Does anyone watch Under the Dome? by 1kiki

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Does anyone watch Under the Dome?

POSTED BY: 1KIKI
UPDATED: Tuesday, July 9, 2013 19:45
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VIEWED: 1698
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Monday, July 8, 2013 2:19 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I've caught some of it and in some respects I think it has things to say about the real world. I'm curious about other people's opinions.

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Tuesday, July 9, 2013 2:03 AM

DEVERSE

Hey, Ive been in a firefight before! Well, I was in a fire. Actually, I was fired from a fry-cook opportunity.

I watched the pilot and the first episode, but I think I'll pass on the rest of the series.

The pilot wasn't too bad, it seemed rushed but caught my interest as it introduced a number of interesting characters and a promising storyline. The second episode was just tedious and boring and everything jumped from place to place without doing anything or explaining anything. The third episode started just confused and rushed again, so I lost interest quickly and switched to Defiance.

It originally seemed to have some promise, but it looks like another TV show that starts well and then just gets weird and stupid. The characters I do not find real - would people act like that if such a dome really happened? I doubt it. Mr. King has a tendency to make characters who are a bit "over the top" while maintaining them as interesting. In the TV show, everyone seems like an idiot running on emotion and freaking out, which I would not have a problem with if the dome were in place for a month, but in the TV series it's been in place for like 5 minutes.

I will admit I am not a huge King fan. I do think he has the talent to create great characters and moods in his books and Under the Dome was a great book, at least right up to the end, which I find to be Mr. King's greatest failing, ending a story with a good ending. The TV series so far has made me lose interest in it already.

Oh let the sun beat down upon my face;
With stars to fill my dream;
I am a traveler of both time and space;
To be where I have been

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Tuesday, July 9, 2013 2:25 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Never heard of it.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Tuesday, July 9, 2013 4:11 AM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:
Originally posted by DEVERSE:

I will admit I am not a huge King fan. I do think he has the talent to create great characters and moods in his books and Under the Dome was a great book, at least right up to the end, which I find to be Mr. King's greatest failing, ending a story with a good ending. The TV series so far has made me lose interest in it already.

^This. Exactly this. King's books, at least since "It" and "Tommyknockers" (and probably before, as well, but I didn't notice as much) always seem to end with some sort of Deus ex Machina letdown, something along the lines of "... and then the Great Hand of The Lord reached down from the sky..." I tired of him nearly 30 years ago, and haven't regretted that decision for a moment. When I hear "From best-selling author Stephen King" attached to a movie of show, I cringe and think "Must avoid at all costs!"

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero

"I was wrong" - Hero, 2012

Mitt Romney, introducing his running mate: "Join me in welcoming the next President of the United States, Paul Ryan!"

Rappy's response? "You're lying, gullible ( believing in some BS you heard on msnbc ) or hard of hearing."

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Tuesday, July 9, 2013 8:19 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Well, his books make terrible movies true, generally the short stories converted into movies are a whole lot better in terms of quality and sensibility.

As for Deus Ex Machina, man don't even get me started on The Stand unless you want a 90 minute rant on just how vile the so-called "God" of Christianity is..

The short form tl;dr of it being "Notice the external threat, created BY Him to drive them into his puppets regime during a crisis He formented, in order to *ensure* they make ALL THE SAME MISTAKES all over again by forcing their society down that path ?"
I wrote two short stories for a Fanfic author as part of an anthology about folks who took one look at that mess and told both sides where to shove it.

There is one King series/story I really would like to see done in film though, and that is Tales from a Buick 8 - only I'd worry that with the automatic assumption these days that american audiences are too stupid to operate a doorknob they'll try to EXPLAIN all that shit, which'd ruin the whole goddamn point.

-F

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Tuesday, July 9, 2013 9:42 AM

WULFENSTAR

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

Stephen King helped nail down the mythos of the American knight, Roland of Gilead a.k.a the Gunslinger.

Then the mental disease of liberalism came roaring back... and he "came out" as a gun-control fanatic.

