User talk:Sgeureka/Carnivàle

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pronounce Carnivàle - http://progressive.stream.aol.com/turner/gl/hbo/carnivale/season2/carn_stack_stunt_384_dl.mov

Co-Producer Todd London Produced by Bernadette Caulfield Co-Executive Producer William Schmidt, Dawn Prestwich, Nicole Yorkin, Dan Hassid, David Knoller

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[edit] Interviews

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http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2003-12-24/calendar/it-s-not-just-tv/

And, because nothing can exist without a tie-in, there is HBO/Real Arcade's Fate (www.realonearcade.com/carnivale/), an online tarot-card game (read: "fancied-up solitaire") that lets the player be the Tattooed Lady, the Conjoined Twins or the Dogfaced Boy (a character who is not, nor has ever been, on Carnivàle -- weird). The game requires concentration, patience and mental acuity, which is to say that it's slightly less involved than -- and not nearly as fun as -- watching Carnivàle.

http://tv.zap2it.com/tveditorial/tve_main/1,1002,274%7C84040%7C1%7C,00.html

According to the show's premise, one man represents light and the other darkness -- but who stands for what remains an open question. Barbeau plays Ruthie, a snake dancer who works in the carnival as a barker for her son, strongman Gabriel (Brian Turk).

Barbeau recalls, "When I first read it, my thought was, 'It's "X-Files" out of Marjoe Gortner by David Lynch.' Somebody else said 'Grapes of Wrath' and Stephen King, but I don't see Stephen so much as 'X-Files.' Everybody is likening it to 'Twin Peaks,' but I never saw that.

"I also think -- and I think Dan Knauf mentioned this -- it's basically 'Star Wars.' It's an epic of good vs. evil. Someone else said, 'It's as though Satan and Jesus were reincarnated on Earth, but we don't know which is which.'"

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-tv.html?2003-11/04/12.30.tv

Moore added, "People aren't in the carnivale by accident. You'll start to go, 'Oh my God, that guy is connected to the backstory, and that guy isn't.' You'll start to see that Brother Justin is on an arc, on a climb to power, and that Ben is trying to grapple with a role he didn't want, but was born into. That's where you'll be by the end of the first season.

http://www.themidway.org/reviews/20040119-01.html - http://web.archive.org/web/20070103161355/http://themidway.org/reviews/20040119-01.html - Dust Bowl Passion Play by Ana Marie Cox, In These Times (January 19, 2004)

It has the look of a Walker Evans photograph and a soundtrack reminiscent of the Anthology of American Folk Music. The plot, on the other hand, feels as though it stemmed from an aborted collaboration between David Lynch and Andy Griffith. At once inscrutable and utterly familiar, this anachronism-filled fantasy of a Dust Bowl passion play -- complete with references to the Crusades -- wound up being nothing more than Little Matrix on the Prairie.

If you have any familiarity at all with the charges leveled against "blue America," as the media dubbed America's urban (and Gore-voting) areas in the 2004 election, you won't be surprised to know that it's the preacher who represents Darkness. Ben, the kind-hearted working-class regular Joe, can bring kittens back to life and mend broken bones with a touch. Brother Justin has powers, too, but they are considerably darker -- he makes a thief vomit coins and, as a child, he once killed a man with his mind.

For all its pretensions to religious allegory -- some stigmata here, some wandering in the wilderness there -- the show's underlying message turns out to be essentially the opposite of spiritual belief: fatalism. Though Ben does a lot of hemming and hawing about how "Only God can decide when to take life and when to give it," the plot of "Carnivale" winds tighter and tighter around him -- taking from him the ability to decide for himself whether to use "The Gift," even as he becomes godlike in using it.

Brother Justin's story arcs in a similar, but more disturbing, manner. At first, he sees his ability to conjure forth visions of individuals' sins and wreak revenge upon the ungodly (a town father is a pederast; a corrupt city councilman has a heart attack) as a sign of God's blessing. He was, after all, doing the Lord's work -- running an orphanage and ministering to the destitute. But he was born bad, you see, and like a reluctant anti-Christ, he, too, must be punished by fate until he finally accepts his destiny and starts doing evil like the obedient pawn he is . . . that, in the universe of "Carnivale," we all are.

"Carnivale" gives viewers a world where individuals have little power over their fate and whose moral balance is eternally fixed: Every good action has an equal and opposite evil reaction, or, as it is often put, "Every time you give life, you must also take it away." This is not a progressive understanding of the human struggle; it isn't even modern -- the Greeks had more lee-way than the characters of "Carnivale." The show's patina of liberal elitism, then, confirms the right's worst stereotypes even as it does little good to actually advance a liberal argument or worldview.

http://www.themidway.org/reviews/20040300-01.html (GREAT ARTICLE) - http://web.archive.org/web/20070103161408/http://themidway.org/reviews/20040300-01.html - Fluff And The Right Stuff by Stephen Henkin, The World & I (March 2004)

HBO's new apocalyptic drama, Carnivale, which challenges us with a world that is anything but safe. For Armageddon junkies, already hyped on heightened terror warnings and catastrophic daily headlines, it's all there: a storyline charged with omnipresent doomsday religious symbolism; the stark environment of Dust Bowl America; a haunting, ominous soundtrack. Even the opening credits say "end of the world."

"What would you do if you woke up one morning and found out that you were the Savior? Or you're the Antichrist?" Knauf said when introducing the concept of the series to an interviewer. However, although the series makes use of familiar, highly resonant religious imagery, it has its own mythology that is quite distinct from any biblical source.

Knauf originally drafted Carnivale as a film screenplay in 1992. As the story was too long and complex for the film medium, however, he shelved the idea. Its production as a television series now rides the rising wave of fascination for things apocalyptic among viewers of television and film. A great fan of myth, Knauf describes the series as "an epic story of good versus evil, set in a carnival in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, between the two great wars." But nothing here is simply black-and-white. Ambiguity and mystery are integral to the show. One of the two characters central to the evolving plot, Ben Hawkins (played by Nick Stahl)-the destitute young fugitive the carnival picks up as a stagehand at the beginning-has the ability to foresee the future and to restore the dead to life, but in time he discovers that he can do this only if another life is taken; he must choose who is to die. A tormented soul, he suffers crippling nightmares, considerable confusion, and various temptations. The other central character, who never actually meets Ben and the carnival in the first season, is Brother justin Crowe (played by Clancy Brown, who was the villainous prison guard in The Shawshank Redemption). he seems at first to be a bleeding-heart Methodist minister, albeit with a penchant for fire-and-brimstone sermons. When darker urges to evil and power manifest themselves with growing ominousness, he begs another minister to kill him "before it is too late."

The twelve-part opening season, which ended last November, has created a hardcore following of Carnivale addicts, who share a common bond of trying to fathom the show's complex tapestry of science fiction, history, and religious allusion. Carnivale is not full of the fun and frivolity usually associated with a road show. The wandering carnival is a metaphor, a venue in which the forces of good and evil are divined by characters especially prepared for the supernatural task at hand. The viewer's appetite is whetted by this collection of world-weary freak-show characters-each of whom has the psychological numinousness of an archetype-who seemingly hold the future of humanity in their sweaty hands.

As the series evolves, so troubling are Ben's growing powers that he cannot sleep; when he does, he dreams of an unspeakable horror yet to come. Stahl steals many a scene through his convincing portrayal of someone completely at the mercy of unpredictable spiritual phenomena. Brother Justin, meanwhile, is coming into his own repertoire of spiritual powers. When he breaks into a church and preaches that sinners can be saved only by blood and fire, he demands to be baptized; the sign of the cross made with holy water on his forehead turns to blood. After his parish's children die in a fire that has engulfed his church (did he set the blaze?) Brother justin is forced to confront, yet also to savor, the growing menace he has become.

