A Poopy Night to Remember

Last night pretty much sucked.  I like to think of myself as an energetic optimist but the events of this last evening have left me with a cynical smirk on my face and a serious pain in my right hip.  It went sort of like this:

Driving home from the final bonfire of the summer I had my mind full of goodbyes and packing.  I was nearly home, cruising along in my newly purhased but long-ago produced vehicle, when a flash of tan and white entered the right side of my vision.  A doe, as large as a kodiak bear in my memory, leaped in front of my car, used my hood like an gymnast’s vault and was propelled above and behind my slowed vehicle.  It was the kind of thing that, once it happened, I kept trying to wake myself up from the scary dream but to no avail.  I quickly pulled to the side of the road and pulled the e-brake, hopping out of my car and noticing for the first time that my hip had had a very sudden meeting with the steering wheel during the collision and I now felt like I had a plastic needle buried in my pelvis.  I was still riding high on frantic adrenaline, which dulled the pain slightly and helped me as I dragged the recently deceased woodland creature off to the side of the road so that other drivers wouldn’t be troubled by her passing.  I did a new dance I call the limp-hop back to the car and drove (slowly) back to the house, traversing the half mile with anxious looks at my crumpled, dented, and disfigured hood.  After pulling into the garage and staring with disbelief at my newly destroyed vehicle, I decided to take a short walk outside to clear my mind and settle the army of gnomes running around in my stomach.  The night air felt great and just shortly after my third or fourth deep breath I thought I felt a spot of rain.  Oh no, not rain at all, friends.  Not only had a representative of the woodland creatures introduced herself in a lovely way but it seems that the airborne population felt a little left out.  Yep, a bird shat on my head.  Not on my clothes.  Not on my shoes.  Nope, directly onto my melon.  I took a shower and washed my hair just shy eight times but I can’t shake the feeling of that turd sitting amongst the tiny bristles of my recently shaved head.

I woke up this morning and for the first time in a long time, felt really miserable.  But hey, you can’t have good days without terrible days, right?

Carnivale 1×5, 1×6 – Babylon, Pick a Number

I watched both of these episodes back to back, partially because their narrative is pretty clearly connected and mostly because I just wanted to watch more.  The first episode, Babylon, was a little frustrating for me.  I understand pretty clearly by now that the characters all have deep interesting stories and that they are more connected than we are originally led to believe.  However, sequeneces like Ben’s dream of the war and Lodz’s bear devouring the man don’t really do anything for me.  That sequence has had to have shown up at least 5 or 6 times by this point and I know almost nothing more about it than I did the first time.  Characters often drop cryptic lines like, “Ever since St. Louis” and “You look just like him,” but I still feel a bit like I’m traying to make out an image in water that is sinking deeper into the murk instead of coming up to daylight.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t just want all of the answers right now on a silver platter but it would be nice if the writers of this show stopped acting as though they needed to hook me with mystery.  I’m already hooked by this point and I would like to be rewarded for watching more of the episodes with more information about the characters and their motivations.

Babylon ends with Dora Mae’s body being discovered, hanged in one of the trees near Carnivale, and Pick a Number continues this plot arc.  The members of Carnivale enact an archaic ritual called carnival justice and put the only man remaining alive in Babylon to trial.  He narrowly misses death, but Samson returns before Carnivale ships out and after hearing about this mysterious Scudder that we’ve been tempted by thus far, shoots the man.  Samson sees Dora Mae’s spirit in one of the windows of a building on his way out of Babylon, which tells us that the souls of all those men that Scudder killed still reside in Babylon.  The troupe ships out on their perilous southward course.

In a distant but perhaps related story, Brother Justin is still reeling from the loss of his new migrant ministry and he reads the story of Babylon, the mother of harlots, at the same time that Dora Mae’s story is going on.  It’s obviously no coincidence that Harlot was carved into the girl’s forehead before she died.  Brother Justin decides to venture into the wilderness to look for a sign from God and on his journey he meets a radio personality who tells the ex-minister’s story via the airwaves.

The religious-themed (and often supported) narrative is really interesting to me at this point.  I don’t consider myself anything close to a biblical scholar but I like to think that I know the holy book relatively well and tie-ins like this are really neat.  My only worry with this kind of thing is that the narrative will get a little too self-indulgent and ultimately become heavy-handed.  However, I don’t think this has happened yet and hopefully it won’t!

Carnivale 1×4 – Black Blizzard

I don’t have a whole lot to say about this episode so I will make it quick.  We find out that Lodz knows quite a lot about who/what Ben is and may even have some of Ben’s powers himself.  Jones takes a gander into Management’s trailer while Samson is out visiting his favorite gilly, and finds out that either Samson has been lying to them and Management is nothing more than a myth or else Management (that mysterious he that we keep hearing about) has decided to go out for a spot of fresh air in the dust storm.  Either way, tensions are built and ready to be sprung between Jones and Samson and Lodz returns with high hopes for where he can take Ben and his powers.

The best part of this entire episode for me was Sofie’s story.  I’m still a little fuzzy on what happened but it is pretty clear that, like many of our other characters, there is more to her than we see.  The single tear she sheds after making love with Harlan, the boy she has been playing with, gave us a glimpse behind her hardened exterior into who she really is: a lonely girl with an almost dead psychic mother and no real friends.