As such, King (and his works), are dead to me.

"None of you seem to understand. I'm not locked in here with you... YOU are locked in here with ME."

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Tuesday, July 9, 2013 12:10 PM

WHOZIT

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Quote:
Originally posted by DEVERSE:

I will admit I am not a huge King fan. I do think he has the talent to create great characters and moods in his books and Under the Dome was a great book, at least right up to the end, which I find to be Mr. King's greatest failing, ending a story with a good ending. The TV series so far has made me lose interest in it already.

^This. Exactly this. King's books, at least since "It" and "Tommyknockers" (and probably before, as well, but I didn't notice as much) always seem to end with some sort of Deus ex Machina letdown, something along the lines of "... and then the Great Hand of The Lord reached down from the sky..." I tired of him nearly 30 years ago, and haven't regretted that decision for a moment. When I hear "From best-selling author Stephen King" attached to a movie of show, I cringe and think "Must avoid at all costs!"

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero

"I was wrong" - Hero, 2012

Mitt Romney, introducing his running mate: "Join me in welcoming the next President of the United States, Paul Ryan!"

Rappy's response? "You're lying, gullible ( believing in some BS you heard on msnbc ) or hard of hearing."

I really hated "IT" when "IT" turned out that "IT" was a big fucking spider, after "The Lagoliers" I vowed to privetly boycott Steven King.

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Tuesday, July 9, 2013 4:50 PM

DEVERSE

Hey, Ive been in a firefight before! Well, I was in a fire. Actually, I was fired from a fry-cook opportunity.

Quote:
Originally posted by FREMDFIRMA:
As for Deus Ex Machina, man don't even get me started on The Stand unless you want a 90 minute rant on just how vile the so-called "God" of Christianity is..
-F

When the "The Stand" was published (1978) I was taking University classes and the book was the "big thing" as King seemed to be everyone's favorite author at that time. The girl I was interested in was one of those liberated liberal arts hippie types with a great set of... anyway I hung around her a bit and went with her to one of her discussion groups where they were talking about The Stand. A typical Canadian University of the time populated by Buddists, Hindus, Muslims, those of the Christian and Jewish faiths; and every one of them felt the religious overtones of the book pertained to their religion and the conflict between good and evil and the values of right and wrong.

Not saying you are wrong in your opinion of the book being about Christianity, just that maybe the overtones are somewhat more broad based than just about one religion.

Oh let the sun beat down upon my face;
With stars to fill my dream;
I am a traveler of both time and space;
To be where I have been

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Tuesday, July 9, 2013 6:14 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Well, that's the thing - mind you the version of The Stand I own is the full out, whole shebang directors cut version, in hardcover, you could seriously beat someone to death with it.

I didn't see it as a conflict at all, certainly not between moral values or even right and wrong, given that the "Big Good" sets the whole conflict in motion (yanno, what they call "Act of God") and then has his little pet deliberately drive things not only into a confrontation, but forces the developing society straight down the same course, to make the same mistakes, to do it all over again.

Once you realize that Flagg is just as much 'his creature' as Abagail, it becomes clear the humans are no more than fodder and pieces for a sick game to amuse and entertain an entity which feeds off fear, hatred and conflict - and yes, while it's deliberately Christian in overtone, the same could be said of many religions, especially those intolerant of any other practice, which is most of em, sad to say.

One of the fanfic pieces I wrote was about a straggler who rejected the "cause" because of a distaste for organised theocracy, and after leaving the farmhouse then had to fight his way through an attack of the same weasels which "attacked" Abagail, conveniently in the moment where her reason was overcoming faith, and also 'his creatures' as much as Flagg was - said attack obviously intended to drive the outsider back into the protective arms of the faithful, and when he chooses to make a final stand and die rather than submit, revolves around why someone would make that decision.