(cut characters)

With high production values, haunting music, and a Felliniesque mysteriousness, the show resembles the mesmerizing Twin Peaks. Knauf is aware, however, that Lynch's hypnotic mind-bender ran out of steam, finally derailing in what most viewers saw as a cop-out ending. Knauf stresses that he has thought out the basic plot for the entire series; the story has a clear internal logic and a finite end, with identifiable signpost developments along the way. How long it will take to tell the whole tale he does not really know; on American television, it depends on how well the show does in the ratings and how many times it is picked up for another season. he estimates that it could not last more than five or six seasons. Although small revelations in each installment drive the story forward, it might take a miracle to sustain interest that long, given the growing pile of unanswered questions that each installment leaves behind.

The show's philosophical underpinning is its most compelling quality. Knauf explains that Carnivale unfolds in what he calls "the last great age of magic." He curiously remarks that, "Once we as a species created and managed to harness the Bomb, that was the beginning of the Age of Reason. You could argue that, at that point, God sorta gave us the car keys and said, 'You're on your own.' But up until that moment, there was such a thing as magic."

http://www.themidway.org/reviews/20041010-01.html - http://web.archive.org/web/20070103161250/http://themidway.org/reviews/20041010-01.html - Come Join The Carnivale by Jeremy Mahadevan, Asia Africa Intelligence Wire (October 10, 2004)

Along the way they pick up a young man, Ben Hawkins, who carries with him a mighty secret and a power to match.

The second tale is that of Brother Justin Crowe, a preacher based in California who begins having visions of a mission that, while apparently divine, may easily be demonic as well. Crowe himself develops terrifying abilities that intimidate others into going along with his plans, most of which have admirable intentions but are executed with a ruthless will.

At some point Crowe and Hawkins will cross paths, and all indications point to literally apocalyptic developments.

The show also has plenty of religious and mystical symbolism, which is carefully utilised on the whole. The religious aspects are far more obvious in Crowe's story - probably because his view of the world is so highly charged with religion.

Some symbolism appears unsubtle (the avian names Crowe and Hawkins, for example),

Thus, it is interesting to see whether a premise, which deals with the fundamentals of good vs evil such as that found in Carnivale, would go down well with these same viewers.

Ben hides many secrets and is a sort of a healer, although the full extent of his powers remains unrevealed. As the plot progresses, he finds out that his past and that of the carnival are more intricately intertwined than he'd first imagined.

Brother Justin Crowe (Clancy Brown): The alternate protagonist, or perhaps the antagonist, Crowe is an enigmatic figure by all accounts. He is a devoted preacher who begins having terrifying visions, and develops intimidating powers of persuasion. In an attempt to fulfil what he sees as his divine mission, Crowe can be merciless.

Ben's presence appears to be part of some plan of the Management's.

http://www.themidway.org/reviews/20041208-01.html - http://web.archive.org/web/20050405220444/www.themidway.org/reviews/20041208-01.html - In The Twilight Zone by Hizreen Kamal, New Straits Times Press - Malaysia (December 8, 2004)

This 12-episode series takes place at a time of worldwide unrest, with evil on the rise around the globe and the Great Depression wreaking economic and social havoc here at home.

http://www.themidway.org/reviews/20041218-01.html - http://web.archive.org/web/20050410162202/www.themidway.org/reviews/20041218-01.html - Art Without A Net by Peter Craven, The Australian (December 18, 2004)

It begins with a rapid edit flicker of trench warfare horrors and twirling tarot cards as Anderson mutters in archetypal cliche. We're then transported to the dustbowl of Oklahoma where our hero Ben Hawkins (Nick Stahl) is attempting to deal with his dying mother, who for some reason recoils from him in dread on her deathbed as if he has the mark of the beast.

Meanwhile, he continues to have hideous dreams of the Great War, dreams of things he is too young to have experienced, with Expressionist horrors that involve monster circus bears in caps with blood-gushing faces and which also involve the face of another man he seems not to know but who the audience comes to know as Brother Justin Crowe (played with eloquent intensity by Clancy Brown).

It's hard to convey the full uncanny awfulness of Carnivale. It seems to have been conceived in essentially literary terms and therefore allows itself the kind of combination of clustered magical improbabilities and narrative slackening that can sometimes work on the page but is deadly on the large screen, let alone a small one.

It's almost like a biblical injunction against pretension on television.

http://www.themidway.org/reviews/20050105-01.html - http://web.archive.org/web/20050410160644/www.themidway.org/reviews/20050105-01.html - Life's A Carnival, And So Is Death by Noel Holston, Newsday (January 5, 2005)

A tall order, to be sure, but series creator and co-executive producer David Knauf assured entertainment writers that, unlike so many myth-based series that have failed to deliver on their promise or even to maintain a steady forward momentum, his was carefully thought out. "We know what we're going for," he said.

I'll just say that while the show remains a thing of harsh, weathered beauty, it also seems more pretentious than ever, its bloody religious symbols and mystical mumbo jumbo increasingly campy.

http://www.themidway.org/reviews/20050105-02.html (a little fanboy-ish) - http://web.archive.org/web/20050410161547/www.themidway.org/reviews/20050105-02.html - Second Season Of 'Carnivale' Could Be Quite A Ride by Terry Morrow, Scripps Howard News Service (January 5, 2005)

Brother Justin (Clancy Brown) -- who is emerging as one of cable TV's best and strongest villains -- is taking his fire-and- brimstone message to the radio waves. His demonic visions intensify and his evil grows.

Meanwhile, kindly carnival worker Ben Hawkins (Nick Stahl) has a meeting with the traveling company's shadowy "Management," who instructs him to seek out his father and do something about him.

Both Hawkins and Brother Justin are commanded to find a man named Scudder. If they do not, the world will come to a swift and fiery end.

This new development gives "Carnivale" a stronger purpose. "Carnivale" has always been one of television's smartest shows, but it's usually too timid in proving it.

http://www.themidway.org/reviews/20050106-02.html - http://web.archive.org/web/20050213184901/themidway.org/reviews/20050106-02.html - 'Carnivale' Returns - Please Let There Be A Plot by Andy Dehnart, MSNBC (January 6, 2005)

It’s an obvious dichotomy and an even more obvious turn to have the minister be evil and the murderer be good. But ultimately, it works, mostly because each is convinced that they’re the opposite. Ben rebels against his abilities while maintaining a single facial expression; Brother Justin is convinced he’s doing God’s work and always appears as though he's acting as a conduit for God while speaking to an enraptured congregation.

Like "Deadwood," the characters speak in a dialogue that feels authentic, even if that authenticity is a modern interpretation. As Carnivàle manager Samson, Michael J. Anderson gets the best dialogue, dropping terrifically incomprehensible lines such as, "C’mon children, we got dust to shake" and "Damn straight. We rollin’ box ears way too long. Grouch bags empty. We don’t even got over-the-road money."

More frustratingly, the series’ complex, original mythology - which borrows heavily from religion and the reality of life in that era - has possibility that never seemed realized. Its setting during the Great Depression, between two world wars, contains rich possibility, but ultimately that was subjugated by the more fantastic elements. But those, too, had possibility.

In the opening moments of the first episode, Samson addressed viewers directly, saying, "Before the beginning,...

