3.1 Move On & 3.2 But I’m Not But like a toddler first learning how to tell a joke, this show just can’t stop fluffing its punchlines. Under The Dome squandered every bit of promise the fake world concept had in record-breaking time, by a line uttered in the episode’s opening minutes. “We hope it takes us home,” said Barbie of the swirly vortex out of which a beckoning Melanie had stepped at the end of the last season, continuing, “but what if it takes us to an alternate reality?” Thud. Clunk. Ba-dum, ba-dum, baaa-dum. That’s the sound of a script falling washing machine-heavy down stairs, toppled by the weight of its lack of confidence in its viewers. To give credit to the writers, I can only imagine it was a particularly tone-deaf note from the studio in the vein of… Writers: They’re not supposed to get it. Not ‘til the end of the episode. They might suspect it. That’s the mystery element. Exec: Yeah, we’re going to have to go ahead and lose that. Exec: Yup. People are too dumb for that. You’ve got to tell ‘em them it’s all fake at the start. Writers: But…? Exec: [moonwalks out of writers’ room, beat-boxing] As soon as we heard the words ‘alternate reality’, GI Barbie playing ‘do you feel lucky, punk?’ with an insurgent, Norrie pledging a preppy sorority, and skateboarder Ben having his asthma cured (way to dream big, guy) were just tiresome hurdles to get over before the real story could continue. Whatever in the Sam Hill that is. Let’s attempt to pin it down. In 1988, an alien race sent a whole bunch of magic eggs to Earth, the only one to survive intact landing in Chester’s Mill, ME. A teenage girl accidentally died hitting her head on it, so her friends buried her in the woods and went on to become an alcoholic murderer, a god-bothering barber and Mrs ‘I make terrible art and faked my death’ Big Jim. Twenty-odd years later, an impenetrable dome surrounded the town of Chester’s Mill, trapping its inhabitants and the dead girl’s unwitting half-brother inside. The egg elected some teenage lackeys and a gloriously-maned journalist with a Prius to do its bidding. The dome proceeded to cause all sorts of monkeyshines from plagues of caterpillars to rains of blood to twisters and magnetisation and whichever other suggestions fell out of the Mad Libs book that week. Sometimes the dome let email through, for reasons of plot advancement. Sometimes it let people through, for reasons of plot advancement. All the while, Big Jim’s shirts were getting progressively tighter. Does that more or less sum it up? Compared to season two’s magnetapalooza, this was a fairly subdued opener for Under The Dome. More time was given over to ponderous psychobabble about closure, making amends, being a prisoner of the past and (said roughly every two minutes what with it being the episode title) the importance of moving on, than it was to action. Junior and Julia did their best to provide some peril by punching some butterflies, and Big Jim almost burst his buttons shouting at a stray dog, but neither encounter really ramped up the excitement. I suppose there’s nothing else for it steels resolve, takes deep breath we’ll just have to stick around to find out. Read Frances’ review of the season two finale, Go Now, here.