See, Flagg was never relevant, he's just a hand puppet to provide that useful 'external threat' to help edge the newly formed society down the road to disaster, and to collect in one place for convenient destruction all those whos presence would ruin it too quickly, thus depriving the "Big Good" of the misery and suffering upon which it feeds.
Side order was of course, definately removing those who might have turned that society away from such an awful path by forcing a useless pointless suicide quest on them, and 'sparing' the one who by the time of return would have neither the power nor interest in doing so - note that his almost immediate reaction upon returning is to get the hell out of dodge before things go even further south, yes ?

So to *ME*, the whole story is about a monstrous and vile Deism casting ruin and despair upon the humans for the LuLz, and feeding on the misery - which to be completely honest ties right in with my own viewpoint on what most people call "God" really *IS*, given that I am an Outsider-Theory Maltheist.

As for the humans, even the so called "good" folks were dicks, all along instead of maybe trying to help Harold a bit, teach him to overcome an immaturity he developed BECAUSE of being excluded socially, maybe show him a bit of compassion and acceptance, instead they choose to shun him, mock him behind his back (which he finds out), exclude him from the decision making process even as they use his knowledge than sneer at him for sharing it... and yeah, he damn well held a grudge about it, as I have said many times - how you treat people determines what they become, and Harold became their enemy.

Conversely, the so called "bad" folks are in many ways surprisingly decent, in that this was the very first time anyone treated Lloyd or Donald as a human being, and their dogged loyalty shows how desperate they were for that one tiny thing most of us take for granted - unless of course, they're minors... *hisssss*

Anyways, I could go on, but I think that sums it up enough.

I still wouldn't mind seeing From a Buick 8 done well.

-Frem

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Tuesday, July 9, 2013 7:45 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I don't know much about King, probably a result of being sans TV, radio, and other mass media for years.

My very first serious episode of being in a small, physically isolated group of people was a result of the Blizzard of 77. In my location snow drifted over the tops of the utility poles. SignyM wrote of people being pulled off the Father Baker Bridge with frost on their eyeballs, and snowplows being used as ambulances. At the time I clearly remember being disdainful towards the people who went to the stores to buy mass quantities, and then hoarded their goods. But with no shipments into the city, and empty shelves after a couple of days, and over a week with no traffic in or out - and being reduced to eating oatmeal and mayonnaise for days on end - I came to see the wisdom of their ways.

I don't care HOW small the town is that you live in, SOMEbody is old enough to have been through a similar experience, and they WILL hoard. So this whole storyline where people just get in their cars and drive whenever the mood strikes (nobody's hoarding gas?), just go to the restaurant and eat their fill (the restaurant isn't running low?), just turn on the tap and expect water to flow (nobody sees there might be an end to that?) - strikes me as unreasonable.

Also, the over-the-top characters - the contract killer, the lesbian couple from Brentwood, the conspiring pillars of the community dealing drugs, the nutso paranoid stalker/ kidnapper with daddy-issues - are too much.

And, sad to say, there are already strong elements of the supernatural (coordinated seizures where the victims are muttering the same words at the same time? good lord ...), the lamest cop-out of stories everywhere.

HOWEVER, some things ring true.

The characters are relating to the event according to their comfort zones. The smart kid is being smart. The fearless reporter is being fearless. The community leader is leading. The kids are skateboarding and wisecracking and bullying. The housekeepers are keeping house. And this in general is how people relate. Think of the Jews as the noose tightened: as they were required to wear stars of David and forced into ghettos, as they were packed into freight cars, as they were worked to death in the camps. Maintaining normalcy was more important than attempting an effective response.

So, as I watch the show two thoughts compete in my head: 1) Why don't they DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT? Conserve food and water ... band together to prevent panic and violence ... organize themselves along a group survival paradigm ... and, 2) Of COURSE this is what people do. After all, look at global warming. (A situation I see as directly relateable to life under a dome).

And the answer to all of THAT is, because they're too immersed in their own lives - and unable to relate to the larger picture on its own terms. Just as we are today.

Basically, for the first few episodes (until it gets all 'Lost' and weird), I see it as a pretty realistic disquisition of inadequate human response to all but the most mundane circumstances.

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