Whether that sets up "Carnivàle’s" existence in a parallel universe or tries to ground it in our era doesn’t matter as much as its thrilling promise of something, anything. But just like Samson’s monologue, the first 12 episodes turned out to be all setup and no delivery. The battle between good and evil that promos promised never occurred; the two main characters never even met, except in dreams. There were a lot of hints but not many solutions. The revelations weren't all that revelatory, and the biggest secrets remained uncovered. Because of that, many moments felt gratuitous; they weren't there to serve a larger story. The murder of a girl who was the star of her father’s strip show was less disturbing than their family’s dynamics; the apparently incestuous relationship between Brother Justin and his sister Iris (Amy Madigan) was introduced but offers nothing and even weakens the effects of their unspoken bond as siblings.

http://www.themidway.org/reviews/20050107-01.html - http://web.archive.org/web/20050410160649/www.themidway.org/reviews/20050107-01.html - A Carnival Returns by Nancy deWolf Smith, Wall Street Journal (January 7, 2005)

Adding to the gloom is an apocalyptic plot revolving around the strange powers and visions of an 18-year-old carney worker, Ben (Nick Stahl). By this season, we know that Ben is destined to do final battle with Evil, as represented in the person of Brother Justin (Clancy Brown), an evangelist. What Ben represents is not entirely clear. He gets cryptic messages from a growly voice that emanates from behind a curtain in a carnival trailer, insinuating that Ben is destined to save the world. But nobody in this show and its huge cast, anchored by the diminutive carnival manager Samson (Michael J. Anderson), ever gives or gets a straight answer.

As the season opens, the carnies dig through the smoldering ruins of a fire that killed a catatonic but accurate fortuneteller and helped conceal the murder of a blind consort of the bearded lady. Ben tries to learn more about his father, Scudder, who may hold the key to his destiny. Brother Justin, meanwhile, preaches on the radio, recruits a prison inmate to do his dastardly bidding, and is excruciated by a beautiful Chinese tattoo artist.

http://www.themidway.org/reviews/20050108-01.html - http://web.archive.org/web/20050410162107/www.themidway.org/reviews/20050108-01.html - Odd 'Carnivale' A Show That Begs For Consistency by Mark Dawidziak, Plain Dealer - Cleveland (January 8, 2005)

Shadowy messages, disturbing visions and eerie hints were peppered throughout the first season, giving "Carnivale" followers clues about the good-vs.-evil allegory behind the series.

What exactly is Ben's role in this apocalyptic battle gradually taking shape on the dusty horizon? And why has he been chosen to be on a collision course with radio evangelist Brother Justin (Clancy Brown), a preacher whose false face masks something truly horrific?

From the start, "Carnivale" has been a relentlessly weird combination of sensibilities. With its carny setting, its Dust Bowl grit and its bizarre imagery, the HBO series has played like a combination of Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes," John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" and David Lynch's "Twin Peaks."

At its best, "Carnivale" creeps under your skin as an unsettling yet fascinating mix of mysticism, mystery and metaphor. At its plodding worst, the portentous stuff becomes pretentious, while the paranormal aspects slide uncomfortably close to self-parody.

You get the usual "Carnivale" quota of Biblical references and prophetic ramblings, but the ponderous and slow stretches might wear you down before the hard answers are given up by the writers. The "dark one," Samson tells us in Sunday's opening, chose to "live as a mortal," and, after World War I, "he fled across the ocean to an empire called America. . . . And so it was that the fate of mankind came to rest on the trembling shoulders of the most reluctant of saviors."

Did you get that? Or are you like a confused Ben in next week's episode, responding to news from Samson: "That don't make no sense."

If you're inclined to stick with "Carnivale," flaws and all, hope that the writers have a better answer than the one Samson gives Ben: "It don't have to."

http://www.themidway.org/reviews/20050107-05.html - http://web.archive.org/web/20050410160414/www.themidway.org/reviews/20050107-05.html - Sunday Seesaw
'Carnivale' Is Up, 'Unscripted' Down by Melanie McFarland, Seattle Post Intelligencer (January 7, 2005)

"Carnivale" won a passionate following by presenting the kind of detailed mythology rarely seen on television.

Early on, however, the plot's wheels sank into the muddy road of obsessive detail.

The second episode is really where this season kicks off, with the race to stop Armageddon under way and Justin's rise to power reaching to alarming expanses.

http://www.themidway.org/reviews/20050107-04.html - http://web.archive.org/web/20050410161451/www.themidway.org/reviews/20050107-04.html - HBO's 'Carnivale' Remains A Maddening Mystery by Rob Owen, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (January 7, 2005)

HBO's "Carnivale" (9 p.m. Sunday) is one weird show. In its first season, I initially found its complex plots intriguing, but as the season wore on, the show became convoluted, confusing and tiresome.

It's a cryptic series full of mysteries and that should suck viewers in.

http://www.themidway.org/reviews/20050107-03.html - http://web.archive.org/web/20050410160836/www.themidway.org/reviews/20050107-03.html - HBO's Sunday Night Stew by Paul Brownfield, Los Angeles Times (January 7, 2005)

"Carnivale," its weird series about God, the occult and the circus,

The show is about a minister, Brother Justin (Clancy Brown), who either is going mad or is possessed by the devil ... "Carnivale" is bathed in an occult mythology that keeps acquiring layers more than plot points, like a truck whose clutch is jammed in a low gear.

You can try to join the show in midstream, but good luck: Season two begins the way the first one did, with a dwarf, seen in close-up, addressing the camera. "On the heels of the skirmish man foolishly called the war to end all wars, the dark one sought to elude his destiny, live as a mortal," he says. "So he fled across the ocean to an empire called America."

That's the show's heavy hand; you half expect the credits to list God as a creative consultant. "Carnivale" is beautiful to look at, but it drags, cutting back and forth between Ben and the carnies and Brother Justin's growing religious zealotry in California; the narrative thrust is toward some sort of Judgment Day meeting between the two

Ben, who spent much of the first season sleeping under a truck, resisting the notion that he had certain responsibilities as a God-like force of light,

http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/reviews/2003-09-11-carnivale_x.htm

We'll let you discover his powers, but let's just say that, when asked whether he'd like to know the past, present or future, Ben responds, "What's the difference?"

but too often it slips from wondrous to ridiculous.

http://www.themidway.org/articles/20050109-1.html - http://web.archive.org/web/20050410213333/www.themidway.org/articles/20050109-1.html - DeKay Is Challenged By Role In 'Carnivale' by William LaRue, The Post-Standard - Syracuse, New York (January 9, 2005)

Because of the show's large cast, with 17 major roles last season, DeKay and most of his fellow actors disappeared from the screen for long stretches. DeKay says he knows the show's writers feel bad about that. Some have even shown him scenes with Jonesy that were cut because there wasn't enough time. "They've all got great ideas, but you can't fit them all into 60 minutes. Our job (as actors) is to deliver what they have written, so we can inspire them to write more," he says.

http://www.themidway.org/articles/20041120-1.html - http://web.archive.org/web/20050410204110/www.themidway.org/articles/20041120-1.html - Sideshow In A Desolate Land by Hafidah Samat, New Straits Times (November 20, 2004)

He added: "Through the first season, Justin is sure that all his visions are coming from his divine authority, all-knowing, all- loving. He is sure he's doing God's work, he's a man on a mission, he feels righteous in his mission, but gets challenged right at the end of the first season." "There's not much more you can do but read, watch movies, listen to the series music, to get into the character role. So I do the most I can, then the next thing you know, they're making you spew coins out of someone's mouth, there's no preparation for that!", said Brown, referring to a scene in which his "power" ranted him the ability to make an old woman spat coins from her mouth after she was caught stealing at the church.

Brown, however, admitted he practises his religion in a "moderate" way.

"I do believe in some kind of cosmic design, but there's always a dark side that sort of balances everything. I may not go to church every Sunday, but I do read the Bible, and I am raising my kids to believe in a higher divine authority.

"But at the end of it, I'm not a preacher, I'm just a guy," he added.

According to him, his theatre background has helped quite a deal in playing the role.

