Series / Under the Dome

A 2013 series based on the 2009 novel of the same name, noteworthy due to the involvement of Steven Spielberg and a strong crew of writers, including respected Graphic Novel writer Brian K. Vaughan.

A small town in Maine is suddenly enclosed in an impenetrable dome that covers the entire town. All lines of outside communication are cut off, and the majority of emergency services were out of town for a parade at the time.

The show was renewed for a second season which ran in the summer of 2014, and had been renewed again for a third season in 2015. It was cancelled on August 31, 2015.

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Under the Dome contains examples of:

• Aborted Arc: Melanie was set up to have a hidden agenda throughout her tenure, manipulating others like Junior, hyper-focusing on the egg, and trapping the townspeople in cocoons to change them into... something. She's killed by her perceived accomplice Christine before any of this can actually bear fruit, and what she was planning or how she even came Back from the Dead is unrevealed.
• Adaptation Expansion: The series deviated from the novel, with King's input and Approval of God, from the second season onwards.
• Adaptational Villainy: Inverted, though one could hardly call it Adaptational Heroism. Jim Rennie comes across as a somewhat power-hungry but well-intentioned selectman, considerably different, at least for the moment, from the Bible-spouting sadistic hypocrite he was from the very beginning of the novel. Likewise, his son Junior is clearly disturbed, but at least he's not murdering women and having sex with their corpses within the first hour of the show. Phil Bushey as well, who is happy to be Big Jim's Dragon but isn't a crazed methhead who burns down the entire town.
• Affably Evil: For a murderous, power-hungry councilman, Big Jim Rennie is actually pretty friendly if you're on his good side.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: It was more "a form that was handy". The bringers of the Dome managed to establish verbal communication by assuming the form of Alice.
• All Is Well That Ends Well: After rioting and looting due to the water shortage in "The Endless Thirst", everyone stops all that and rejoices when it starts raining.
• Alpha Bitch: Max Seagrave. That said, her life history explains this. Her mother had to prostitute herself to bring money in when she was young. Seeing the way the people of Chester's Mill treated her mother has to be a major driving force in her relentless drive to seize control over the town and bulldoze down anyone who's in her way, by any means up to and including blackmail. Her Batman Gambits are, when they work, extremely effective.

• Anti-Villain: Big Jim fits this trope as well. He begins to lose the "Anti" part of it as the first season goes along, but eventually regains it.
• Anyone Can Die: Many recurring characters end up dead. By the end of the series, nine of the fifteen people who were billed as "main" characters - Linda Esquivel, Angie McAlister, James 'Junior' Rennie, Phil Bushey, Dodee Weaver, Carolyn Hill, Sam Verdreaux, Rebecca Pine and Eva Sinclair - died.
• Apocalypse How: In season 3, whatever controls the Dome creates the visual scenes of an apparent natural Continent-wide destruction by asteroid.
• Arc Words: Multiple characters have had seizures while muttering "Pink stars are falling... pink stars are falling in lines."
• Artistic License – Military:
  • A first-season episode describes and depicts the MOAB bomb as a missile instead of a bomb. It's also unlikely that the MOAB would be used to destroy a hard target such as the dome, since it's a fuel-air device designed to airburst and demolish softer targets over a wide area. (In the original novel the scene involved a tactical nuke.)
  • It can probably be forgiven for being a dream sequence, but when the one woman sees her Navy husband coming home from deployment, walking down the street, he's wearing a discontinued working uniform and wouldn't be authorized to wear it off base/ship anyway.

