The first season of Under The Dome concluded tonight. The new show about a town that finds itself suddenly surrounded by an indestructible spherical force field that traps everyone either inside it or out. Now I don't hate the show but a lot of what happens in it seems to indicate that maybe.....well maybe Chester's Mill is just a town full of idiots.
What follows is mildly spoilerific. So be warned. I've chopped it up into three major sections: The Kids, The Adults and The Military.
THE KIDS
Party Dudes!
A number of kids find themselves separated from their parents when the dome appears. And instead of worrying about how they might deal with the stressful situation of being trapped in a mysterious force field dome where they might eventually die from lack of resources they decide this would be a great time to party!
And party they do. They first throw a huge party on a bridge near the dome. Then they move to a skaters park where they take turns riding a skateboard up the dome itself. Then they move onto the homes of kids who have parents trapped on the outside of the dome.
Not seen are any of the kids seemingly stressed at all by the situation. No one has a breakdown. No one has separation anxiety. They just party and have fun. Mostly.
Poke The Bear
One notable exception is the character Angie. She had the misfortune of breaking up with her insane boyfriend, Junior, on the same day the dome came down. This, of course, prompted him to abduct her and lock her in his dad's fallout shelter (you see he really is insane). Oh and she's shackled to the wall with a chain around her ankle. For her own good, so Junior says.
In fact this is really a huge expression of jealousy gone psycho. He was upset that he saw Angie talking to the new guy in town, Barbie, right after the dome manifested.
Well Angie then does what anyone would do when shackled and imprisoned by a clearly disturbed person: antagonize them!
Yes, not content with the direness of the situation she concocts a lie that she tells Junior about her having mind blowing sex with Barbie. This results in him leaving quickly to attempt to kill Barbie who, to this point, only knows Angie as a nurse in training that asked a few questions about the dome. Boy is he surprised when an unhinged teenager shows up and tries to kill him.
In the end Barbie survives the attack by Junior but nonetheless: way to go Angie!
Where Is The Sister?
Angie has a brother, Joe, who actually is not so much interested in partying with the other kids. He actually is very much interested in the dome. In fact he makes an immediate effort to quantify its physical nature; size, shape and material construct. He even hypothesizes that since it seems to be electrically based it might be able to be turned off if they can find a power source.
One thing he doesn't seem too interested in is his sister. Even though he knows she is trapped in the dome with him (he ran into her not long after the dome manifested) he doesn't notice she is missing for three days! And that was when he finally started looking for her.
Did Angie kill his dog when he was younger?
We Are Through!
Later on Angie is found by Junior's father, Jim, and released. Jim appeals to her to not go vigilante on Junior while still trapped in the dome. She agrees though this sets up the very awkward situation of being trapped inside the dome with her clearly disturbed kidnapper and not being able to tell anyone about it.
Well then the awkward dial gets turned up to eleven when a mini dome surrounding an egg is found. The dome wants four people to put their hands on it to activate it and eventually it turns out that the four desired people are Joe, Angie, a girl named Norrie and a fourth.........JUNIOR!
Yeah, kidnapping boy needs to join up with kidnapping victim and friends.
At first this kind of works out but then, when Junior opines he wants things to be back to normal with him and Angie after the dome comes down (if it comes down), Angie decides to antagonize him again. She yells at him and lets him know that they will never be together ever again. Which is a perfectly reasonable position to take since the guy did lock her up and that is usually pretty good grounds for never being a couple again. But...given that she needs his help to bring down the dome telling him this information in this way was not a good move. Naturally Junior decides to not help because he'd rather just die in the dome now.
Way to go Angie! Still always thinking things through.
THE ADULTS
A Dome! What About Our Crime?
Yes, the adults in the town are not much better. The day the dome appears a trio of them, who more or less run the town, decide the most immediate item they need to resolve is to hide their crime of hoarding propane.....no seriously that was what they were doing. This trio, a town councilman, Jim (yes, Junior's dad), Duke and the local Reverend run around rather haphazardly trying to eradicate evidence of this crime. This leads to arson when a home containing such evidence gets torched. Mind you this is in a dome with limited air supply and limited water.
We Need A Bar And A Fight Club
So why were they hoarding propane? Why it was so a woman named Max could use it to manufacture a drug named Rapture. Oh and this woman is stuck inside the dome with them. Oh and she immediately decides the town needs an underground club for all their vices.
Literally underground! She sets up this pleasure palace inside the caverns of the old cement factory. Otherwise known as the place the townsfolk should be refurbishing into a long term storehouse.