"It's one of those rare roles that I simply couldn't resist and I got to stretch myself in every possible way and the only thing I couldn't do is my cartoon voice," said Brown laughingly.

http://www.themidway.org/articles/20041009-1.html - http://web.archive.org/web/20050212163725/themidway.org/articles/20041009-1.html - Circus Of Life

by Sherwin Loh, The Straits Times - Singapore (October 9, 2004)

'Are we creatures of darkness or creatures of light? And I still don't know the answer to that question.'

But it seems that viewers are reading into the show's Biblical imagery, and have decided what they are about on their own.

Taking the last names of both lead characters, one interpretation is that Hawkins (Hawk) is a winged creature of light, while Crowe (Crow) is spawned from darkness.

Such readings, among many others found on the Internet, are things series creator Daniel Knauf never expected.

'I'm not a big fan of sending messages,' explains the writer/director in another interview.

'I just want to tell a ripping good story. If people draw inference and messages from it, that's just a sign of it reaching people on many different levels.'

Carnivale's title was inspired by Knauf's long-time fear and fascination with the carnival show.

'It was a stab at irony. The carnival (in the show) is really a flea circus. And yet, they have the spunk to add this European affectation,' he says

And what about the religious aspects?

'They stem from the epic of good and evil, especially when back then, religion was a fabric of good and evil,' explains the Catholic-raised individual, who laughs when asked whether a higher power had told him to write the show.

'There's a word for people like that. And that word is 'crazy'.'

http://www.themidway.org/articles/20041008-1.html - http://web.archive.org/web/20050410201448/www.themidway.org/articles/20041008-1.html - Riddle Of The Freak Show by Kreangsak Suwanpantakul, The Nation - Thailand (October 8, 2004)

Unlike other HBO offerings like Sex and the City and The Sopranos, the individual episodes of Carnivale, while intriguing, dont stand alone.

To enjoy the freak show, audiences are required to stay tuned throughout its 12 episodes, but a number of critics in the US have blasted its crawling pace.

Ive now watched six count em, six episodes and still I dont know what the hell is going on, Linda Stasi complained in the New York Post.

Ben Hawkins (played by Nick Stahl from Terminator 3), who conceals his gift of healing powers and is often haunted by strange and traumatic dreams.

In HBOs promotional ads, his touch gets a paralysed girl on her feet. Other strange occurrences ensue, then Hawkins meets Brother Justin (Clancy Brown of The Shawshank Redemption), a devout preacher who believes God is speaking to him or is it some other entity'

Created by Daniel Knauf, whose film projects have been shelved as too damn weird, Carnivale reaped five Emmys this year.

Knauf: I didnt think of the X-Men. I thought of [things like] Todd Brownings movie Freak and epics from Dickens to Star Wars fell into brew.

Stephen Kings books, JRR Tolkien and a lot of literary references stuck with me from when I was young, and I always loved the carnival.

Im going to start telling people I was thinking of the X-Men [laughs]. Even Harry Potter, believe it or not.

What kind of message are you trying to send'

I subscribe to the belief that if you want to send a message, call Western Union [laughs]. Im not a big fan of sending messages. I just want to tell a good story.

Knauf: God, theres been a lot. They did anagrams based on the names of each character. The pilot is titled Milfay, and if you rearrange the letters, it spells family. And the truth is when we did Milfay, we looked at a period map at the time and I arbitrarily picked Milfay. Id love to say Im really smart, but it was a complete accident and once it happened, people started coming up with a wilder anagram with all these weird mysterious meanings. That kind of freaked me out a little bit.

Whats the meaning of Carnivale with an e'

Its actually a stab at irony. This is a really crappy little carnival and theyre moving to all these crappy little towns.

They just have the spunk to call themselves Carnivale, like theyre fresh from a tour of the continent.

Its basically a European affectation that they put on. It was kind of funny given the circumstances.

Brother Justin believes God speaks to him. Does God speak to you when youre writing'

Theres a word for people like that and that word is crazy [laughs]. No, God did not tell me to write the show, he told me not to [laughs].

Are you religious in real life'

Brown: I was raised in a small town. I went to the church just like Brother Justin. I dont proselytise or scream during the hour, or try to convince anybody of anything else. I just appreciate the simple beauty of it all.

http://www.themidway.org/articles/20040222-1.html - http://web.archive.org/web/20050410203344/www.themidway.org/articles/20040222-1.html - Behind The Scenes
Trapezists Karyne And Sarah Steben by Pamela Sitt, The Seattle Times (February 22, 2004)

But filming the first season of "Carnivale" near Los Angeles proved to be, at times, a bit too close for comfort. "We were stuck together, closer than we've ever been," Sarah says. "When I'm cold and she's warm and if I need to go to the bathroom and she's hungry, what do we do?" Working in television, the twins found, is less than glamorous: "We realized we are in a circus all day long in the sand and the cold," Karyne says. "The waiting (is a challenge). And learning to perform for a little camera we have to make every movement smaller."

http://clancybrownfanclubblog.blogspot.com/2005/01/decoding-carnivale-with-clancy-brown.html

CLANCY: The Lost Gospel of Mathias… William Talbot Smith, and he’s listening to the radio broadcast… Actually, William Talbot Smith actually existed. He was an occultist back in the day.

SHELLEY: Really?

CLANCY: Yeah. And so, somehow, Dan Knauf got ahold of his memoirs or something, and decided to put them in the show.

http://clancybrownfanclubblog.blogspot.com/2003/12/clancy-brown-interview-part-1.html

So, I’m sitting here thinking, how can we have that and have it inform the main point which, we know, is a battle between good and evil, or wonder and reason, or whatever the ultimate confrontation is. And I’m thinking, well, maybe that’s the key… That you write it, you construct stories that become these sort of allegories to the main story. And maybe they don’t give particular clues to it, but you basically see that struggle manifest. And our own story can deliver whatever clues we need.

http://clancybrownfanclubblog.blogspot.com/2004/01/clancy-brown-interview-part-3.html

Beth: Oh, and we have to talk about this, too, since we brought up Apollonia’s rape. What is Brother Justin’s face doing on the Tattooed Man in a few frames in that scene?

Clancy: All I can say about that is that way, way, way, in the beginning, I played the Tattooed Man for an instant. But that’s an old storyline and I don’t think that’s the situation anymore.

Clancy: But I really don’t know… If I’m saying I don’t know, I really don’t (chuckling) I mean, I’m still not sure that Justin is the Avatar of Darkness! I think, at the end of the show, he thinks he’s a deeply sinful man. But I don’t think that’s any different from what he thought before.

Beth: (laughing) Well, I wonder if, in the end, it’s not actually going to turn out to be a battle between the good and evil in each person.

Clancy: Or we’re two parts of the same entity. Yeah, all those theories are valid, at this point, I think. But that’s what’s great about the show. It really… It says it’s about good and evil. It says it’s about black and white, darkness and light, BUT… Is darkness really darkness and is light really light?

Beth: And it’s kind of a motley crew Ben is surrounded by… If these are all the people who are supposed to be on the side of Good, then you’ve got some pretty flawed people on the side of Good, too. We’ve got some pretty dark things going on there.

Clancy: But then there’s that curious thing he says about Wonder and Reason…

Beth: Right.

Clancy: And there’s the idea of Humanity and Divinity…

Beth: Or Order and Chaos…

Clancy: Order and Chaos… There are all sorts of opposites that are not quite as stark as black and white and good and evil, so…

Clancy: Oh, somebody said there was some B-movie pathos, ya know, and all he does is scream and yell. And that’s true, he’s very much a teenager in a lot of ways. He’s a petulant, whiney guy! He reacts very predictably to extraordinary situations. I won’t go so far as to say he was a stereotype of the evil minister, because he certainly wasn’t. But he was definitely not reacting in a sophisticated way, a mature way, to what was going on. He’s a very immature man, at that point. But then, then… he changes. He changes from the time he imagines jumping off the bridge, that’s when it starts to go. Actually, from the time he leaves the burned out church. He’s sitting there railing at God, “Tell me what you want me to do! Tell me what you want me to do!” It’s like a little teenager yelling at their parents, (angry teen voice) “Just tell me what you want me to do! You’re not being clear” Well, you gotta learn that on your own. I’m not tellin’ ya!