• Awful Truth: Thanks to Ollie, Junior learns the truth about his mother's death.
• Backstabbing the Alpha Bitch: Practically as soon as Max makes her unwelcome appearance and insists on throwing her weight around, Barbie and Jim begin conspiring over how to undermine her.
• Being Good Sucks: Alice refuses to let Carolyn steal insulin for her during the epidemic. Two episodes later, she ends up being the first of the 23 diabetics currently residing in Chester's Mill to run out and fall into a diabetic coma, by which time the town supply of insulin has long since dried up. She then dies an episode later.
• Betty and Veronica: Season 3 introduces a Love Triangle in the Barbie and Julia relationship, with Barbie getting a new girlfriend in the sexy and morally ambigous Eva to contrast with the homely and morally righteous Julia.
• Big Bad:
  • Season 1 has Maxine Seagrave, who comes to town and begins blackmailing the protagonists and even shoots Julia as part of it. As well as Big Jim Rennie, who constantly shifts between Anti-Hero and Anti-Villain.
  • Season 2 has a Big Bad Duumvirate between Rebecca and Big Jim, who want to poison some of the towns residents with a virus. Halfway through Rebecca has a Heel–Face Turn and Big Jim turns back to Anti-Hero and the Big Bad becomes the Dome, which ends up going through various dangerous changes during the second half of the season, which causes major problems for the protagonists.
  • Season 3 begins with Melanie Cross and Christine Price, whose motives aren't really clear, though they have some sort of connection to the Dome. Ultimately, the Kinship as a whole, including its new queen Dawn, serves this role.
• Big, Bulky Bomb: In "Blue on Blue" the Air Force tries dropping a GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast device on the dome (mistakenly described and depicted as a missile instead of a bomb). It obliterates what looks like a few square miles outside the dome but does zip to its target apart from making it rumble a little.
• The Big Damn Kiss:
  • Joe and Norrie when the bomb impacts the dome.
  • Barbie and Julia after the riot.
• Birth-Death Juxtaposition: Alice and Alice. With sappy doses of Someone To Remember Her By, Babies Ever After, and an eerie form of Dead Woman Junior.
• Book Ends: The pilot starts out with Barbie burying a body. Then lots of things happen to get your mind away from it. In his final scene of the episode, he realizes he's staying in the home of, with the wife of, the man he buried this morning.

• Butterfly of Doom
  • Alice refusing to let Carolyn steal insulin for her. As a result of this incredibly noble act, when she runs out two episodes later, she wanders out into traffic in a daze, causing a truck to swerve to avoid her and crash into the water tower. This end up breaking the pipeline and losing most of their available clean water, which is made much worse with the discovery that the lake the water was drawn from has become undrinkable, due to being polluted with methane. Combined with the anxiety caused by the bomb failing to breach the dome, a full-scale riot breaks out in the town and leads to the murder of Rose.
  • There's also a literal and very symbolic butterfly trapped in the mini-dome
• Call-Back: A character mentions in season 2 that half the dome is surrounded by a bombed out area, and the National Guard perimeter is brought back up, its lack of visibility from the dome due to it being ten miles away from the dome itself.
• Cannot Keep a Secret: Seems to be genetic, as Joe and Angie repeatedly demonstrate that they simply cannot help themselves but accidentally let slip things they were trying to keep quiet.

