Under the Dome Season 2

DVD Wholesale Quick Overview:

I was pretty excited about watching all of the Under The Dome Seasons, but I didn’t make it past Episode 3 in Season 2.

First thing that turned me off (although I GET what they were trying to do) was how they brought in additional main characters. New people were suddenly mainstays in the day-to-day life of the town, when they either hadn’t been mentioned at all in Season 1 or had only been introduced in the season’s last episodes.

What made me stop watching, were the characters, the plot, and the acting. I don’t blame the actors, because I think they all did the best with the scripts they were given. But it seemed that many of their lines existed simply to explain the plot to the viewer. “And now, you’re telling me that you have to go to the old mine to get the dynamite to try to blow up the alien spaceship?” I made that up, of course, to illustrate the kind of dialog to which I’m referring.

And lastly, the flip flopping of the character attitudes got to be too much for me as well. I couldn’t stand seeing the son go through the cycle of hating his father, then protecting his father, then respecting his father, then hating the father. Or the townspeople wanting this person dead and then in the very next scene, applauding him and patting him on the back. I know people are fickle and crowds even more so, but the behaviors weren’t believable to me. That kind of back and forth can build tension when done well, but when executed poorly (as I felt was the case in Season 2) it makes it seem like the writers were just making stuff up as they went along.

I decided to spend my time watching another series. Maybe Under The Dome gets a lot better later in the series, but I’m sorry to say that I probably won’t ever find out.

-Michael W. Layne

The only good films based on Steven King’s stuff are those he stays far away from. Well, he’s listed as an executive producer here as well as writing this thing. That said, this giant mess is so awful that it becomes some kind of cheese masterpiece. “Under The Dome” is like watching somebody’s expensive fiberglass car catch on fire and slowly melt to a stinking lump of nothing. You just can’t take your eyes off of it. It’s pretty entertaining in a groan-inducing kind of way.

The entire series boils down to only two actually good stories buried under tons of boring filler filmed like some kind of “sexy” shampoo commercial. So…the best of those two good stories follows Dean Norris’s serial murderer/crazed dictator/heroic villain character: a strutting little rooster named “Big Jim” and his abused, psychotic son “Junior”. When Norris is on screen puffing up his barrel chest, barking orders at everyone within earshot, or getting that strange look in his eyes when some misguided fool calls him their savior this show really does become something more. Between this and “Breaking Bad” he should take his place among the better character actors. The Big Jim tale stays interesting throughout the whole series, and the conclusion to that story line is deeply deeply disturbing and hilarious at the same time. Sadly, the second best story line doesn’t fare so well. The bigger narrative about what THE DOME is and what THE DOME ultimately wants starts out spooky and intriguing. By the final season… (um…Marg Helgenberger)… it’s all turned to dog poop. Maybe the “Riff-Trax” guys could do an “Under The Dumb: Season 3: Condensed Cheese” edition.

Anyway, if you’ve got a lost weekend to kill and a case of beer and a buddy or a girlfriend with a decent sense of humor, watch the whole unbelievabley lame thing. Just don’t expect it to be…you know… “good”.

Best/Worst scenes of the series:

Marg Helgenberer smearing slimy alien sex juice onto Junior’s mouth before initiating that creepy, mind-wiping coitus thing she does.

Big Jim strutting though the now totally abandoned town with that “it’s all MINE now” look on his face

“Aren’t you missing a hair appointment or something?”

– Josiah

I guess my feeling about this series is that it is pretty weak when one considers the talent involved in it. Dean Norris as the bad guy is the biggest disappointment of all. After all the years of watching him perform brilliantly on Breaking Bad as an obsessive narc seeing him in this cartoon role as the amoral self-serving delusional town fat cat is a reminder of how wasted the talent is. The story line, which certainly could be interesting if you accept the sci-fi premise in the first place, has descended into gross melodrama. Personal relationships are represented by the occasional big kiss. Virtually all the dialogue sounds like speech-making rather than the way people talk with each other.

In the end, this series is just one more nail in the coffin of broadcast network TV. All the really good series being made are on cable channels.

– Steven Goldstein

DVD Wholesale Main Features    

Actors: Dean Norris, Rachelle Lefevre
Producers: Steven Spielberg
Format: Multiple Formats, Box set, Color, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English
Subtitles: English, Spanish
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. )
Number of discs: 4
Studio: Paramount
DVD Release Date: December 9, 2014