/ 27 July 2013

Dumber Dome is Lost in translation

Dumber Dome Is Lost In Translation

The residents of an idyllic small town somewhere in rural America wake up one day to discover that they have been encased in a giant, impregnable, possibly supernatural dome. Drama ensues.

This concept might seem eerily familiar to anyone who saw the 2007 film version of The Simpsons, in which President Arnold Schwarzenegger has the town of Springfield encased in a giant dome. However, Under the Dome is adapted from a novel by Stephen King, and he claims to have come up with the idea in the late 1970s, so we can safely ignore any suspicion of plagiarism.

More importantly, Under the Dome is initially quite fun. In the pilot episode, we are treated to the physical spectacle of the dome's arrival, and all the chaos that results from it. Aircraft fall out of the sky, cows are sliced in half, and trucks smash into invisible walls on the highway.

In subsequent episodes, having presumably blown through most of the special effects budget, the dome is mostly unseen. It is simply there: invisible, all-powerful, shaping the actions of the humans trapped within it. "The dome", in this sense, occupies the same position in the narrative that "the island" did in Lost. As was the case in that series, Under the Dome is driven by the human drama that results when ordinary people are isolated from the world and forced to survive together.

But where human characters were the best thing about Lost, they're the weakest point in Under the Dome.

Sure, there's a large and diverse cast: a charming criminal, a tenacious reporter, a tough female deputy sheriff, a nerdy teenager, and a lesbian couple and their daughter. Some of these characters are portrayed well, and several of them are fun to spend time around. But all of them, ultimately, behave more like stereotypes than real human beings.

Also, I can't get over the way that Under the Dome ignores the basic laws of economics. Any real-life community that suddenly became isolated from the rest of the world would rapidly transition from a cash economy to a bartering system.

People would stockpile food, and the value of money would plummet towards zero. Very soon, the only way to obtain basic necessities would be would through trading or theft.

This is not what happens in Under the Dome. In one scene, a character is inexplicably able to walk into a store and buy a chocolate bar. In other scenes, we see that the town restaurant continues its sell its priceless food for worthless paper money.

This might seem like a minor complaint. But it's indicative of a broader problem with Under the Dome, which is a reluctance to explore fully the implications of its own premise.

The show wants to have it both ways. It wants to use the dome as a plot device, but it also wants to protect its quirky, friendly, small-town atmosphere. And it definitely doesn't want to think too much about the crushing, terrifying scarcity that the dome creates.

As a result, the whole series takes on a patina of unrealism. It's one thing to ask an audience to accept the existence of a supernatural dome, but don't ask them to believe that people under the dome will stop behaving like people.

This is why Under the Dome, which could have been a fascinating study of how humans behave when cut off from civilisation, is ultimately such a disappointment. Other TV shows that have grappled with similar themes, such as The Walking Dead and Battlestar Galactica, have managed to be enormously thought-provoking and influential simply because they took their own premises seriously. To its detriment, Under the Dome does not.

Under the Dome is shown on Tuesdays at 8.30pm on M-Net