[edit] Conception and production facts

[edit] Use for later

http://www.carnycon.com/bally/adrienne.html

Beth: Thanks for telling us about it! The one thing that was surprising to me, and I thought, at the time, it must have something to do with the way they photograph the show… When you see Brother Justin in his preacher outfit, it's all black with a white shirt. But when you see Clancy standing there in it, it's actually a light yellow shirt. And I wondered if it's light yellow so they can adjust the color one way or another to give the show that almost sepia, old photograph look to it?

Adrienne: Well, that's interesting. He talks about some of that in here. He talks about the post production producer Todd London, and the finish color timer Pankaj Bajpai at Encore Hollywood, and their work being crucial to the look of "Carnivale." He says, "They have helped bring out the distinctive color palette that is one of the trademarks of the series. They work very hard to de-saturate the colors just enough, and suppress the bright blue Southern California skies and green vegetation. The Carny world is muted, dusted, desperate in tone, and this is contrasted with the world of the preacher, Brother Justin, who is building his congregation in California. And so the colors there are a bit deeper and cleaner."

[1]

Not as easy to categorize is "Carnivale," which weaves a multilayered tapestry of stories that threads together science fiction, history and religion.

"This is not a traditional TV series by any stretch of the imagination," he said. "We're telling a complicated story in a very elliptical, unusual fashion. We're setting the bar pretty high for the audience."

"All that narrative is difficult to explain in print," Monroe said. "For many of our series, we usually have a little more print and outdoor elements."

http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=interviews&id=1255

DK: Carnivale is deeply layered and requires the viewer's full attention. Not only did they pay close attention, but they seemed to relish the demands of the narrative.

DK: Carnivale is a "tip of the iceberg" story. We have a detailed, fully developed mythology, rules and backstories for all the characters, but we use those as a foundation rather than part of the visible structure. We learned to trust that the buried details would surface in their own time, that the story would unfold organically, without the sense that the writers are giving it the whip.

Knauf: I think you could watch Season Two on its own and enjoy it, but I don't think you'd experience it with the depth of satisfaction of someone who had watched Season One.

Knauf: The theme of Season One was Discovery. Ben Hawkins and Brother Justin discover what they are. Both are reluctant. Both are a bit horrified. Both deny it. But in the end, they learn to accept it, if not embrace it. Season Two is about Engagement. I'd say more, but I don't want to spoil things.

http://www.centimes.demon.co.uk/Fragments/carnivaletcatranscript.html

KNAUF: Well, one of the characters is a minister, but-yeah, I mean think religion is a theme that comes through in it because it was important in the time. And, we're really what we're talking about is hearts and minds and people trying to really gather souls, and you can't do that without some sort of religious subtext.

MOORE: And I think also it's integral to sort of the basic mythos of the show--beyond organized religion, in sort of the minister character, and sort of the more surface aspects of "The Word"--I think the roots of the show are eternal. They are the struggle of light and dark, and good versus evil, and it does examine questions of faith, and it does examine, sort of, the nature of man. It's not afraid of sort of exploring that terrain, which I think is sort of an interesting thing to tackle on television.

(Knauf) Also, I think our conceit in this is that, you know, arguably what we say in this is this is the last great "Age of Magic," and once we, as a species, created and managed to harness "The Bomb," that was the beginning of the Age of Reason. And you could argue at that point, God sort of gave us the car keys and said, "You're on your own," but up until that moment, there was such a thing as magic. That's the conceit of the show.

Making Carnivale S1 DVD

(stahl) This whole thing is about self-realization and becoming aware of these powers and learning to harness them, and the implications of this battle between good and evil.

AM: Iris has been aware since she was a little girl that her brothers has powers, but she believes he is here for a real reason. [...] I love my brother more than anymbody in the world and I would do anything for him.

CD: She [Appy] basically is the one with the powers and I channel that.

PB: Whenever Lodz approaches a situation or a person, he can see pretty much what the future of that situation is.

Rita sue: At that time, I don't think that a lot of husbands even saw their wifes naked. But during the depression, I think it's a good way to make a living.

Samson: A lot of people, if it were not for the carnival, they may have found no place in this world at all.

Ruthie. "Freaks" were sort of the celebrities of the time. They had more money than most epeople furing the depression, because people paid to see them.

Terry Dresbach, costume designer: It's a really stark period. You don't see that in America very often, in any historical context. We really tried to convey that through the clothes as much as possible. Everybody's filthy and ragged. [..] Once you add about four pounds of dirt and shred it up a little bit, it's ready for camera. There's a lot of glamour

http://www.hbo.com/carnivale/behind/clancy_brown.shtml

HBO.COM: The story seems to have a lot of ambiguity to it. Does any character really know who he is?

CLANCY BROWN: No. Even to themselves. None of these characters are really what they seem. And none of 'em really know who they are - or the role that they are playing. All of them seem to be aware that they are players in some drama. But, that makes sense, in a way, because it's a carnival. And things are never what they seem, even to the to the denizens of the carnie.

http://www.hbo.com/carnivale/behind/michael_anderson.shtml

HBO.COM: Is Samson a mentor for Ben?

MICHAEL J. ANDERSON: Well, Ben is really caught up in greater powers But he's sort of lost and confused. He doesn't know really who he is, or why he has any of these abilities. And neither does Samson But, because they share that degree of confusion, they're able to piece it out together, sharing and comparing what information they have been able to gather So, he's not so much a mentor that reveals the secret so much as he provides a way to discover the secrets.

HBO.COM: And does that feeling hold true for the other characters, the freaks, as well?

MICHAEL J. ANDERSON: Exactly, if it not for the carnival, a lot of these people may have found no place in this world at all So I think they cling to the carnival and to each other. It's a clinging to survival; it's a clinging to life.

AC ATBISO
  • DK - I know when we cast them, we wanted to get women that didn't look like beautiful strippers. We wanted to get women who looked period-correct. No cosmetics or surgery allowed.
  •  ?? - And this is one of the first of many very perverse scenes between Brother Justin and Iris.
  •  ?? - It seems in the series that the two of them would hit it off soon. Was that originally in the works? -Dk: I think when I sat down and work on the cahracters, I knew that those two would be drawn to each other, and that there would be a potential love interest but I kept it open. It was sort of like I knew that there would be tension there if we didn't consumate anything and we'd be able to do whatever we wanted to. So the fact we left them sort of doing this dance.
http://clancybrownfanclubblog.blogspot.com/2004/01/clancy-brown-interview-part-4.html

Beth: But instead he goes down there and drags that tubercular drunk out of the Cantina. I thought, wait a minute… Are there no jails with actual murderers and rapists and such he could pick his victim from – some actual vicious, guilty people instead of some poor pathetic drunk?

Clancy: Well, right! But that’s not insignificant, too. That, to me – and again, this is just Clancy talking as fan-boy… That, to me, was the greatest argument for him being a creature of light -- was that he wouldn’t execute someone so pathetic as that to achieve his own ends.

Beth: Right.

Clancy: But then he goes and tries to kill himself, which is a complete copout, and that’s a bunch of crap! We already know that you can’t kill yourself. Justin already tried it, and you can’t do it. So it must be that somebody else has to kill you… There has to be an X-factor involved, and you can’t just do this sort of whimsically, you can’t just kinda escape it. You have to conspire with someone else. And I think that’s why Justin asked Balthus to kill him, cuz he already knows he can’t do it himself. If it really is gonna end, then someone has to do it. Someone has to kill them, cuz they can’t kill themselves.