• Clean Cut: Lots of things where the dome came down.
• Cliffhanger
  • The first season ends with the Dome glowing with a blinding light, while Big Jim orders Barbie to be hung.
  • The second season ends with Julia confronting a raging homicidal Big Jim while the Dome keeps on shrinking, while the rest of the surviving citizens of Chester's Mill meet a creepy Melanie who indicates them the way to go to save themselves... at least it seems she does.
  • Season 3 ends with the Dome coming down and the military taking all its survivors into custody; seven (including Big Jim's dog Indy) were ultimately allowed to go free as long as they stuck to the official cover story. One year later, six of the seven gather together to discuss their findings: Dawn, the queen of the Kinship, is alive; the viewers also learn she's found a new egg, and intends to use it to start all over. Meanwhile, Norrie has enlisted in the military, and breaks into a top-secret holding facility to find the rest of the Dome's survivors, all of whom remain infected by the Kinship. This group includes Joe, whom she vows to free.
• The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: Julia is an Intrepid Reporter who is good in Pulling the Thread. However, she completely missed the fact that her husband was The Gambling Addict and he cleaned out their savings, mortgaged their house and sold off some of their possession in order to pay off his gambling debts.
• Coincidental Broadcast
  • In "Blue on Blue" the warning to get to safety is admittedly on a repeating recording, but Junior happens to turn on the radio right when the message is beginning another repeat.
  • While at the radio station, Big Jim overhears military chatter discussing his murder of the Reverend. It doesn't end well for Dodee, who happened to be present in the room at the time.
• Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind: Happens four times in "Incandescence": Junior attacks Christine and gets attacked by Barbie and then Julia; one of Hektor's men is shot and killed by Norrie before he can get Joe, and Hektor himself is taken down by Big Jim.
• The Corrupter: Christine Price is actively sowing discord in Chester's Mill to keep people off-balance and distracted.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Junior. After Angie breaks up with him, he follows her around, sees her bumming a smoke off another guy, and decides to kidnap her and keep her locked up in his bomb shelter—for her own good, of course, because the dome coming down clearly scrambled her brains and made her stop loving him, so he has to keep her safe until it lifts. He also tries to Murder the Hypotenuse, only Barbie has no idea what he's talking about and easily kicks his ass.
• Cute Bruiser: Melanie. She strangles Ben and her (and Barbie's) dad, and if it hadn't been for Christine's Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind, she'd have gotten Julia as well.
• Didn't Think This Through: In a fit of jealousy, Junior attempts to intimidate the new guy in town that he knows nothing about, before trying to murder him when that fails. Naturally, he gets the living snot beat out of him by Barbie for his troubles.
  • Ollie's faction of farmers quickly jump ship after Barbie blows up the well.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: In "Thicker Than Water", Angie is possibly hinted at having some connection to the dome, possessing both a collection of snowglobes and a monarch butterfly tattoo. The subsequent episode invokes and subverts this however, when it's pointed out that they're attempting to rationalise the unexplainable with sketchy evidence, when practically anything could be linked to the dome using the same logic. However, Angie is later revealed to be one of the Four Hands.

• Deadly Force Field: When the Dome first appears, it drops out of the sky and cuts anything in its path cleanly in half, starting with a cow that is gorily split lengthwise. We're also shown destroyed houses and a woman who lost a hand.
• Despotism Justifies the Means: Big Jim Rennie begins to take on aspects of this as early as his battle with Ollie for control over the propane and water, but crosses fully into this realm as of his manipulation of the townfolk into giving up their civil liberties, then calmly telling Barbie exactly how he will pin all the crimes he's committed onto Barbie and three innocent teenagers.
  Big Jim: Now that's as cold as cold-blooded gets.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Maxine Seagrave for Season one. Set up as a major threat to Chester's Mill, but killed off by Big Jim a few episodes before the finale.

• Entertainingly Wrong: In "Blue on Blue", the Reverend believes that God was whispering "Moab" to him, in reference to the ancient city. It's actually his hearing aid picking up the military emergency broadcast that they're going to drop a M.O.A.B. ("Massive Ordinance Air Blast", also sometimes known as the "Mother Of All Bombs") on the dome.
• Epic Fail: Reverend Coggins breaks into Duke's house to destroy some incriminating papers. He manages to burn the whole house down and nearly dies in the process.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: As bad as they both are, Big Jim and Junior still see each other as family. For example, before going off to kill Maxine, Big Jim tells Junior to stay at home with an almost tearful farewell that makes you wonder if Big Jim knows he might not come back alive. Likewise, Junior seemed pretty upset after receiving the vision from the dome of Big Jim with stab wounds with he and the other kids holding bloody knives. After seeing that, his first impulse is to go find Big Jim and warn him that he might be in danger.
  • And in "The Enemy Within," Big Jim tries not to kill Junior when they have their final fight after the dome comes down, but has to.

