Under the Dome - So Disappointed

[pendamuse]

I was really set for this mini-series (this bit is impor­tant, but I’ll be back) looked promis­ing, based on a book I really enjoyed. It’s a typ­i­cal King Tale - small town, unusual cir­cum­stances, unimag­in­able ter­ror, more ter­ror from peo­ple who called them­selves “neigh­bors”, FINALE!

I wasn’t crazy about how the book ended and the rea­son behind the dome (I won’t spoil it, but - really?) but like most Kind books, it’s the Jour­ney, not the Des­ti­na­tion. I keep telling myself that because I really do enjoy the ride.

Then, the mini-series for Under The Dome was announced, and I got excited - not too excited, because we’ve been here before, with less than excit­ing results - because after Rose Red and Storm of the Cen­tury, two sto­ries that skipped book treat­ment and went right to pix­els, I was ready for some­thing I was famil­iar with.

*sigh*

Dur­ing the first episodes when my hus­band would ask me - “did that hap­pen in the book?” and me giv­ing a despon­dent grunt, I real­ized this wasn’t really going to be what I expected. I under­stand com­pos­ite char­ac­ters and the need make things more con­crete for tele­vi­sion, but so much was dif­fer­ent right off the bat, I stopped think­ing “adap­ta­tion of” and more “based on an idea by some guy that sat next to a book by Stephen King once in a bus terminal”.

I’m still sigh­ing about it. I would see it to the end, because I’m that kind of sucker, and I would do my best to get into the story. “After all,” I asked myself, “it’s only 13 episodes, so how badly could they screw it up?”



“We are going to make this suck so hard they’ll be beg­ging us to can­cel it - you hear me!”
Photo Credit: TV | NEWS | TODAY

Around Episode 6 it was announced that it would be picked up for a sec­ond season.

Um … what? This is a mini-series. That doesn’t mean short sea­sons, it means it’ll wrap some­where around 13 episodes. At least it used to. Now it seems to mean test­ing an audi­ence to see if there’s inter­est and then trolling out more episodes. So the answer was, “they’re going mess this up badly, sister!”

Mr. King, you may approve of the changes, but then you also gave us Max­i­mum Over­drive and while I enjoyed The Shin­ing mini-series (see how that man­aged to stay a “mini-series”) you could hear the unspo­ken expo­si­tion in the long shots of Col­orado and the Over­look. You may know from books, but when it comes to tele­vi­sion, your track record is depress­ing and dis­cour­ag­ing. Some­one con­vinced to you dis­mem­ber your own baby and reassem­ble it using parts of a slug, a fer­ret, and a rock. What­ever glue used isn’t hold­ing and I fully expect the final sea­son will be released to DVD directly in frag­mented pieces and stick fin­gers. The sad part is only the most ardent of fans will care by that point, because this really isn’t the Under The Dome we were expect­ing. We were expect­ing a baby with meth and pol­lu­tion and Saun­ders and all of the awe­some that the book showed us. We got a baby drawn on a piece of paper with holes cut out at the bot­tom so the doc­tor can make it dance with his fin­gers. It’s not the same

In the hands of the right screen­writer and the right direc­tor, Under the Dome could have been some­thing worth tun­ing in for over 13 finite weeks. The mate­r­ial is there for 13 finite weeks, not 39 and sure as heck not over three sum­mers (Sea­son 3 in 2015? Really?). Tan­gents were cre­ated, new char­ac­ters are spun from whole cloth, and are we hon­estly tread­ing the “Mag­i­cal Chil­dren” waters again? If a “Mag­i­cal Negro” shows up, we will fight. The book had so much already there, and here we are 13 hours in, and none of it is hap­pen­ing. Mys­te­ri­ous char­ac­ters that just hap­pened to be in Chester’s Mill show up out of the blue, char­ac­ters run as if there’s some­place to go and hide in caves and mines and in a town of roughly 1,300, no one can find any­one. Any writer that tells you they can’t take a book that was almost 1,110 pages and cre­ate a 13-week minis­eries is not only not try­ing but very lazy. We’ve prob­a­bly reached a new low.

*slow clap*

The mate­r­ial was there the devi­a­tions are so vast with this ridicu­lous “Monarch” sto­ry­line, and four mag­i­cal kids (rolls eyes), and so much stu­pid, small farm­ing towns all over the US feel a sud­den pres­sure to build Star­bucks and strip malls and dis­tance them­selves from the slack-jawed locals of Chester’s Mill, it was squandered.

There, I said it.

This isn’t The Walk­ing Dead. This isn’t Sher­lock. This isn’t Amer­i­can Hor­ror Story. Under The Dome isn’t like any of those shows that leave fans slaver­ing for the next episode and the next sea­son, not because it’s not on cable, but because some­where between hard­cover and screen, some­one tin­kered the soul right out of it. I can’t say I’m giv­ing up on all King adap­tions going for­ward, but I cer­tainly won’t look upon them with any great enthu­si­asm. You’d think I’d learn my les­son - Firestarter: Rekin­dled, Bag of Bones, The Tom­my­knock­ers. No one has learned any­thing since, well, ever, and a body gets tired of promises made and not kept.

So here’s your Rock-Slug-Ferret-Baby back. I don’t want to watch its sad dance anymore.