CBS's "Under the Dome"

On Monday I watched the premiere episode of CBS's "Under the Dome".
It's based on a Stephen King novel that I've never read.

I thought it was an interesting idea.  A dome comes down on a town and they're stuck inside.  They can see outside the dome, but they can't hear and they can't pass through it.
What will happen?

Guess what?  I'm not going to watch it.
Why?  Because the stock characters - I'm so bored of these archetypes.  Can't anyone be mostly normal?  Wouldn't that be interesting enough?

1.  The town councilman is obviously bad and nobody in the town knows it.  He wants power.
2.  The councilman's son is a psychopath and nobody knows it.  He wants to hurt people and has already trapped a girl in a fallout shelter.
3.  The main hero guy is a mystery.  Is he good, is he bad?  We don't know yet.
4.  The journalist with a supposedly philandering husband.
As you might suspect the journalist and the hero have joined forces and he realizes her husband is the man he buried at the beginning of the episode (I missed the first few minutes, did he kill the guy? I don't know.)
5.  Earnest young high school kid who is curious and kind and has befriended the mysterious hero.  His parents are both outside the dome and his friends want to use his house for parties.
6.  Older cop who has a hand in some of the bad stuff happening in town, but he doesn't like it.
7.  Younger cop who is honest and true - she has a fireman boyfriend who's on the other side of the dome.
8.  A wealthy lesbian couple with a daughter who's been in trouble - they're taking her to a camp when they get caught inside the dome.

I enjoyed the show, but really didn't like the councilman and the councilman's son.  I don't dislike those characters because they're evil, I dislike them because there's no motivation for them to be evil.  They're evil only to cause trouble for the hero and the good guys.  I can't imagine it's always in their best interest to be evil, but they will be - just to be the bad guys.

Although the book had an answer for the dome, I read the creators of the television show are giving it a different answer.  They asked Stephen King about their change and, according to them, he liked it and wished he'd thought of it.

Given all that, I read the synopsis of the original Stephen King story.
Eh.
There was an original Star Trek episode about that.

So - good show for those of you who aren't tired of the same stock characters in the way I am.  If you haven't watched as much TV as I have - they're new to you...:)