• Face–Heel Turn: Melanie undergoes one of these in the third season premiere.
• Failed a Spot Check: Joe is smart enough to begin figuring out the size, power source and physical properties of the dome, but it takes him about three days before he starts to wonder why his sister's not been seen in a while.
• Failure Is the Only Option: If the MOAB worked the show would have ended before it was halfway through Season 1.
• Fake Guest Star: Mackenzie Lintz (Norrie) is billed as a guest star on every season one episode she appears in. She appears in every episode of the series and turns out to be playing a fairly important character at that, since Norrie is one of the four people who can communicate with the dome.
• Faux Affably Evil: Maxine, who basically decides to take the opportunity of being in the dome to set up a fighting and gambling ring.
• Free-Range Children
  • A number of parents were out of town when the dome fell while their teenage children stayed home and were trapped by the dome. Days later no one seems to be too concerned that there are a number of essentially orphaned children running around with no supervision. They seem to largely disappear in season 2 as the teenage threads focus on the main characters.
  • Presumably Angie indulged in this before the dome fell, since neither Joe nor her work colleagues noticed her absence until Day Four.
• Friend or Foe?: In Barbie's Dark and Troubled Past. His Army unit in Iraq mistook a friendly unit for the enemy and gunned down all but one member.
• The Gambling Addict
  • Peter, Julia's husband, had a serious gambling problem. He gambled away all their savings and owed a lot of money to a bookie. Barbie was sent in by the bookie to collect on the debt. Julia does not find out about this until she is told that he sold his car to a friend and that he mortgaged their house behind her back.
  • Since he owed a bookie a lot of money, he apparently decided to get Genre Savvy. When he could not pay up, the bookie sent an enforcer to collect. Peter decided to meet the enforcer in an out of way cabin and, after the guy started to leave, threatened him with a gun with only one bullet in it. One suspects that he might have been suicidal and wanted to be killed.
  • The fact that he took out a life insurance policy but that it would be voided in case of suicide points to the possibility of a suicide by proxy planned to leave money for Julia. Julia herself takes this interpretation when she figures out what happened, which is probably one reason she takes it so well.
  • Phil is also apparently something of a gambler, as he recognises Barbie as a Loan Shark and was aware of Peter's monetary troubles.
• Genre Savvy:
  • In "Exigent Circumstances", after Jim charges Barbie with several murders (none of which he actually committed apart from Peter Shumway), he offers not to pursue Barbie's allies if he pleads guilty. Barbie doesn't trust Jim to hold up his end of the bargain, so he pleads "not guilty" to piss him off.
  • Big Jim also displays this in the last few minutes of season 3. When Dawn (the new queen of the Kinship) is shown to be alive, he says he expected this.
  Big Jim: "I've seen enough bad movies to know if you don't have a body, they ain't dead."
• Ghost Extras/Apathetic Citizens: Even though all the extras in the background are all stuck in the same predicament as the main cast, they don't seem to do much aside from go about their business. No one in the background is leaping up and asking what they can do to help because they are just that - extras.
• Government Conspiracy
  • Subverted. Julia initially assumes that the military is responsible for the Dome, but quickly realizes that it's not the case. However, overheard radio transmissions in the last few episodes of the season imply that the military has at least some knowledge of what's going on.
  • In season 2 it becomes clear there are possibly larger agents at play. It's eventually revealed in season 3 that Aktion Energy was studying eggs, like the one that initially generated the Dome, in order to use them as a new source of clean energy, but when one of their own got possessed by an alien, they kept searching for them in order to find a cure for him and stop a possible invasion. The Dome was triggered when one of Aktion's agents - Christine Price - touched the egg in Chester's Mill and also wound up possessed.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Linda the new Sheriff falls for the old "I'm sick, open the cell door" trick, not a minute after putting a perfectly healthy prisoner in there, and with no backup in the building.

