand blue bolt of joy strike an otherwise barren big-budget landscape. Here’s a film that offers the same big, loud, dumb spectacle every other summer blockbuster has been trying to sell you for years, but actually understands the restraint required to make being big feel as such, the cadence of loud that turns noise into Rock & Roll, and that entertainment can be dumb, without being stupid. It took Marvel five movies and two-thirds of an Avengers to get the kind of slack-jawed, silly grin out of me Pacific Rim managed in an hour, and then maintained through multiple viewings.
Maybe there’s no magical secret to having the high ratings CBS regularly trounces other networks with. From where I’m sitting, their most successful shows have at least one common factor: making sure that somebody gets killed every week. It works for NCIS, it works for Survivor and Big Brother (with exile being about as close to death as reality TV allows…for now) and it’s worked well enough for Under the Dome to earn it a second season. Cable dramas like The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad might get all the attention for the violence inherent to their vision, but death is no stranger to the FCC-regulated networks either (the cast for CBS’ upcoming Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which is at the whim of infamous character-killer Joss Whedon, will likely spend most of their time on the show ready to shop their resumes elsewhere at a moment’s notice).
All right folks, I know you’re upset. We all are. These last two weeks being trapped under the metaphorical dome of our commitment to watching Under the Dome haven’t been easy on any of us; our most important resource, good will stemming from the pilot, is running on empty. With all the knife-sharpening critics have been doing the last couple episodes, you’d think they could easily cut through the impenetrable force field surrounding Chester’s Mill. A lot of the more vocal viewers out there have been turning on this thing faster than they can turn off their TV once the show’s over. Sure, that one loudmouth predicted that the ratings would start to falter if things kept going down a bad road, but I’m here to tell you we’ve still got time to right this ship – err, dome, and the answer is simple...
You don't often feel like you're winning when you play The Last of Us. It has a story mode that can be played through to a definitive conclusion, but it's not one that ends in triumph and celebration. There’s no flagpole to jump on, no place to punch-in your initials, and Princess Peach isn’t waiting at the finish line with a fresh slice of cake.
Even with four types of dramatic conflict that it could be choosing to explore (Man vs. Man, Man vs. Self, Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Society), Under the Dome’s best stuff since the pilot has been coming from the little known fifth class of conflict, Man vs. Dome. “It’s the dome! It’s gonna kill us all!” raves Randolph, last week’s trigger-happy deputy turned prophet of doom, a sentiment later echoed by incumbent town crazy Junior, who deals with his fear of the dome collapsing on everyone by beating his fists bloody against it. They might be less stable than anyone else in Chester’s Mill, but at least in their panic, these two nut jobs add a sense of urgency to the show that has been sorely lacking.
After its second episode, Under the Dome looks to be attempting the latter approach, for better and worse; based on “Into the Fire,” we might be getting a much flimsier miniseries than the one originally hinted at by last week’s mostly impressive pilot. Rather than simply being underserved in the initial rush to get to the big dome stuff, the show’s shakier elements from last week don’t improve here, and show signs of infecting the rest of the infrastructure. There’s a whole lot more of the blue-ball conspiracy teasing this week, the kind that usually kills programs like this, and even more of the B-movie-worthy line readings/acting you could mostly eyeroll passed if only contained to the first hour. These aren’t necessarily ingredients that will make for an awful show, but they are ones for a series that’s far less interesting than I hoped Under the Dome would turn out to be.
Master of horror Stephen King, and comic book whiz Brian K. Vaughn would like to invite you Under the Dome for 13 hours, and so far, it's a tempting offer.
With one season yet to go, Mad Men’s star still has one year to find salvation, but its hero may yet turn into the monster she once railed against. The Merry-go-round of Misery isn’t out of juice just yet it seems, and it looks like it might be Peggy's turn to take a ride.
