Review: Regular Show ”The Dome Experiment”

Spoilers Below

A dome gets placed over the park by Maellard trapping everyone inside, but it’s Benson that looks incompetent because he was supposed to be the one to make sure everyone got out beforehand. Convinced that it wasn’t him that screwed up, Benson goes Rambo and decides to fight back at what looks to be an evil corporation housed within a dome that’s placed inside of the dome.

Meanwhile, the rest of the guys are just trying to make the best of the fact that they are in the dome. Instead of fighting it, the rest of the guys take turns in cleaning the toilets, growing food, and whatever else the crew needs to stay alive for 30 days.

Eventually, the guys grow restless waiting for Benson to come back, so they form a search party and go looking for him. The agency that is housing the dome uses a fake puppet-Benson to fake out Mordecai and Rigby, but it doesn’t work. In comes the real Benson breaking out of the dome-within-the dome in which he infiltrated in an attempt to retrieve proof that didn’t screw up the dome date. The agency event made a fake house with Benson’s fake friends in an attempt to fool him, but he doesn’t buy it and ends up reuniting with his team.

Together, the group scales the small dome and are able to blow a hole in the big dome so as to manage an escape. Once out, Benson confronts Maellard who tells the group that he did all of this for no real reason whatsoever.

Our Take

Blown away! The producers of Regular Show better hope and pray the movie is as good as this, because this is the best long-form Regular Show special of the year thus far. Benson going commando was so god damn good, and even with all of the times we’ve been yelled at by him, if you weren’t rooting for him near the end there, then you aren’t human.

There were just so many jokes laden throughout. Dr. Dome and his constant dome puns, and attempting to trick all of the park employees with fake puppets of other park employees. The Simpsons-esque gags that showed up on the control panel, and watching the park employees adapt to their surroundings were the stuff of comedy legend. Benson’s email went so damn far, and kudos for the writers for balancing his obsession and not beating us over the head with his mission.

Obvious influences are included in this week’s episode including Bio-Dome, Rambo, and Oblivion, but the one thing I didn’t like about the episode was the scene where Benson shows up to save Mordy, Rigs, and the whole gang. I just kinda felt the musical score became anti-climactic and could have used a punch up to really accentuate the fact that Benson was here to save the day. Fortunately, this gripe is minor and pales in comparison to the Emmy-worthy hilarity for the rest of the episode.