• Gun Struggle: In a flashback in the second episode, Barbie and Julia's husband Peter fight for a gun. The gun goes off and Peter's dead. No big surprise, as we already saw Barbie bury his corpse in the pilot episode.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: A cow got sliced lengthwise by the dome in the pilot, and humans who met similar fates are shown in the second episode.
• Heel–Faith Turn: The Reverend rediscovers his faith and comes to believe that the dome is a punishment from God. He wants to atone for his crimes and tries to convince Big Jim to join him in confessing to the town about the illegal things they had done. Big Jim kills him.
• Holding Back the Phlebotinum: Everyone inside the dome remembers there is an outside world and acknowledges it but has pretty much ignored it in the space of two weeks. For the Rule of Drama to apply the writers can't have the people in the dome asking the people outside and their unlimited brain power for suggestions and help.
• Hope Spot: After finally escaping from Junior, Angie runs into Rose, the owner of the diner, who promises to protect her no matter what. Then come two assholes wanting to rob the place...
• Hypocrite / Jerkass Has a Point: Ollie rightly points out that in the post-Dome Chester's Mill, Big Jim only maintains his power and authority because he controls the propane supply, so why should he object to Ollie levying power by controlling the water? Furthermore, Big Jim is the aggressor for coming onto his land with intent to seize it for himself, only resorting to invoking eminent domain as a flimsy justification.
• Infodump: Julia during the fire, explaining it hasn't rained in weeks.
• Insistent Terminology: When Julia asks why the only radio station in town didn't pass on that they had been listening to the outside world: "We're not a news station!"
• Kangaroo Court
  • Barbie is subjected to one, despite it being perfectly clear that the townspeople were already fully convinced of his guilt and planning to execute him anyway.
  • This happens again with Big Jim and Rebecca Pine in season 2, but this time the town is divided over whether or not they're guilty and violence ensues before the trial can get underway.
• Karma Houdini: Big Jim. After having lied, bullied, blackmailed and murdered his way through the entire series, he ends up as a well-paid Congressman without any comeuppance whatsoever, be it legal persecution or whatnot. Granted, he did have to kill his son to get there, but he appears to have gotten over that one pretty well.
• Kill the Cutie
  • Rose, the sweet old lady who owns the diner, and Dodie, the radio technician who's been trying to capture radio transmissions of the outside world.
  • Angie in season 2
• Kudzu Plot: We're never really given any answers. Why the dome had to come. Who the aliens are. When it comes down to it viewers got fed up waiting for answers to what should have been a cut-and-dry show and stopped watching.
• Loan Shark: Barbie works as an enforcer for a bookie (Maxine) and was in town to collect on a massive debt owed by Julia's husband.
• Locked Out of the Loop
  • The sheriff kept his deputy sheltered from the town's secrets, since he didn't want her involved.
  • The National Guard on the other side of the dome have thus far made no attempt to communicate with the inhabitants inside, leading Julia and Barbie to speculate whether they've been specifically ordered to ignore them.
  • Joe is smart enough to map the area of the Dome and work out its exact centre, figure out some of the mechanics of how the forcefield operates and theorise on the nature of the seizures he and Norrie have experienced. However, he's too afraid of how other people would react to reveal that they have some strange connection to the dome and enter a trance-like state during their seizures, as well as how this lead them to discover the strange Egg located in the precise centre of the dome, under a mini-dome of its own.
• Last-Name Basis: Barbie is actually "Dale Barbara", but is referred to as "Barbie" so much it's a shock when he is finally referred to by his first name in "Going Home".
• Limited Social Circle: Even in the dome, with a limited number of people to talk to, in two weeks the main characters only still only hang around with each other. Julia supposedly knows lots of people in Chester's Mill, but only ever hangs around with Barbie.
• Limited Wardrobe: Junior never takes off his deputy outfit until near the end of Season 2, even though most of the line of sheriffs Chester's Mill goes through don't bother to dress the part.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: Everyone who tried to exit the dome by following Melanie at the end of season 2 wound up in one of these, trapped in cocoons while their minds were tricked into believing they were in a version of Chester's Mill where the dome has fallen, and everyone who didn't make it out is dead. The illusion later starts to fall and ultimately crumbles when Big Jim smashes the egg.