Organizing For The Long Haul
Oh, and that lack of storehouses? Well it is indicative of the adult's basic apathy to the whole situation. They don't seem to do anything to try and live in the dome long term. There is no census of who is in there (which allows for a teenage girl to be kidnapped with no one noticing). There is no accounting of existing resources. There is no meeting on how to make sure the people have enough food, medicine or water.
This causes things to go as you might expect. Food goes bad and becomes scarce. A meningitis outbreak occurs and there is not enough medicine to treat everyone. Insulin runs scarce for some diabetics and they start dying while others still have plenty. Then the water runs low and the town immediately descends into a riot.
It's almost like the town was a mecca for anarchists or something.
Should We Figure Out What The Dome Is?
In addition to never taking time to plan out a survival strategy for living in the dome no one (except the teen Joe) seems to care what the dome is or what is being done about it. The only adult person in town that seems to expend any effort into getting a fuller picture of what is happening is the local radio station engineer. She is the one that ascertains it is a dome by rigging a device that allows her to listen in on military communications on the outside.
But, her aside, no one else seems to really give a damn about the dome. It is merely regarded as a nuisance that has given their lives a new dimension like hair loss or something. It's like the dome manifested over a town where intellectual curiosity was punished. No one assists the kid that seems to be on the ball with investigating the dome. No one is trying to set up a way to effectively communicate with the outside world.
Of course communicating might not work anyways because...
THE MILITARY
A Failure To Communicate
Soon after the dome arrives the military does as well. They cordon off the outside of the dome and then....just sort of stand around occasionally spraying it with water (yes that happens). One of the defining aspects of the dome is that it allows no sound to travel through. But it does allow light to pass through which is why it is largely invisible.
Somehow this sound thing just seems to bum everyone out so much that all attempts at establishing meaningful communication through the dome never happen. Seriously they never happen! No one sets up a billboard messaging center or anything. If light passes through it might be possible to set up a super fast light sensor relay that would allow digital messages to be very quickly passed back and forth. But no one even tries so we'll never know. Everyone just seems content to stand around futilely screaming at people on the other side that can't hear them.
Did That Guy Die?
Of course communication only matters if one side wants to hear the other. And it seems the military is content to just stand outside the dome and ignore what happens on the inside. Several times people inside the dome die right there at the edge of dome in view of the soldiers on the outside and the military personnel just sort of carry on as if they are ignoring a TV playing Real Housewives or something.
Oh the guy that just died was the town sheriff? Oh well, hey let's mill around this barrier tape some more. Got a cigarette?
MOAB away!
When the military does decide to do something it is the worst possible kind of something. They plan to hit the dome with a MOAB. What is this MOAB? Why that would be the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb or the GBU-43/B. What is this thing? Why a massive fuel air bomb.
And that is important here. A fuel air bomb is intended for use on soft targets in wars (soft targets being things like humans or supply lines). It uses massive overpressure from the detonation of atomized petroleum based accelerants to kill large concentrations of unprotected people.
It is not intended for use on hard targets. The dome is a hard target. What you would use on the dome would be a high explosive penetrator bomb like the GBU 57-A/B. Which is intended to destroy hardened military bunkers.
Of course this comes from some lazy research. I'm imagining a writer was given the assignment to find a huge bomb. He promptly googled "huge bomb" wandered through several pages of scantilly clad women laying on bombs, went back clicked safe search to "on" then saw a wikipedia page on the MOAB.
Or it is possible the military in the world of Under The Dome just doesn't know better. They never seem to try and figure out what the physical nature of the dome is aside from spraying water on it.
Oh and they never warn the people in the dome about the impending massive explosion.
Who Cares About The Dome People?
And that lack of warning about the bomb might be because they don't seem to really be concerned with the dome people. If they did care and actually observed the people inside the dome they would eventually see how the people trapped inside are woefully over their heads. Remember how they never try to communicate? Well if they did have a means of communicating they could help the dome people get over their own obvious incompetence.
I mean maybe the people in the dome don't know how to plan for life in the dome but outside the dome exists an entire planet with numerous highly educated people that would have some ideas. They might not have enough food? Well get a panel of experts together and come up with a plan for dome based agriculture then relay it inside the dome. Not enough medicine? Well get doctors and medical researches to come up with ways that they might be able to make more.
Remember in Apollo 13 how a bunch of engineers get together to figure out a way to get a square carbon filter to fit into a receptacle designed for round ones using only items found in the spacecraft? Things like that could be done. Experts could convene and figure out survival strategies using the resources that are trapped under the dome.
For example the lake where the town gets their drinking water is contaminated (this causes the riot I referred to) well water purification specialists could figure out some sort of new filtering system using available material.