Clancy: Ya know what she is? She’s (Iris) the anti-Eleanor Roosevelt!

Clancy: Oh, yeah. Though I might have to shut up here pretty soon. You’re asking me questions I don’t have answers for, but I love the questions! And even if I don’t have answers, I’m also formulating theories and everything. And sometimes that line gets blurred as to what I actually know and am telling you and what I’m just speculating on. You can safely say that I’m speculating on about 99% of it.

Clancy: Actually, it was kinda hard at the beginning, cuz you want to steer people away from stuff that’s just wrong, and maybe show off a little bit, and pretend you know something more than you do – and sometimes you do know something more. But then, after like the second week, it became fun just to see what people were coming up with. And many times, people were ahead of the game – like with the TAVATAR/AVATAR… Everyone got that right off the bat!

http://clancybrownfanclubblog.blogspot.com/2003/12/clancy-brown-interview-part-2.html (nothing in here)
http://clancybrownfanclubblog.blogspot.com/2003/11/wirx-decoding-carnivale-call-in-with_19.html

Clancy: Yeah, yeah… I still don’t know what that Tattooed Man is all about. (laughing)

John: The dude is totally buffed. And he raped Apollonia, right? Sophie’s mom, wasn’t that the guy doing her last week in the episode?

Clancy: Yep, yep! He had some tattoos on. So I’m… I’m lost on that imagery. I’m sure there’s some historical reference to it, some… You could probably look up that tattoo and find out what that’s about.

John: Is there anybody on the set, to get off talking about the show specifically for a minute, that you never came in contact with during the filming?

Clancy: No, I didn’t… Of course, I came in contact, but I didn’t really hang out with the carnival people too much. Yeah, I’d see ‘em every now and then.

John: Okay… yeah, that’s what I meant. Did they shoot at the same time they were shooting with you, and you know?

Clancy: Nah, they had the day off when I was filming.

[edit] Clues for BJ's evilness

http://clancybrownfanclubblog.blogspot.com/2003/12/wirx-decoding-carnivale-call-in-with.html

John: And you said to him, “I’m reminded of the phrase, ya know, making a deal with the devil.”

Clancy: “Making a deal with the devil.”

John: And he says, “Oh, I’m not THAT bad!” And you said something like, “No, YOU’RE not that bad…”

Clancy: I said, “No… Of course you’re not….”

John: “Of course you’re not…”

Clancy: I was just joking! (laughing)

John: Tommy, it’s YOU that’s makin’ a deal with the devil! Not me!

John: I like the razor blade Hosts…

John: That’s right. And you’re his (Norman) greatest evil! Ya know?

Clancy: (hesitates) Yeah… Ya know, I was talking with Dan about that, and it might not be “greatest evil.” That might not be sorta the tag line to those little trips into the subconscious that we take.

And then that was the, ya know… You had the black contact lense

Myth&Magic

Michael Strang: Trees are really open to symbolic manifestations. It's got it's root in the soil, its leaves reaching to the sky. And so, darkness reaching for light. You haev the Tree of Life, Tree of Knowledge. the Branching of the trees. The dark heart dwelling within the tree.

Knuaf: It's the tree of good and evil. It's that tree at the centre of the garden. It's one of the iconic things, a dead twisted tree like that. There's a meaning there, and I really think that was really what promted me to place it on the chest. This is where you will build your empire. This is what it all boils down, is this tree. And it just had a certain power.

"Iris was first born, she's about six years older than Justin, so she is the protective older sister. Since she's the child of an avatar, she has avatar blood in her, but only first-born males can be avatars as far as anybody knows, so she's what's called a vectori, where she carries the blod, so, you know, her children will have blood as well, and if a dydnasty dies out, a new avatar can pop up somewhere out of a family that has avataric blood within it. So at some point when a mother gives birth to an avatar, she ebcomes crazy. Something to do with the power of the avatar, something renders the mother barren and insane."

[edit] Avatar

http://www.mooncross.net/carnivale/transcripts/chat_knauf.html

fboffo_DKnauf: Anybody can kil an Avatar. Even you and me.

fboffo_DKnauf: continue, The Avatara have always been male.

fboffo_DKnauf: But it IS operative from birth. And, like I said, bse nature can be subverted or overidden by free will.

http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/CarnivaleHBO/message/18955 (http://boards.hbo.com/thread.jspa?threadID=22283&start=75)

The dagger broke because it didn't strike in the bough of the tree tattoo, 'where the black heart beats." There was only one place where Ben could strike a killing blow, and he missed it the first time.

http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/CarnivaleHBO/message/11906 Feb 21, 2005 transcript from a chat daniel knauf attended at the carnycon.com website

  • [fboffo_DKnauf] Just because you're an avatar doesn't mean you'll be particularly good at it.
  • [fboffo_DKnauf] Remember, they're half human.
  • [fboffo_DKnauf] Even avatars can be underachievers.
http://carnivaleinterviews.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_archive.html March 08, 2004 Knauf Beth

Dan: Any theory that has anything to do with determinism is probably false. And I don’t want to ruin anybody’s day, but free will is absolutely critical to our storytelling here. Everybody makes choices. Nobody’s destiny is spelled out.

Beth: So right up until the end, you have a choice.

Dan: Absolutely. And that includes… The whole idea of being born a creature of light and a creature of darkness, yeah, that’s all about potential. The man may be very different from the blood.

http://www.savecarnivale.org/html/carniecast_071705.htm

DK: Ben's mom went crazy because she carried an Avatar to term.

http://www.hbo.com/carnivale/behind/daniel_knauf2.shtml

DK: Everything's a choice. Free will is such a huge part of this, and not all the choices are gonna be the right ones.

http://www.mooncross.net/carnivale/transcripts/chat_knauf.html

fboffo_DKnauf: muse, He does have the soul of an angel. As for the knife, you or I could use it.

not used
  • The mantle cannot be passed on to anyone else later.[2]
  • The blood of a Prince becomes Vitae Divina (blue blood) upon rising to the level of Prophet. -->
Known by a thousand names in a thousand books,[3] the true function of the Usher has not yet been revealed.[4]
  • When Avataric and human natures coincide, the Avatar will work well towards the goal of his House.[5]
  • This does not make the mortal of the avataric Blood, but does give them additional abilities.[6]
  • Though mortal, Avatars are tougher and more resilient than normal humans.[4] Injuries from such a weapon never fully heal.[7]
  • As Avatars are recognized as "other" by their fellow man, they are often subject to brutality and cannot expect to live very long.[6]

[edit] Scudder

http://www.mooncross.net/carnivale/transcripts/chat_knauf.html

fboffo_DKnauf: The Templars were always only tangetically connected to the plot.

MckeeLJS: Dan please elaborate on the snake biting ritual with Scudder and kerrigan

fboffo_DKnauf: McKee, the ritual was one which granted Scudder access to the truth of his destiny. Plus, what we shot was aLOT grosser than what you saw, but the network pussy's made us cut it.

http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/CarnivaleHBO/message/18955 (http://boards.hbo.com/thread.jspa?threadID=22283&start=75)

He (Scudder) attempted to defy his destiny. He went into hiding because he feared Belykov would kill him and/or those he loved.

Appy was keeping the creature Sofie saw in the shed at bay. In other words, Appy was shielding Sofie from her own true self all of those years.

Question: If Scudder was a COD, why was he involved with the Knights Templar. And why did Iris say that her father was an evil man?

Answer: Scudder was a member because he wanted access to their knowledge and library. And all Iris knows about her father is what her mother told her. And we all know that, as the birthmother of an avatar, Pleminia was BATSHI*!