• Ludicrous Gibs: The cow is filled with them - it sure doesn't look like an anatomy textbook - but they don't spray everywhere, as they usually do in this trope.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Norrie finds her biological father outside the dome during Visitor's Day and discovers that she wasn't a test-tube baby from an anonymous sperm donor as she'd been previously lead to believe. It's implied, but not made clear, that Alice may have been in a heterosexual relationship with him at the time.
• Meaningful Name: Seagrave, though not for Maxine, but for her mother, Agatha. Granted, it was a lake, but the point stands.
• The Men in Black: The soldiers Barbie meets have no unit designation. When Barbie asks about it, he's told to mind his own business.
• Morality Kitchen Sink: Big Jim, Junior, and Ollie. Oh heck, and Barbie too. Probably ''everyone'' by the time we're done.
• Ms. Fanservice: Angie. The fanservice level is extremely tame and has featured both sexes in near enough equal measure, but Angie's still at the top of the short list, with Eva in season 3 the only challenger.
• Mysterious Waif: The girl in season 2 whose name is eventually revealed to be Melanie. She is found drowning in the lake, and when she wakes up she has no memory.
• Mythology Gag: In the Series Finale, Big Jim uses a metal facsimile of a baseball from a trophy to beat one of the kinship to death. In the book, he did the same thing to Lester Coggins; the difference is, in the TV Series this was more or less self-defense while in the book Lester was killed to cover up their involvement in Phil Bushey's "business."
• Never Found the Body: In season 2, in consecutive episodes, characters fall into a hole and are automatically considered "dead" despite a lack of any evidence either way. The Rule of Drama is the reason. In season 3, Dawn (the new Queen of the Kinship) falls into a pit and is supposedly dead; a year later, when six of the Dome survivors discover she's alive, Big Jim comments that he suspected she was alive because of this.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: for a certain amount of "hero". When Big Jim forces Norrie and Joe to drop the Egg into the hole, hoping that he will be able to use it to gain passage outside for himself and his family, the only thing he manages to do is to apparently close the only way out of Chester's Mill and nearly kill Melanie.
• Noodle Incident: Max and Barbie's history. There have been references to a romance between them at one point.
• "No Peeking!" Request: In "Imperfect Circles", Norrie walks into Joe's room to talk to him, much to his embarrassement as he Sleeps in the Nude and only has a Modesty Bedsheet to cover himself. He asks her to look away while he gets out of bed and puts on some pants first.
• No-Sell: The US Army detonates its biggest non-nuclear bomb in an effort to breach the dome. While the area around the dome is devastated by the explosion, it does not seem to have much effect on the dome and the people inside barely feel anything.
• No OSHA Compliance
  • Not that a private residence usually qualifies, but it seems Duke - the police chief and thus supposedly someone concerned with all aspects of public safety in his small town - decorated his house in the most flammable items he could find.
  • During the earthquake in season 2, the bars in the jail split from the wall in a manner showing they weren't exactly sunk into the ground or ceiling for reinforcement.
• Offing the Offspring: Big Jim is forced to kill a Kinship-controlled Junior in the series finale.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Norrie. Until Alice is on her deathbed, where it's revealed to short for Elinore.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: A major theme of season three is those townsfolk rescued from the cocoons have very different personalities than before.
• Only Sane Man: After a few days of being under the dome the town seems ready to descend into panic and chaos, but some of the main characters are able to talk people down and keep order. The audience knows that this is actually a subversion since these individuals have their own issues.
  • Big Jim is good in a crisis and has managed to talk down the townspeople on multiple occasions. However, his ego and dark secret are setting up for a major conflict with the other characters.
  • Barbie is able to back up Linda and Big Jim at crucial moments and tries to stop the manhunt for the rogue deputy from turning into a farce and/or tragedy. However, he killed a man right before the dome fell and is now hanging out with the man's wife.