Or....hell maybe the military on the outside doesn't want them to live. I haven't read the book the TV series is based on so maybe that will be the reveal for next season.
What follows is mildly spoilerific. So be warned. I've chopped it up into three major sections: The Kids, The Adults and The Military.
THE KIDS
Party Dudes!
A number of kids find themselves separated from their parents when the dome appears. And instead of worrying about how they might deal with the stressful situation of being trapped in a mysterious force field dome where they might eventually die from lack of resources they decide this would be a great time to party!
And party they do. They first throw a huge party on a bridge near the dome. Then they move to a skaters park where they take turns riding a skateboard up the dome itself. Then they move onto the homes of kids who have parents trapped on the outside of the dome.
Not seen are any of the kids seemingly stressed at all by the situation. No one has a breakdown. No one has separation anxiety. They just party and have fun. Mostly.
Poke The Bear
One notable exception is the character Angie. She had the misfortune of breaking up with her insane boyfriend, Junior, on the same day the dome came down. This, of course, prompted him to abduct her and lock her in his dad's fallout shelter (you see he really is insane). Oh and she's shackled to the wall with a chain around her ankle. For her own good, so Junior says.
In fact this is really a huge expression of jealousy gone psycho. He was upset that he saw Angie talking to the new guy in town, Barbie, right after the dome manifested.
Well Angie then does what anyone would do when shackled and imprisoned by a clearly disturbed person: antagonize them!
Yes, not content with the direness of the situation she concocts a lie that she tells Junior about her having mind blowing sex with Barbie. This results in him leaving quickly to attempt to kill Barbie who, to this point, only knows Angie as a nurse in training that asked a few questions about the dome. Boy is he surprised when an unhinged teenager shows up and tries to kill him.
In the end Barbie survives the attack by Junior but nonetheless: way to go Angie!
Where Is The Sister?
Angie has a brother, Joe, who actually is not so much interested in partying with the other kids. He actually is very much interested in the dome. In fact he makes an immediate effort to quantify its physical nature; size, shape and material construct. He even hypothesizes that since it seems to be electrically based it might be able to be turned off if they can find a power source.
One thing he doesn't seem too interested in is his sister. Even though he knows she is trapped in the dome with him (he ran into her not long after the dome manifested) he doesn't notice she is missing for three days! And that was when he finally started looking for her.
Did Angie kill his dog when he was younger?
We Are Through!
Later on Angie is found by Junior's father, Jim, and released. Jim appeals to her to not go vigilante on Junior while still trapped in the dome. She agrees though this sets up the very awkward situation of being trapped inside the dome with her clearly disturbed kidnapper and not being able to tell anyone about it.
Well then the awkward dial gets turned up to eleven when a mini dome surrounding an egg is found. The dome wants four people to put their hands on it to activate it and eventually it turns out that the four desired people are Joe, Angie, a girl named Norrie and a fourth.........JUNIOR!
Yeah, kidnapping boy needs to join up with kidnapping victim and friends.
At first this kind of works out but then, when Junior opines he wants things to be back to normal with him and Angie after the dome comes down (if it comes down), Angie decides to antagonize him again. She yells at him and lets him know that they will never be together ever again. Which is a perfectly reasonable position to take since the guy did lock her up and that is usually pretty good grounds for never being a couple again. But...given that she needs his help to bring down the dome telling him this information in this way was not a good move. Naturally Junior decides to not help because he'd rather just die in the dome now.
Way to go Angie! Still always thinking things through.
THE ADULTS
A Dome! What About Our Crime?
Yes, the adults in the town are not much better. The day the dome appears a trio of them, who more or less run the town, decide the most immediate item they need to resolve is to hide their crime of hoarding propane.....no seriously that was what they were doing. This trio, a town councilman, Jim (yes, Junior's dad), Duke and the local Reverend run around rather haphazardly trying to eradicate evidence of this crime. This leads to arson when a home containing such evidence gets torched. Mind you this is in a dome with limited air supply and limited water.
We Need A Bar And A Fight Club
So why were they hoarding propane? Why it was so a woman named Max could use it to manufacture a drug named Rapture. Oh and this woman is stuck inside the dome with them. Oh and she immediately decides the town needs an underground club for all their vices.
Literally underground! She sets up this pleasure palace inside the caverns of the old cement factory. Otherwise known as the place the townsfolk should be refurbishing into a long term storehouse.
Organizing For The Long Haul
Oh, and that lack of storehouses? Well it is indicative of the adult's basic apathy to the whole situation. They don't seem to do anything to try and live in the dome long term. There is no census of who is in there (which allows for a teenage girl to be kidnapped with no one noticing). There is no accounting of existing resources. There is no meeting on how to make sure the people have enough food, medicine or water.
