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!

Advertisement