  • Linda seems to have stepped up to her new responsibility as sheriff and is a good counterbalance to Big Jim's ego, but she is clearly under massive strain and is making poor decisions.
  • Junior really stepped up during the quarantine crisis and probably saved a lot of lives by calming down the people in the hospital. However, we know that he is actually the first person to have snapped a result of the dome and the crazy is just bubbling under the surface.
• Pet the Dog: Big Jim seems to be just as upset about Rose's death as Angie, as he considered her a good friend. He doesn't hesitate to give Angie the keys to Rose's diner, and even tells her to say goodbye for the both of them.
  • More literally in season 3, a stray dog seems to take a liking to Big Jim. He's annoyed at first, but within a few episodes he's named it Indy and is actively looking for him when he's not around. According to an interview with Dean Norris, this was added specifically to make Big Jim more likable as he's going back to being an antihero this season.
• Plot Armor: Big Jim Rennie. He's managed to get one over on just about everybody he goes up against. In one episode, Max's "foolproof" escape hatch to keep Jim and Barbie in line falls apart in approximately 10 minutes of that episode as soon as Jim realizes all he has to do is let her mother die when she falls overboard. At that point, she has no hold over him. In fairness, he does suffer a fair bit. Although he still gets Spared by the Adaptation and is a wealthy Congressman in the end.
• Pocket Protector: Implied by the bullet-dent in Barbie's dogtag.
• Police Are Useless
  • While Linda is often the voice of reason and has stepped up admirably in the wake of the Dome coming down and Duke's death shortly afterwards, she's nonetheless repeatedly cow-towed by Big Jim whenever he goes on the warpath, often leading to near-disaster. Similarly, she's thus far proven unable to keep a tight leash on her deputies, leading to one going stir-crazy and accidentally shooting the other, as well as letting Junior remain on the force despite the fact that he's already proven unreliable at best and a loose cannon at worst, particularly when armed.
  • Despite having a ton of evidence that he has been involved with an illegal drug ring for several years, Linda decides not to throw Big Jim in the nearest prison cell and even allow him to continue to run the town. Furthermore, in the same episode she later falls hook, line and sinker for his lie about Barbie being responsible for multiple murders, despite all evidence against him being entirely circumstantial and hearsay, most of it told to her by Big Jim himself.
  • The only two professionally-trained cops in the Dome die in episode 1 and 2, in what seems almost a deliberate attempt to keep the police as useless as possible.
  • The replacement police are appointed and given absolutely zero training for their job (one was the local DJ), and are rarely seen going about the job. Junior has been wearing his police uniform almost 24 hours a day since appointed and has done very little actual police work.
• Powder Keg Crowd: When the water supply is in danger of being gone, the residents do this.
• Product Placement: Windows tablets with the snap-on keyboard in season 2, episode 3.
• Putting on the Reich
  • Big Jim does this increasingly as the series progresses. Lampshaded by most of the characters who oppose him, who start to refer to his cronies as "The Gestapo" and comment that the town has become effectively a police-state.
  • In season 2, Big Jim and Rebecca, a science teacher, conspire to "thin the herd" by releasing a weaponized flu that is estimated to kill 25% of Chester's Mill, at minimum.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Samantha Mathis's character dies in episode seven, however it is notable that she is probably required by contract to play Dagny Taggart a second time in Atlas Shrugged Part III, filming in fall of 2013.
• Realpolitik: When Ollie attempts to levy power through his control of the well, Big Jim plots to seize it via eminent domain. When Ollie makes clear that the rule of law has become irrelevant and that he's got an armed posse defending it, Rennie fights fire with fire and amasses his own militia.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Big Jim gets one from Barbie and his wife in Season 2; first, his wife upbraids him, saying he always thinks he knows best for everyone else, and then Barbie bluntly informs Jim that his brilliant plan to throw the egg into the chasm underneath the high school has backfired badly, with the exit now closed off, apparently permanently.
• Red Shirt: The volunteer that Big Jim and co. bring along in "Thicker Than Water".

• Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale: The promotional shots and the CGI shots from far away don't really capture the dome as big as they ought to.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: After Junior burns down his house, Big Jim finally decides alone in the woods is better than with the townsfolk.
• Series Continuity Error: The final shot of the first season is a pull back from the Dome showing the surrounding area, which in no way shows the damage caused by the missile strike halfway through the season (despite being shown to be quite graphic in the episode where it happened).
• Shoot Out the Lock
  • Linda does this in "The Fourth Hand" to gain access to the warehouse where the propane is being stored.
  • She also bashes the lock off the safe-deposit box entrance door with a fire extinguisher. Not quite shooting it, but still, main force over a key.
• Shout-Out
  • Episode 3 has one kid say that somebody is streaming The Simpsons Movie on a loop. A central point of that film is Springfield being put under a dome.
  • Joe decides to dub the Dog, "Truman". In the film, the protagonist is unknowingly the star of a reality television show, residing in a fake town located inside of the world's largest dome.
• Shower of Love: One scene in "Move On", has Eva join Barbie as he's showering. We only see them from the shoulders up as they begin to kiss before they close the curtain and the scene changes.
• Show Some Leg: Angie goes to distract Junior, who is on guard at the hospital, while Barbie rescues Julia. Junior, Distracted by the Sexy, obligingly wanders away with her for a talk, a hug and a kiss.
• Sinister Minister: Reverend Lester is part of Big Jim's methamphetamine operation to the point that he's willing commit breaking and entry on the home of the town sheriff to cover up evidence (and inadvertently commit arson as a result). He also appears to be an addict himself.
• Skewed Priorities
  • Despite the dome trapping the town, Big Jim makes covering up the propane shipments their top priority. There is very little they can actually do about the dome. However, they should be taking a census, mobilizing resources, trying to communicate with the outside world etc.
  • Naturally, the teenagers take the dome trapping most of their parents out of town, as an opportunity to have many wild house parties.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Sort of. In the book, Angie and Dodee are killed by Junior on 'Dome Day'. They have considerably more significant roles in the show although both end up dead at a later point, albeit in a different fashion than the novel. On the other hand, played straight with Big Jim.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Barbie, after the revelation that Peter was very much an Asshole Victim.
• Suddenly Always Knew That: Joe was president of the robotics club at school! And he even has a remote control drone! And no one remembered this for over two weeks!
• Suicide by Cop: When Julia discovers the life insurance policy Peter had, she says that he must have taken the policy out and then forced Barbie to kill him (as the policy was void in case of suicide) as a way for Peter to get her out of the hole he'd dug them into.
• Surrounded by Idiots: The Reverend is always missing the point and nearly burns to death by accidentally setting the room he was in on fire, as well as blocking the only exit.
• Toplessness from the Back:
  • When Angie is having sex with Junior in the Pilot episode, the camera is positioned behind her, so only her bare back is visible.
  • In "Imperfect Circles", when Julia is getting out of bed the morning after sleeping with Barbie, we see her shrugging off the Modesty Bedsheet for a moment, showing her bare back as she gets up.
  • In "Ejecta", when Eva is trying to seduce Barbie, the camera is placed behind her as she takes off her shirt. The audience only sees her bare back, while the few shots from the front use Shoulders-Up Nudity or have Barbie acting as Scenery Censor.
  • In "Breaking Point", Eva and Barbie are making out, when she pushes him into the bed, takes off her shirt and begins straddling him before the scene cuts off. Throughout the scene, we only see her naked back.
• Town with a Dark Secret
  • The town authority figures were stockpiling propane for some reason that had nothing to do with the dome (though they are aware it certainly looks like they knew ahead of time). The sheriff tries to explain it to his deputy, but since he's touching the dome at the time, his pacemaker explodes before he can.
  • The third episode reveals that they're involved in the drug trade, producing what is revealed in the ninth episode to be a new designer drug called Rapture.
• Villainous Valor: No matter what we think of Big Jim's motives and methods, he is no coward. He leads from the front and often puts himself in danger to save others.
• Villain with Good Publicity: A rare example in that the villain actually deserves the publicity. The show makes it clear that Big Jim is a pretty terrible human being... but the town is only seeing him handle potentially serious crises with a level head, and he has saved a lot of lives through his efforts.
• Visual Pun: Barbie, who just buried a body out in the woods touches the cow, bloodying his hand, which he then leaves a handprint on the dome he is imprisoned in. "Caught red-handed".
• Wham Episode
  • "Speak of the Devil." The four "Dome people" - Junior, Angie, Joe and Norrie - discover that the dome is insisting that they kill Jim Rennie. Given the way the man has basically carved out his own kingdom in which all threats against him are ruthlessly eliminated, the Dome has a point.
  • Even more so in season 2's "Going Home" when some characters actually manage to get out of the dome... or so they thought.
• Wham Line
  • Barbie to the CEO of the MegaCorp that may be playing a part in bringing down The Dome:
  "Hi, Dad."
  • Melanie when she gets her memories back:
  "I am Melanie Cross... and I think this is where I died."
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Remember when Julia was 'the Monarch,' whatever that meant? Neither does this show. The actual "queen" turns out to be Christine Price, and then her successor Dawn.
• Wild Teen Party: On the bridge, in full view of the National Guard.
• Witch Hunt: Big Jim launches one against Barbie at the end of season one.
• You Can't Go Home Again: According to Christine, the aliens have fled their homeworld, after it was destroyed by another alien race. They have traveled tens of thousands of light years to Earth and fear their enemies may have followed them.
• Your Head Asplode: Downplayed. Jim kills Lester by pressing his hearing aid-equipped ear against the dome. All we see is a runnel of blood coming out of the ear in question, but it's enough to guess what happened.

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