[edit] Ben and Sofie

http://www.savecarnivale.org/html/carniecast_knauf.htm

Allison_CarnyCon: Why did ben whisper 'sofie' in the cornfield when he was about to be killed by justin. was it because ben was worried about the woman he loved or was there more to it than that?

fboffo_DKnauf: Yes, and yes, Allison.

ilovecarnivale: Was Sopie and Ben ever going to meet up with each other and be in the end?

fboffo_DKnauf: love, yes.

http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/CarnivaleHBO/message/18955 (http://boards.hbo.com/thread.jspa?threadID=22283&start=75)

Question: Do Ben and Sofie love each other?

Answer: Yes, more than life itself.

[edit] Reviews

[edit] Characters

  • And we can't really blame the characters for being miserable.[8]
  • off-the-wall characters[8]
  • brought to life with picturesque cinematography and top-tier acting,[8]
  • He sprinkled enough magical gifts over the carnival's cast of mind readers, fortune tellers, snake charmers, catatonic psychics, conjoined twins, bearded ladies and lizard men to make the bizarre and the macabre appear just about routine.[9]
  • He hints at his feelings about much of television in a line early in the first episode of Carnivale. Tarot reader Sophie, who channels the insights of her psychic but catatonic mother, Apollonia, tells Ben that the people in the towns they visit are "sleepwalkers". "What we do is to wake them up," she says. Says Knauf: "Audiences are just starving for something different. If we think about sleepwalkers, there's sleepwalker TV, that even if it's well done they're still just bad guys, good guys, cops and doctors."[9]
  • Knauf blurs the edges of "good" and "bad" guys from the first few minutes of the series, and forces viewers to confront preconceptions about how heroes should look or behave. Ben Hawkins, ostensibly the hero of the piece, arrives at his destitute and dying mother's house in the first scene with a leg iron and chain still dangling from an ankle. [9]
  • By the end of the episode, Knauf has not let slip any clues how and why it got there. He paints Hawkins as a taciturn hero, repelled by the appearance of the "carnies" and initially hostile and suspicious of them and their bohemian ways.[9]
  • Conversely, the starchy preacher, Brother Justin Crowe (Clancy Brown), whose story plays out in parallel to Hawkins, but whom we increasingly feel is due for some End of Days-style confrontation with him, appears a pillar of his Californian community, and a leading moral light.[9]
  • The tension between the way these two characters appear, and what we, and they, gradually discover to be their true natures is built steadily, and cleverly. Some of the most arresting grabs used to build atmosphere are the repeated flashes of Hawkins' grotesque dreams.[9]

[edit] Ben

  • and that Ben perhaps has a few too many tragedies piled on him for one day,[10]
  • We are led to believe that Hawkins, quiet and hard working, but unable or unwilling to make many friends, is destined for greatness.[8]
  • Some of the big puzzle in "Carnivale" involves Ben's parentage. He met the carnies coincidentally, but his family tree is rooted among these strangers who move from town to town, offering citizens a night of decadence. When he's not engaging in reticent flirtation with Tarot card reader Sofie (Clea DuVall), he's pursuing leads about his own past.[11]

[edit] Sophie

  • While I feel Sophie’s attack was very contrived,[10]

[edit] Justin

  • As Justin, Brown is a plus, too, preaching with an uncomfortable degree of passion.[11]

[edit] Premise / pilot / perceived future

  • [pilot] as a whole this sets up the course of the show nicely, while leaving many, many questions to be answered in future episodes.[10]
  • The premise is so unusual, and has the potential to be truly creepy.[10]
  • Carnivàle could be one of the greatest feats of the history of television, depending on what's in store as the show continues.[12]

[edit] Negative

  • While I don’t see this as being a water cooler show, or a huge ratings success,[10]
  • The only drawback to the show, which is entirely a matter of personal taste, is the fact that Carnivàle is not for those with a short attention span; the story is slow and takes its time. In fact, in the first 12 hours, not much more than character development is presented.[13]
  • If there's to be a major complaint, it's that we're still left with a lot of questions when the first season of Carnivale draws to a close.[8]
  • Despite my glowing review, Carnivàle is not for everyone. It's frustratingly ambiguous, and the dark overtones, religious references and strong content could alienate a number of viewers.[12]
  • The weakest element is the dialogue, which is merely purposeful and plain, although, with a plot this baroque, simplicity is probably the best way to go.[10]
  • But in its effort to be important, the series is diminished.[11]

[edit] Cult following / Audience / Fandom

  • I do envision this as having a strong and loyal cult following[10]
  • The series was cancelled a year ago, and the message boards on Yahoo are still active with over 6,000 members. The last 20 posts dealt directly with fan debates over the mythology behind the show, the meaning of good and evil, and the birth of a fan's baby. There is a file floating around the internet entitled "The Gospel of Knaufias" which attempts to piece together a kind of "bible" fans can use as a companion guide. Just two weeks ago there was a live fan convention called CarnyConLive, where a majority of the actors from the show turned out and fans were actually able to meet their favorite characters as well as the writers and artists that made this show such a phenomenon.[14]
  • More adventurous viewers that are looking for a world of magic in which to lose themselves could not ask for something better, though, and there is also the promise of a lot more to come. This could very easily become one of the coolest cult series in the history of television,[12]

[edit] Mystery / Good and evil

  • However, the incredible mystery and occasional shocking moments of supernatural power will keep you riveted.[13]
  • * One of the things that makes Carnivàle so fascinating is its refusal to make put anything into black and white terms. In a story of a carnival, it would make sense to either focus on the real magic behind the scenes, or else use Ben Hawkins as a way to expose the trickery behind the process. In an epic tale of good vs. evil, it would make sense to draw the battle lines early, and demonstrate the difference between the good and evil characters. Fortunately for us, series creator Daniel Knauf is much more creative than that. There is a lot of trickery going on in the carnival, as Ben quickly discovers. The carnies use all of the classic tricks to pull money from their gullible and desperate audience. However, there are also mysterious powers at work here, perhaps more than most of them could possibly imagine. As well, even by the end of this first season it's unclear which of the two major characters is good, and which is evil. As in the carnival itself, many things are left to the imagination and speculation at this stage.[12]
  • Jerking between flashes of World War One trench warfare, strange body parts, a tattooed torso running through a jungle, another man running for his life, they are among the production's most filmic, and craftily unsettling moments.[9]
  • Happily for Daniel Knauf, and despite his fascination with all things bizarre and apocalyptic, he says his own dreams are not filled with images such as these.[9]

[edit] Story

  • which hopefully will be what HBO expected when it green lighted a show about a dust bowl carnival full of freaks with superpowers.[10]
  • Those that can appreciate a slowly building story that you know will pay off eventually (as there is always the ‘final showdown between good and evil’) will love Carnivàle.[13]
  • I read somewhere that someone called it the “period drama for people who don't normally like period drama.”[13]
  • The show certainly dazzles with unpredictable plot twists and scares with disturbing themes and imagery.[8]
  • Even before the first plot point drops, however, viewers are warned to brace themselves for myth and allegory. To each generation was born a creature of light and a creature of darkness, Samson, a dwarf played by Michael J. Anderson, who had a small part in Twin Peaks, says in an introduction. And great armies clash by night in the ancient war between good and evil.[15]
  • Mr. Knauf seems in the thrall of the apocalyptic, though sometimes the language can seem less like Scripture and more like an old Star Trek script. There was magic then, nobility and unimaginable cruelty, Samson intones. So it was, until the day that a false Sun exploded over Trinity. And Man forever traded away wonder for reason.[15]
  • The story is actually very basic. No adventure can proceed without a romance and a quest. Ben rescues Sofie, the daughter of a creepy catatonic fortuneteller, from an an attack, setting off a love-hate relationship that could be dragged out for many episodes. And propelled by weird dreams and scraps of memory (soldiers in the trenches of World War I, a tattooed man running through a jungle, a legless boy, etc.), Ben searches for the father he apparently never knew.[15]

