This first episode didn’t pull any punches. When the Dome comes down, shit gets real. It is made out of some electrical force field and they pretty much spend the first episode explaining the powers of this dome while at the same time hinting at conflicts to come. The dome is impenetrable. It stops cars, trucks and planes that collide into it. You can see through it but you can’t hear anything on the other side. Within a day, armored military trucks are at every road block but because they are not in the town, they can’t really do much in the way of enforcing the law.
Inside of the dome, this small town is is missing a lot of cops and firefighters because they were either outside of the dome when it fell or they crashed into the dome and died. Dean Norris (Hank from Breaking Bad) is a community politician who has some authority and it looks like he is going to be an antagonist of sorts. In one scene, after the dome has fallen, Norris’ character asks a ranking officer if he should tell the townsfolk why they have been stockpiling propane, especially right before this freak occurrence. The officer says that he would do anything to help this town survive but you can tell that Norris’ character has him by the balls. He also has a psychotic son named Junior who goes a bit love crazy and captures his girlfriend who broke up with him. He sees her smoking with an out-of-towner guy who is first seen burying a body in the woods, and after trying to threaten him, he kidnaps his ex and locks her in his bomb shelter. Like father like son?
Now one strange thing about the dome is that it has certain effects on those that touch it. At first it shocks people like static electricity but in the episode, two people end up having seizures while babbling about stuff that has no context at this time and one police officer has a heart attack right after touching it because the electricity sets off his pacemaker.
Overall this was a very good pilot episode. I’m interested to see how the hierarchy of power shifts within the town when everyone begins to turn on each other. What will be even more interesting is to see how the world outside of the dome reacts to this event. I didn’t really think much of this show beforehand but I’ll probably be watching it every Monday night.