By: James Bowler
Why is it every time we visit Chester's Mill each Monday that
we are completely engulfed within the show?
Why are we obsessed with this
surprising summer break out hit?
Well here’s a list of reasons why ‘Under the Dome’ has
managed to gather more than 10 million viewers per episode every Monday night,
and why what was meant to be a mini-series has now been renewed for a second
season before it was even close to finishing.
(Clearly spoilers are ahead, so if you haven't watched it get ON your ass and do so).
The Characters
When the dome comes down, mysteriously and unannounced,
Chester’s Mill is left with a handful of characters who are not only interesting and complex, but also have a lot of secrets to hide, which slowly
become dug up as each episode unveils.
As Julia Shumway narrates at the beginning of the episode ‘none
of our secrets are safe’.
Topping the list we have ex soldier and all around mysterious dude, Dale ‘Barbie’ Barbara.
We start out seeing Barbie burying a man in the middle of nowhere and we later learn that this man is Julia Shumway’s husband who was shot accidentally by Barbie when he fought back while Barbie was trying to collect a debt.
Barbie, aside from having this sordid past, is a cool
freakin’ guy. He’s like the Jason Bourne of the dome, you never really feel
scared for him, because you know he can handle himself.
Even when Big Jim Rennie says ‘you wouldn’t want to make an
enemy out of me Barbie’, he comes back with the most epic counter threat, ‘there’s
two sides to that coin’.
I mean how badass is that, just having the biggest honcho in
the town threaten you and throwing it back in his face and meaning it.
Barbie also clearly has a conscious, he doesn’t really want
to hurt anyone or do bad things, he just got caught up with the wrong people
(which was revealed more in the latest episode).
You can see him constantly trying to fight his emotions when
having to make tough decisions to protect himself and the people he cares
about.
Even though he’s banging the widow of the guy he killed, and
she doesn’t know about it, you know its eating him up inside (well maybe not, but
look at her, would you say no to that?).
Next up of course is Big Jim Rennie, de facto mayor, drug
runner, and all around creep.
He’s like a scarier version of ‘Breaking Bad’s’ Walter White
(if that’s even possible).
He claims numerous times that he’s been helping make drugs
in order to ‘save the town’. But there is always more to Big Jim and his plans
than meets the eye.
Having lost his wife to a suicidal car accident, Big Jim
seems to have really gone off the deep end, much like his son Junior Rennie,
but unlike Junior he is able to keep the crazy at bay.
He has already killed numerous people who seem to ‘get in
his way’ (again anyone reminded of Walter White?), and now when the mysterious
Mags shows up claiming to be his partner in crime (the actual crime of cooking
drugs), it’s clear Big Jim had his fingers in a lot more pies than we earlier
suspected.
The question is what is his endgame? And how many more
people is Big Jim involved with?
Of course James ‘Junior’ Rennie is clearly another choice.
After we see him having it out with his girlfriend Angie McCain, Junior kidnaps her by knocking her unconscious (you know just casually smashing her head off the counter), and chains her to a bed in his father’s fallout shelter.
After we see him having it out with his girlfriend Angie McCain, Junior kidnaps her by knocking her unconscious (you know just casually smashing her head off the counter), and chains her to a bed in his father’s fallout shelter.
All this happens in the span of one episode, could we be
anymore intrigued?
Junior keeps telling Angie that she’s sick, the dome is
making her sick, and that he is trying to save her.
Now we all just assume that he means he believes that dome
is giving her ‘ideas’ and ‘independent thoughts’ like her wish to move out of
Chester’s Mill and into a big city, and he doesn’t like that.
But in a shocking reveal, it seems that he was right, and
the Dome is actually affecting her after she has a seizure and talks about ‘pink
stars’ falling. He shows her a picture his mother painted years ago before she
killed herself, of Junior standing outside and pink stars falling around him,
based on a dream she had (also the art looks like it was painted by a
kindergarten student, but I’m not art major).
We realize that maybe Junior isn’t as crazy as we initially
thought, while it was completely screwed up to chain Angie to a bed, his heart
may have been in the right place.
Although he has murdered two men as well (that we know
about), and his extreme jealousy has shown its ugly head before when it comes
to Angie, so who know’s what he’s really capable of (plus he’s the blood born
of Big Jim, enough said).
There are so many other complex characters with secrets,
many still showing up, and I know you’re saying, but what about those two
sex-crazed teens? Well yeah they’re interesting too, but they’ve got nothing to
hide really, they’re just all about the dome, and somehow they’re connected to
it.
The Dome
What is it? How did it come here without anyone noticing it,
and how is it possible for this thing to dig that deep into the ground?
This thing has confounded townspeople, the army, even
butterflies! BUTTERFLIES!
Military officials couldn’t even blow the damn thing up with
a non-nuclear missile (although they did clear out a hell of a lot of land
around it).
And the mysteries keep on coming, like how is water able to
soak through it, and why is it giving off an electrical charge that has blown
up electronic devices?
Also what is the importance of the mini-dome? Is the bigger
dome meant to protect it, and if so from what?
The dome also seems to be offering haulicinations and
trading a life for a life. What does it all mean?
If the mini-dome is any indication or tease of what its
larger bretherin is, than this thing is not a dome at all but an entire globe.
The Novel
On June 27th, Stephen King wrote a note to all of
his fans on his personal website explaining his reasoning for keeping Under the
Dome the novel completely separate from Under the Dome the TV series.
You can read it here if you like.
Basically King starts out talking about deceased writer
James M. Cain and an interview he had with a student reporter about his works.
He says that the student was ranting to Cain about how Hollywood
changed original novels like ‘The Postman Rings Twice’, but Cain countered by
saying ‘The movies didn’t change them a bit, son. They’re all right up there.
Every word is the same as when I wrote them’, while pointing to his shelf of
books.
King went on to say that he felt the same way about Under
the Dome and the majority of his remakes, meaning that while Hollywood may
change the story in the film, the original is always there to be read, it never
disappears.
He agreed that the changes made by show runner Brian K.
Vaughn were a necessity to bringing the series to television, which included
changing characters, adding new ones, and repositioning others.
He said the only element that had to stay the same was the
Dome itself, and to me that makes sense.
For this series to work it had to be different while still
following the same basic recipe for disaster, and that recipe comes with a big
helping of Dome.
While some might be cynical about the drastic changes to the
story in the series in comparison to the book, it was a necessary evil, and you
can’t argue with numbers.
Of course now, since the mini-series has now bloomed into a
full series with a second season on the horizon, the writers, along with King,
are forced to come up with a whole new plan for the story, so why not change it
completely.
It’s like it’s happening to the same characters in a
different universe, and the situation is playing out differently (anyone who’s
read The Regulators and Desperation should know exactly what that means and how
it’s played out well before).
And in typical Stephen King fashion he noted in his letters ‘Some
who die in the book – Angie, for instance – live in the TV version of Chester’s
Mill...at least for a while.’
He also teased that the writers have re-imagined the source
of the Dome. He says it was a concern but it makes sense because if people who
read the book watched the series, they’d know how it all ends. Now, no one will
know.
Does that mean the Dome might not have an alien origin but
more of a supernatural one (or maybe somehow connected to the Dark Tower series
and leading into a Dark Tower film finally)? You’ll have to keep watching to
find out!
Twitter: @journalistjim