Another summer Under the Dome
Show finding itself trapped in more ways than one
If Under the Dome has taught us anything, it’s that you can be trapped in a dome and trapped in a story simultaneously.
In fact, one of the promo ads for the third season of Under the Dome — which debuts Thursday on CBS and Global — almost acknowledges it. Probably intentionally in some ways, unintentionally in others.
Big Jim Rennie, played by Dean Norris, is sitting in a chair in his living room. The TV is on and an announcer asks, “Tired of summer repeats?”
Big Jim shoots the TV. The screen shatters. He mutters, “Nothing good on television these days anyway.”
The promo then goes on to describe Under the Dome as “summer’s No. 1 drama,” and promises “new twists, new season, the ultimate summer escape.”
Toward the end, Dale “Barbie” Barbara, played by Mike Vogel, says, “Sometimes you just gotta take a leap of faith.”
That can mean a lot of different things when it comes to the third season. It’s almost as if CBS is saying, “Come on, you guys, this is summer fare, get on board, don’t think too hard about it.”
If it sounds as if I’m making fun of Under the Dome, I’m not really. The fact is I liked the first season a lot. But the show spun its wheels through much of Season 2, which actually is quite understandable.
Several years ago I read the Stephen King novel Under the Dome, which is set in a small New England town called Chester’s Mill. One day a giant, invisible dome of unknown origin descends upon the town, cutting it off instantly from the rest of the world.
In the book, the entire span of events takes place in just over a week. One of the most intriguing elements is how quickly things fall apart in Chester’s Mill, with the town’s most selfish and power-hungry residents briskly attempting to take advantage of the situation.
When the TV series began in 2013, I didn’t really care if the story was going to stick to the book or not. I’ve never been a proponent of TV shows being forced to parrot the narratives of the books on which they’re based. What works on a page doesn’t always work on a screen. You have to make decisions based on the medium and I’m fine with that.
But as soon as it was announced midway through the first season that Under the Dome had been renewed for a second season, you knew the actual foundation of the story would have to change significantly, as would the pace at which that story could be told.
The book had a finite time line because gases from a toxic explosion were trapped in the dome and threatened to choke the residents to death. The TV show, on the other hand, has broadened the story to keep it going, so some rather creative decisions have been made.
To be blunt, some of these characters weren’t really designed for the long haul. Big Jim, for instance, had some different layers in the first season and they were on full display thanks to the excellent performance by Norris.
At this point, though, Big Jim has gone so far down the road to evil he’s just kind of a perpetually angry screamer now. There used to be more to him than that.
At the end of the second season, most of the surviving residents of Chester’s Mill seemed to be on the verge of getting out through a mysterious underground tunnel.
As always, though, there will be complications and the previously promised “twists.” Whatever happens, the story can’t really roam from the dome. Are there three-plus seasons of drama stored in that thing?