Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

STEPHEN KING – UNDER THE DOME – TV SERIES – SEASON 2 – 2014

The first season had changed a few things in the trajectory of the plot. The second season changes the plot radically and opens up onto a third season for more changes in the plot line. The extra-terrestrials of the book are this time completely pushed aside. We are dealing with more concrete and material elements typical of Stephen King’s vision of a society where danger is institutionalized behind uniforms, and at the same time hope can only be found with the help of people from these uniformed institutions. Think of The Stand or Golden Years.

The egg becomes the center of the plot, the egg deposited in the perimeter by a meteor some 25 years before or ago. At this time this meteor and this egg discovered by four high school students (probably seniors) caused the death of a young woman accidently killed by three people. These three people have to come back and the dead one has to reappear on the crime scene. This season brings two of the three survivors found in the perimeter itself under the dome and the third one has to be brought back into the perimeter under the dome. One is a crazy preacher, the other is the uncle of Big Jim’s son, and the third one is the mother of Big Jim’s son who is supposed to be dead. You can already feel and smell how important this Big Jim family is becoming. Big Jim was on the verge of hanging Barbie at the end of the first season. Things become a lot more treacherous and tricky for him at the beginning of the second season and all along.

Barbie is revealed as the son of some important industrialist in Zenith, the city on the other side of the dome. That industrialist is in energy production and his projects have to do with this egg. They are planning some kind of high security action. This father has his own security force but at the same time some invisible governmental force is controlling this private security force. This makes the clandestine secret operation extremely tricky and dangerous since there is no real control over it because of the rivalry that comes along with this double allegiance.

From climbing into the small hills of the perimeter under the dome and managing to get the dome lifted by the extra-terrestrials who are playing cosmic electronic games on earth, we shift to underground tunnels with a way in and a way out. The egg is the key to these ways in and out. Big Jim plays it alone and of course disrupts everything and brings havoc. He makes himself sheriff and you can imagine his sheriff style: shoot even before shooting before asking questions. Preventive (preemptive as Bush used to say) shooting to prevent the police force from having to shoot before asking questions.

Then the second season suggests a way out of the dome but underground and leading to a place that is not identified as perfectly human and the nature of that outside escape world is the cliff hanger of this season. Wait one full year for the next season and the discovery of where these escaping people find themselves and what happens to the three they left behind and what happens to Barbie’s father on the other side who is arrested by his own private security force that receives orders from a higher level that is not identified.

Chester’s Mill has become the center of all cosmic anxieties on earth with the other side of death coming alive on this side of life locked up under the dome. We can recognize under this frantic series the executive hand of Stephen Spielberg who is pushing Stephen King into his very last horror bunkers. And the final holocaust has not yet started. Let alone the final epiphany or salvation. In fact we do not even know how many people will have to be sacrificed to bring that final epiphany, if it is an epiphany. The series becomes then a parable of our modern times: you have to kill millions of people, or you have to let millions of people die in horrible conditions of war and terrorism for maybe some light to appear under the rim of the dome that may bring some alleviation of our evil, some releasing of our tension, some freedom of happiness but that happiness does not come free and a hefty price has to be paid for it. Only naïve nincompoops may think differently. But they are a lot of naïve nincompoops in this world.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

SUPERNATURAL – SEASON 9

It is hard to go on with this series without being repetitive. I will not say much about the episodes that are local and small if not limited battles against this or that monster, vampire or werewolf. These episodes are entertaining but they do not make the plot move forward – nor backward either, just sideways.

The main plot is little by little destroying itself into some kind of delirium tremens caused by self-punishing zeal to go on forever ranting and raving about angels and demons, about hell and heaven, and all that directly on earth that becomes slightly crammed if not jammed with extra-realistic beings who want only one thing: destroy each other, destroy one another, recreate heaven for the good angels who will be stronger and defeat the others by destroying them, and reopen hell for all bad demons though some are worse or badder than others and either they have to be destroyed or they have to destroy those who are not badder.

I would say then the novelty can only be in the technical achievement of the director and editor or special effect technician. But that does not make a good series even if the pictures are original and good. We can of course search the series for what has already been seen, exploited and is coming to the worn out phase, like Wincest for example. Dean and Sam are not like good cheese or good wine, they do not improve with age, they just get older and you cannot teach new tricks to old dogs, or monkeys, or horses.

Let them meditate on Prison Break or Lost

So I am afraid the series is becoming quite unreasonably lengthy and thus insensibly repetitive.

Too bad because I had liked it quite a lot,, in fact tremendously. You can check on academia.edu the following papers:

·       SUPERNATURAL – SIX SEASONS – STEP BY STEP Jacques COULARDEAU & Ivan EVE

·       SUPERNATURAL IS LEADING TO SO MANY THINGS Jacques COULARDEAU

·       SUPERNATURAL – WORK SCHEDULE – WRITING May 27, 2012 Dr Jacques COULARDEAU and Ivan EVE

But well I guess even the best things have to end but it is at times difficult to find the proper exit.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU