Well, damn. I’ve been excited to get away from Angel and start watching something new for a little while now. I took a trip to Best Buy a few days ago to check out the selection and Carnivale caught my eye. I heard little to nothing from friends and trusted viewers, and I decided to go out on a limb and give it a shot. It turns out that I should have done a little more homework before-hand because HBO cancelled this show after two seasons even though it had won several awards and the creator, Daniel Knaupf, had it planned for six seasons. Now, this would be all fine and dandy if the show was terrible (I would be out a few dollars, I s’pose) but after watching the first episode, I’m both excited to watch more and unhappy about working my way through another quality show with an incomplete ending.
Carnivale is a parallel narrative consisting of the story of Ben Hawkins (Nick Stahl), a young man from the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma who gets picked up by a traveling carnival, and the story of Brother Justin Crowe (Clancy Brown), an Evangelical minister. We learn through the first episode that both of these characters seem to be experiencing similar dreams, the content of which seems to be death, pain, and destruction. Also connecting these two is the development of some sort of magical powers. Ben seems to be able to restore life, but his power seems to come with a price that affects the environment around him. Brother Justin’s power is shown only once and it appears to be much more of a mystery to him than Ben’s is to him. Most of the first episode, entitled Milfay, functions to set up our characters and plot arc. The characters within Carnivale, the titular traveling carnivale, are introduced but very few are explored. Sofie (Clea Duvall) forms a bond with Ben after he saves her from being raped, but she is the only one to manage to get more than a few words out of our protagonist. There is obviously a lot of story to tell here but the pacing is such that I feel comfortably full instead of overwhelmed with plot.
I don’t have a whole lot to say about this show just yet. I find the characterization between our two main characters (or who I assume will become our main characters, Ben and Brother Justin) really interesting for a few reasons. Ben almost fits into the stereotypical hero character with his life-giving abilities and good-natured, laconic personality. Almost. We see in the final few moments of the first episode that his power, although it gives life, also seems to simultaneously cause death and decay to the nearby living objects. This same hero was cursed by his mother as filth and was not allowed to even touch her. This could be because she thought he was part of the Devil’s inner circle or because she didn’t want him to help her with his ability. Either way, the sight of his mother warding him off with a cross was enough to tell me that he isn’t our typical hero. On the other side of the picture, Brother Justin seems to be very effective as a brimstone-and-apocalypse spewing minister and he is praying or about to pray in almost every scene he is in. That being said, the little opening bit by Samson (Michael J. Anderson) gave a pretty clear dichotomy between the powers appointed to men, claiming that each generation had a creature of light and creature of darkness born to it. It seems as though we should be able to make the distinction between these two characters as one or the other but what with Ben’s two-way power and Brother Justin’s ambivolence, I don’t think we can yet make that decision.
I’m looking forward to watching more.