Episode Title: “Pilot”
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan
Director: Niels Arden Oplev
I took it as a good sign that the first time we see Dale “Barbie” Barbara (Mike Vogel) in “Under The Dome,” he’s burying the body of a man that he probably killed before attempting to skip town. It’s a rare TV show that outs its lead character as a murderer the first time that we meet him.
“Under The Dome” was originally in development at Showtime and some of the graphic elements in the pilot seem to have been retained from that incarnation, particular the gruesome injuries, an exploding pacemaker and a cow that was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the jury is still out on whether CBS will pull back on that content the coming weeks. Regardless, its refreshing to see that the pilot episode drew in over 13 million viewers. Maybe now CBS doesn’t have to shove “Big Brother” down our throats every summer.
There are full spoilers ahead for the pilot episode of “Under The Dome,” so if you haven’t seen it then you should probably skip this review or else the stars will fall in line.
Aside from the awkward and poorly written scene between Junior Rennie (Alexander Koch) and Angie McAlister (Britt Robertson), most of the introductory sequences were very effective. We meet James “Big Jim” Rennie (Dean Norris), a local politician and a car dealer who shamelessly buys a vote from one of his constituents while turning on the charm. Newspaper editor, Julia Shumway (Rachelle Lefevre) is tipped to the very suspicious stockpiling of propane by the local government while Sheriff Howard “Duke” Perkins (Jeff Fahey) and Deputy Linda Esquivel (Natalie Martinez) expect a fairly quiet day since most of the town’s police force and firemen are at a parade the next town over.
Soon enough, the dome comes down and Barbie shifts into hero mode when he saves Joe McAlister (Colin Ford) from the wreckage of a plane unfortunate enough to fly into the dome. The various scenes of the carnage directly caused by the dome were easily the highlight of the hour. But that’s a trick that the series won’t be able to repeat.
Surprisingly, Big Jim gets in on the hero act by forcing his way onto the airwaves of the last operating radio station for an emergency announcement. Hilariously, Big Jim has to spell out that his warning isn’t one of his car commercials. Even when he was buying the vote of his waitress, Big Jim seemed like he had a decent side and loyalty to his constituents. But a later scene suggests that Big Jim is already trying to grab power, since he’s the ranking government official still in town.
Sheriff Duke was a very engaging character who meets an untimely end. It seems wasteful to write Fahey out of the series so quickly, but it’s going to put Linda in charge of the local PD whether or not she’s ready to handle that. There could be some good drama there. I’m less convinced about the bland progressive family of Carolyn Hill (Aisha Hinds), Alice Calvert (Samantha Mathis) and their daughter Norrie Calvert-Hill (Mackenzie Lintz), who didn’t contribute much to the episode beyond Norrie’s enigmatic seizure; which was later echoed by Joe. And I wonder if there’s anything to be read into the fact that Hinds is a series regular, but Mathis and Lintz are not.
But by far, the worst character on this show was Junior Rennie, whose psycho scenes felt like they were from the “SNL” parody of “Under The Dome,” rather than the actual series. The over-the-top music and the crazy expressions on Koch’s face were unintentionally funny as Junior got jealous of Angie because she was talking with Barbie.
And Junior wasted little time proving what a nut job he is by trying to start a fight with Barbie and by kidnapping Angie and forcing her into his family’s flooding bomb shelter. Junior promises that Angie will thank him for this, but I can’t wait for this plotline to be over.
At the radio station, DJ Phil Bushey (Nicholas Strong) and Dodee Weaver (Jolene Purdy) discover that they may have a way to get a signal to the outside world; which is an intriguing touch. But so far, Dodee and Phil feel pretty separate from the rest of the cast.
There’s a good twist at the end when Barbie realizes that the man he buried was Peter Shumway (R. Keith Harris), the husband of Julia. Since Barbie and Julia seem to destined to be each other’s love interests on the series, that’s bound to be a huge secret between them. Of course, the “Under The Dome” creative team could walk back Barbie’s actions by revealing that he didn’t kill Peter or make it a self defence killing. But that would be a huge cop-out. Barbie is much more interesting as a flawed hero who can’t run away from the murder that he committed.
In terms of performance, Norris, Vogel and Fahey carried the episode; which makes Fahey’s departure sting even more. There’s more than enough story to carry this show through a season (or beyond) and at least half of the characters are worth watching. It’s the other half that I’m not thrilled about.