And now, since my Carnivale post is so clearly lacking in both depth and length, I will post a poem that I composed on the 4th of July.  It came to me while I lay in bed listening to the fireworks going off and wishing that they wouldn’t.  A stomach-ache that felt more like a blob of poison had lodged itself in my abdomen and all I wanted to do was sleep.  So, here is my unpatriotric poem for Independence Day:

I’m thinking to myself,

As I burrow into my bed

And the fireworks crackle keeps me aboard,

There has to be something poetic here,

The popbangcrish has to be something poetic.

The drums in my ears say that there’s nothing

Because

I can’t get that sweet snooze

And I can’t get those soft dreams

Because

These fireworks are frightening them away.

Carnivale 1×3 – Tipton

The third episode of season one opens with a really poignant scene showing a newly dead person being carried out of his or her house just as the carnivale trucks are passing by to set up shop in the town.  The house is wind-blown and ramshackle and even though the vehicles for carnivale aren’t anything special to look at, the carnival and all of the wonders present inside offer a respite from these people’s difficult lives.  The carnival brings life and excitement into these small towns and this episode shows that very well.

Samson is told early on by the law of the town that he and his fellow carneys can’t set up their carnival in Tipton.  This proves to be no big deal as Ben has become a sort of holy healing figure in town ever since healing the little girl in the first episode who was apparently from Tipton.  Carnivale is transformed into a center for old time Christian revivals and Ben gets to play the lead man.  Even though the mode through which they present has changed, the people of Carnivale continue to bring a spark of life into the dull world’s of their entertained.  This new idea, the revival, shows that more than ever, being that their professed goal (the real goal is obviously money) is to arouse the spiritual force within the townspeople and get them fired up.  It works and before they pull out of town, the people of Carnivale have made a pretty penny and shown a few would-be miracles to the small of faith.

We get a bit more character from Samson in this episode, although it doesn’t come from an abundance of screen time for the day-to-day management man.  At one point, Samson is talking with the law from the town and he says something about their operation being one hundred percent legit.  The law man shakes his head and responds with, “I never heard an honest man use the word legit.”  That, first of all, is just a great line, but it also made me wonder a little bit about Samson.  So far, the things that he has done have appeared to be not only the will of the upper management but also for the good of everyone else.  Yet, he has no problem stripping the poor people of Tipton down a bit financially with a convincing (but fake) show of God’s miracles.  He’s obviously a likable enough guy, but there has to be more to him, as there is, I suppose, with many of the characters within Carnivale.  Lodz is clearly able to see and feel more than everyone else even without the power of his eyes, Apollonia seems to have some inside track knowledge about Ben’s purpose and identity, and even Clayton Jones (Jonesy) seems to have a few secrets up his sleeve.  I know I’ve moved a bit away from my point so I will just say this, Samson’s character is fun and at some times, absolutely sympathetic, but something is off with him and I don’t yet know what it is.

Carnivale 1×2 – After the Ball is Over

Episode 2 features several bits of character exploration that serve to both satiate my growing curiousity and add more questions to my expanding list.  It turns out that our good and faithful Brother Justin, he of the cloth, is kind of into his sister.  I was a little caught off guard by this but it definitely adds some depth to the minister.  We also get more about his developing power; it seems to allow him to reveal and bring to light whatever sins the target of his focus has or is commiting.  The poor vagrant that visited him in the first episode yarked up coins after Brother Justin caught her stealing and Carroll Templeton makes a pensieve-like trip with Brother Justin to Chin’s, the place of Carroll’s secret antics involving underage boys.  Brother Justin seems to abhor sin so much that he can somehow call it forth from people and force them to face it.  We find out that he does not spare himself either; he practices flagellation in the solitude of his room, his eyes fixed upon a wooden cross hung over his bed.  Definitely interested to see where this story goes.

Ben appears to have made some connection with Apollonia, Sofie’s vegetable-like mother, and after refusing to have his cards read again, he receives a visit from her.  This visit identifies him as the outsider by creating the anger and confusion necessary to bake a nice mob pie.  Most of the members of the carnival turn against Ben, a few maintain a state of confusion and a sparse few don’t believe he took Sofie’s mother from her bed and dragged her out to his comfy bed beneath the truck.  Ben’s isolation is made even more clear when he is the only one to find or see the baggage cart from which he gets the picture of his mother.  Even though it is yet unknown, the story of Ben’s family and past seems to be of crucial importance to the events that are beginning to mature at this point in the story.  I really appreciate a story that can stride forward on the support of the past.

I feel obligated to mention the economic issue because it functions so heavily in the framework of the entire show.  There is the clear dichotomy between Ben/Carnivale and Brother Justin/his lot when it comes to money and lifestyle.  Brother Justin lives a clean life in a house with food on the table every night while the men and women of Carnivale breath as much dust as they do air on a daily basis.  Yet Brother Justin is now on a mission to delve into the religious needs of the vagrants more than his other, wealthier flock.  I’m sure there is something to say about the roles our protagonist/antagonist are playing (Ben as the underling worker and Brother Justin as the overlord teacher), but I’m going to hold off for now.  The economic difficulty faced by so many at this time (1934) is evident in the opening credits and the lifestyle that most of our characters live.  I can’t remember which character said it in the first episode, but one of them said something about the Carnivale being the thing that woke people from their daily zombified state.  I’m sure the economic theme will continue throughout and perhaps I will eventually have something interesting to say about it, but for now, I’ll just leave it as is.

A new show, a new outlook

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.