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| The fourth hand waits for one man on "Under the Dome" |
So “Let the Games Begin” was not a terrible episode of
television, it was just so unfulfilling.
It took me about ten minutes to come up with that adjective as I cycled
through boring, uneventful, and others.
The thing is, it wasn’t boring or uneventful. There was a lot of action and a few interesting
plots. But this show is so free of
consequences right now and abandons its storylines so quickly that it’s hard to
really get invested in anything.
I think the reason I’ve taken to the teenagers in Under the Dome is because theirs is the
one story that is consistently interesting and that the show feels is worth
returning to week in and week out. This
week, the group discovers that Junior is the fourth hand and they open the
mini-dome, causing the egg to release pink stars into the barn. There’s some other stuff involving Dodee
getting zapped after touching the mini-dome, but it really has no purpose other
than to make us fear for Junior as he prepares to touch the dome later. I’m a little worried moving forward as this
plot has shades of all of the Lost rip-offs
in the past (in terms of answering every question with a new question), but as long
as the characters are invested and the show follows through, it’ll keep me
interested.
As for the unfulfilling parts of the episode, I have a hard
time caring about the fight club or about Max’s crazy mother because neither is
likely to ever turn up again, much like the supply shortage, the water
shortage, the meningitis, the insulin shortage, and the half dozen other plots
that have come up as “Crises of the Week” in the past. The fact that Max got one over on Barbie is
mildly interesting, but if she’s so smart then why is she breaking the first
rule of bookies: “take the bets, don’t make the bets.” A smart bookie isn’t betting against her
customers and taking their stuff when they lose. Win too often and people start to think the
whole thing is rigged. A smart bookie
lets people bet against each other and charges a cover to gain admittance or
takes a piece of the winnings. It’s not
a big deal certainly, but details matter and setting up an incomprehensible gambling
ring that’s never been seen before and will likely never be seen again without
getting the details right just screams laziness.
The story of Max’s mother isn’t much better. She apparently lives in an enormous mansion
nobody’s ever mentioned on an island nobody’s ever mentioned in the middle of
the (poisoned) lake. So where, exactly,
is she getting clean water? Never mind
all that, though, because all she does is crazily point a gun at crazy Big Jim
before falling out of a boat and being left to drown. What purpose does this character serve? Really?
She shows up for one episode, acts crazy, gives us only the barest of
information on Max and then is gone. Is
her apparent death setting up a revenge plot for Max? If so, who cares? Max has been here for all of twenty
minutes. Why am I supposed to care about
her revenge? Ugh, this entire show right
now is just so…unfulfilling.
A couple of spare thoughts –
Sherriff Linda finally does some good police work, finding
Duke’s confession about the drug operation.
Apparently he was working with Max, the Reverend, and Big Jim to
manufacture drugs on the condition that they be kept out of Chester’s
Mill. It’s an interesting twist, but
wouldn’t that have been nice to know five episodes go? With Duke and Reverend Coggins dead and the
drug operation shut down (or at least nobody talking at all about it and only
one person shown actually on the drug) who cares at this point?
So what happened to the chrysalis inside the mini-dome after
it opened?
So thoughts? Comments? Just want to tell me my blog sucks? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter
@TyTalksTV.
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