So butterflies are dangerous, li’l Joe is a psycho-killer, Big Jim’s an evangelist, and Angie is really dead for no known reason. And we should care because …?

This is the problem: when the personalities of familiar characters turn on a dime, when a well-built and understandable character is replaced by a cypher or simply plucked out of the story, when plot threads are introduced and abandoned on a weekly basis, it doesn’t take long for the viewer to just stop caring. And that’s what’s happening with Under the Dome, Part 2.

Last week Angie, the feisty, smart, bold center of attention for a good chunk of Season 1 was abruptly hacked to death at the school, and the makers of that episode cheated by making it look like the inexplicable new character, Amnesia Girl did it. Now in Episode 2: no she didn’t. It was Some Guy instead, and characters spent virtually the entire episode mourning her loss, searching for suspects, and ultimately learning and doing nothing.

Science Teacher has risen from the extras to act as if she was always there, ordering people around, setting fire to crops (which seemed to bother no one much), taking surveys and telling Big Jim what to do as if she was a trusted ally. Three days ago, in Dome time, he couldn’t remember her name and we didn’t even know she existed.

What’s more, the character of the Dome has changed yet again. Last week it was communicating through apparitions of the dead, pulsing out huge magnetic fields, making people pass out and only stopping when the message was delivered: “the killing has to stop.” Except, of course, it didn’t. A few minutes after the Dome turned off its super-magnet, Angie — one of the Dome’s most beloved, one of the four it prized the most — was slaughtered…and the dome has’t responded at all. No messages, no magnetics, no nothing. So…is it conscious? Does it care? Not this week. Never mind.

We should probably create an Under the Dome drinking game. Every time somebody new shows up, or a character exhibits a new power or ability…take a shot! This week: Barbie can fly a plane! Quiet, affectionate, noble young Joe is now the psycho-killer that Junior never became! Joe’s girlfriend Norrie, another of the four main characters last season, has fallen so far into the background that she seems to have been struck dumb. And Big Jim, who last season was known by everyone as a bully, a crook, and a conniving son of a bitch, is now hailed as a savior to the point where people chant his name in church. Whoa, we may be too drunk to continuing.

What we got this week was a whole lot of nothing: Nothing important about the suddenly appearing Hermit Uncle, nothing at all about the Amazing Not-Dead Mom, no messages or actions from the Dome, no lack of electricity, food, or breathable air even after two weeks of being stuck under the force field (even though Science Teacher sets fires to acres of land, creating smoke you can see clear across Chester’s Mill. It just seems to…disappear. Apparently for the same reason that you can regularly see a wind blowing in town.)

One of the really wonderful things about Stephen King’s original book was the sheer implacability of the Dome. It was suddenly just there. It let a little water through, a little air, but it didn’t take long to understand what it was doing if not why. ANd ultimately the town wad destroyed because the Dome just wouldn’t budge. It trapped smoke, it held in heat and carbon dioxide until people choked to death. But this version of the Dome – and yes, we know, King’s okay with it – changes properties and personalities every week, in whatever way serves that week’s plot. We really thought, when we saw Science Teacher setting the field on fire, that we’d see at least some effect on the Dome environment, as King so vividly described in the book: a lingering pall, soot everywhere, people gasping for breath, the light turning yellow-brown. Something, at least for a little while. At least to remind us that these people are actually trapped here.

But no. Nothing. Just an entirely arbitrary murder mystery, magic butterflies that had to be slaughtered (because…they make caterpillars? Who would eat crops sometime in the future? And you couldn’t send people out to use pesticides on the ground to deal with that, you had to send Barbie up in a plane inside an invisible dome to save that day at that minute? We’re having serious doubts about the Science Teacher’s schemes. Giant electromagnets. Emergency crop-dusting to kill cannibal butterflies. Are you sure she taught at the high school?)

Under the Dome 2 seems to be acting like the migraine headaches that King is prone to himself: it makes the brain hurt, right behind the eyes, and even if you rest for a week, the pain just won’t go away. Once again, we are sadly reminded of Heroes Season 2: so much potential, so many good memories, so swiftly swept away.

Ah, well.