This causes things to go as you might expect. Food goes bad and becomes scarce. A meningitis outbreak occurs and there is not enough medicine to treat everyone. Insulin runs scarce for some diabetics and they start dying while others still have plenty. Then the water runs low and the town immediately descends into a riot.
It's almost like the town was a mecca for anarchists or something.
Should We Figure Out What The Dome Is?
In addition to never taking time to plan out a survival strategy for living in the dome no one (except the teen Joe) seems to care what the dome is or what is being done about it. The only adult person in town that seems to expend any effort into getting a fuller picture of what is happening is the local radio station engineer. She is the one that ascertains it is a dome by rigging a device that allows her to listen in on military communications on the outside.
But, her aside, no one else seems to really give a damn about the dome. It is merely regarded as a nuisance that has given their lives a new dimension like hair loss or something. It's like the dome manifested over a town where intellectual curiosity was punished. No one assists the kid that seems to be on the ball with investigating the dome. No one is trying to set up a way to effectively communicate with the outside world.
Of course communicating might not work anyways because...
THE MILITARY
A Failure To Communicate
Soon after the dome arrives the military does as well. They cordon off the outside of the dome and then....just sort of stand around occasionally spraying it with water (yes that happens). One of the defining aspects of the dome is that it allows no sound to travel through. But it does allow light to pass through which is why it is largely invisible.
Somehow this sound thing just seems to bum everyone out so much that all attempts at establishing meaningful communication through the dome never happen. Seriously they never happen! No one sets up a billboard messaging center or anything. If light passes through it might be possible to set up a super fast light sensor relay that would allow digital messages to be very quickly passed back and forth. But no one even tries so we'll never know. Everyone just seems content to stand around futilely screaming at people on the other side that can't hear them.
Did That Guy Die?
Of course communication only matters if one side wants to hear the other. And it seems the military is content to just stand outside the dome and ignore what happens on the inside. Several times people inside the dome die right there at the edge of dome in view of the soldiers on the outside and the military personnel just sort of carry on as if they are ignoring a TV playing Real Housewives or something.
Oh the guy that just died was the town sheriff? Oh well, hey let's mill around this barrier tape some more. Got a cigarette?
MOAB away!
When the military does decide to do something it is the worst possible kind of something. They plan to hit the dome with a MOAB. What is this MOAB? Why that would be the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb or the GBU-43/B. What is this thing? Why a massive fuel air bomb.
And that is important here. A fuel air bomb is intended for use on soft targets in wars (soft targets being things like humans or supply lines). It uses massive overpressure from the detonation of atomized petroleum based accelerants to kill large concentrations of unprotected people.
It is not intended for use on hard targets. The dome is a hard target. What you would use on the dome would be a high explosive penetrator bomb like the GBU 57-A/B. Which is intended to destroy hardened military bunkers.
Of course this comes from some lazy research. I'm imagining a writer was given the assignment to find a huge bomb. He promptly googled "huge bomb" wandered through several pages of scantilly clad women laying on bombs, went back clicked safe search to "on" then saw a wikipedia page on the MOAB.
Or it is possible the military in the world of Under The Dome just doesn't know better. They never seem to try and figure out what the physical nature of the dome is aside from spraying water on it.
Oh and they never warn the people in the dome about the impending massive explosion.
Who Cares About The Dome People?
And that lack of warning about the bomb might be because they don't seem to really be concerned with the dome people. If they did care and actually observed the people inside the dome they would eventually see how the people trapped inside are woefully over their heads. Remember how they never try to communicate? Well if they did have a means of communicating they could help the dome people get over their own obvious incompetence.
I mean maybe the people in the dome don't know how to plan for life in the dome but outside the dome exists an entire planet with numerous highly educated people that would have some ideas. They might not have enough food? Well get a panel of experts together and come up with a plan for dome based agriculture then relay it inside the dome. Not enough medicine? Well get doctors and medical researches to come up with ways that they might be able to make more.
Remember in Apollo 13 how a bunch of engineers get together to figure out a way to get a square carbon filter to fit into a receptacle designed for round ones using only items found in the spacecraft? Things like that could be done. Experts could convene and figure out survival strategies using the resources that are trapped under the dome.
For example the lake where the town gets their drinking water is contaminated (this causes the riot I referred to) well water purification specialists could figure out some sort of new filtering system using available material.
Or....hell maybe the military on the outside doesn't want them to live. I haven't read the book the TV series is based on so maybe that will be the reveal for next season.
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