In Chester's Mill, Maine, a strange occurrence locks the town underneath an invisible dome-like surface.
The episode begins with a man digging graves and emptying dead bodies into them. The man is the first character we see. He is Dale 'Barbie' Barbara. Then we see two cops in a precinct. They are going to check out a disturbance.
The main story line starts with Julia Shumway, a newspaper editor from the Independent, arriving at a woman’s home. The woman is suspicious of a propane truck that has made four delivers in the current week. The woman has also witness the truck come by her home last week as well.
We see Barbie driving quickly in an attempt to leave town but seems to crash into an invisible wall. Then he spins into a farm pasture where cows are grazing. The wall comes down and splits a cow in half. Barbie gets out and touches the wall. We see that the walls burns his hand like electricity could .Then a teenage boy named Joe comes out of the farm house to see if Barbie needs some help. Then a plane flies into the dome and crashes. Barbie ends up saving Joe from the falling debris. The sheriff and his deputy Linda, the mayor along with the killer and the farm boy all converge at the dome wall.
The second half of the show shows how people are reacting to this unexplained event. Julia the journalist and Barbie the mystery man goes and explore the wall. Then they find a bloody woman.
The mayor James 'Big Jim' Rennie goes off and makes an emergency broadcast on the independent radio station. This is the only station working at the moment.
We also meet a lesbian couple who are on their way to take their daughter to a camp. The teenage girl has a seizure. The girl is mumbling about the stars aligning and falling, but it really was not clear. Then they go to the hospital. The Mayor and the sheriff talk at the precinct. They were the two ordering the propane and they were conspiring together before the dome fell.
At the independent radio station, the two DJ’s examine some strange sounds before the dome. Joe goes to a party on a bridge and meets up with his friend. They wander about the dome then Joe thinks that there is an inside power source that can turn the dome on and off. Then he has a seizure like the first girl. The stars are falling or something like that. It is really undecipherable.
The sheriff holds a town meeting to report that 12 people are dead. Meanwhile, Junior Rennie, the mayor’s son, kidnaps his girlfriend Angie after she is seen talking to Barbie. He locks her in the fallout shelter in his backyard.
Julia and Barbie are at Julia’s home. She shows Barbie a photo of her husband and we see that Barbie buried Peter in the opening. Linda the deputy and the sheriff are at the dome like in the beginning of the episode. The sheriff wanted to confess his secrets but he is shot down instantly.
Under the Dome is okay. There are a ton of characters and the show has yet to focus on the main ones. I am hopeful of what may happen but I can see what will happen so far. There are many things to like here. The acting is solid and Brian K. Vaughn does a pretty good job at giving characters decent moments. Under the Dome airs on CBS. Here is the trailer for the next episode:
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