[edit] Season 2

  • In contrast to the first season, the second chapter of Carnivale is rarely meticulous, let alone tedious. With so many plot points to explore and some truly chilling sequences along the way, season two races with Knauf's vision and never hits the brakes. The problem is that the storyline eventually smashes into a brick wall - not one planned by the writers, but one thrown into the show's path by HBO, which decided not to renew Carnivale for a third season. The series does have an epic meeting and much is learned, but when the curtain falls there is no satisfying closure, only lingering questions. Thing is, even without a traditional conclusion, Carnivale is still better fantasy - better entertainment, period - than any show that dares to call itself a competitor.[16]

[edit] Style

  • Except that Carnivale doesn't follow any formula. In fact, you might say that it successfully bucks the cliches and trends that so commonly soil many of today's most popular television franchises. Perhaps this is because HBO isn't afraid to take a chance on something different. [8]
  • Whatever the reason, there is some compelling, if disturbing entertainment to be found lurking beneath the dust in the show's 12-episode first season.[8]
  • From the opening sequence to the fade out on episode 12, Carnivale successfully draws you into the Depression-engulfed world of its many oddly likeable characters.[8]
  • The show certainly dazzles with unpredictable plot twists and scares with disturbing themes and imagery.[8]
  • Carnivale is both an entertainingly surreal and refreshingly original series.[16]
  • The second season of Carnivale is much better than the first, further defining characters, separating heroes from villains, and aligning the paths of two conflicting factions in a suspenseful showdown.[16]
  • As a result, season two moves at a quicker and more calculated pace, which makes for a much more captivating watch.[16]
  • When outlining the plot it's easy to see this as a typical hero's journey, but there is something much more than that going on when you watch an episode of Carnivale, its the way these stories are executed. Almost every frame is a perfectly balanced still photo of a different, more magical and passionate time in America.[14]
  • I think the most important thing that separates the wheat from the chaff in this show is that Mr. Knauf and the other writers have pushed the boundaries of those preconceived ideas.[14]
  • It perfectly captures the look and feel of the Dust Bowl during the depression, and its strange cast of characters is unusual and compelling.[12]
  • Carnivàle is not a would-be Ingmar Bergman film, or a homage to Fellini, despite its creators' more artsy cinematic touches. It isn't even a Dust Bowl version of Twin Peaks, though some of the more bizarre imagery and characters echo that television series by David Lynch.[15]

[edit] Interpretation

  • The writers also like to use mystifying dream sequences, and each episode is punctuated with anarchic imagery from the restless sleep of Ben and Brother Justin.[11]
  • The show doesn't make it clear which character plays for the light team and which is standing up for darkness, but the two men seem to be moving toward an explosive, biblical confrontation of some kind.[11]
  • the show isn't interested in being merely a human-scaled metaphor; it has its sights set on major allegory.[11]
  • Like Angels in America, Carnivale deals with some of the Big Questions through a range of often harsh, and unpalatable, scenarios, and its cast features a quirky variety of non "underwear models". But unlike Angels, there are no household names or Oscar winners in Carnivale's line-up, a fact that would have made the project an even more risky prospect for the network that eventually backed it, the boutique cable service HBO.[9]

[edit] Cinematography

  • brought to life with picturesque cinematography and top-tier acting,[8]

[edit] Depression

  • Dust and depression are still rampant as the traveling Carnivale makes its way through America. [16]
  • Although there are many things that Carnivàle gets right, its most impressive accomplishment is its historical positioning in the Depression. The situation of the area during this time period informs every other aspect of the series. Desperate times bring strange things out of the woodwork, among them the quest of the characters to find some sort of comfort in both the superstition of the carnival troupe and the assurances of the church. This belief in magic became suddenly important again, as the confidence that came with the 1920s suddenly began to fall apart. Likewise, church quickly began to take on apocalyptic overtones, bringing paranoia and fear to a generation of churchgoers. The series also looks back to World War I, the conflict that forever changed our understanding of the nobility and honor of battle. It also looks ahead to the explosion of science over the course of the following generation, which replaced for many that need for superstition and religion with the promises of technology and consumerism. Each detail in the series has been deliberately placed in order to capture the tone and ideas of the time.[12]

[edit] Feeling

  • I'm not sure how to do this prematurely cancelled series justice,[14]

[edit] Outside / Other entities / HBO

  • HBO has come to be known for its unique voice in the television world, and this may be its most refreshingly different offering to date.[12]
  • When you see interviews or hear the commentary tracks by Daniel Knauf, it's obvious that he has really taken the time to plan the series. Most shows are structured tenuously, unwilling to hold off on some plot point because the show could be canceled at any time. On the flip side, many later seasons of shows feel poorly scripted, as though the story is continuing because the fans want more, not because it was designed to run that long. Everything in Carnivàle feels deliberate and planned, and I have no doubt that the series will continue to blossom into one of the most compelling and valuable offerings ever to be produced on television.[12]
  • What can freaks teach us? "That there are more of us than there are of them. We are the freaks. Inside I think we are all freaks: we all feel alienated and distanced. As a viewer, I feel more in common with the freaks than with Jennifer Aniston."[9]
  • Knauf says so-called "freaks", people born with striking physical anomalies, have always interested him, and it is a fascination that probably grew from having a father confined to a wheelchair by childhood polio.[9]
  • "People defined him by that disability, it all had to do with the wheelchair," says Knauf. "One of the beautiful things about Tod Browning's work in Freaks is, five seconds after being shocked or even repulsed by their appearance you stop seeing it, and just start taking them as a person. That's what I wanted to play with, and hope I was successful with it."[9]
  • Knauf, a practising Catholic, says his writing has always been concerned with dark themes, and realises this has made the ideas more difficult to sell in an era when American television is preoccupied with "cops, lawyers and doctors". The success of shows such as Angels and Six Feet Under (set around an undertaking business) proves audiences are desperate for variety.[9]

[edit] Influence

  • Knauf, a big fan of dark-side directors such as Stanley Kubrik, Tim Burton, Tod Browning and David Lynch,[9]
  • Knauf cites The Lord of the Rings author, J R R Tolkein, as well as mythology, as influences on his writing. His preoccupation with the "final battle" of good and evil comes through in the somewhat oblique introduction to the piece, spoken by the diminutive ring-leader of the troupe, Samson (Michael J Anderson).[9]


http://www.ata-tarot.com/reflections/11-01-03/carnivale.htm

(Don't bother to order Tarot cards from the program thinking you will get the deck shown in the opening scenes. You will not.)

Major message: nothing is as it seems. Sub-message: This is a story about polarities, which are also so prevalent in the Tarot cards, and yes, of course, in life itself. Not only is the story split into the two obvious camps of good and evil, but it is further polarized into pairs and twinning at every level.

In this polarity pairing, we have the convict who appears to be a criminal and yet turns out to be a healer, and a minister who has some very evil aspects to him when he gets angry.

A battle between good and evil, not only in the world, but inwardly in this two pair of characters. Both Ben and Brother Justin are further linked by the mythological "dark night of the soul" experiences. Brother Justin may well be acting out the archetype of The Devil, but that is not yet clear.

http://www.filmaffinity.com/en/film989259.html

Wrapping its first season in Nov. 2003, CARNIVALE sparked critical raves. Us Weekly called the show "positively addicting," terming it "a magical mystery tour de force," while TV Guide hailed it as "HBO's latest appointment-TV drama." The New York Times described CARNIVALE as "richly imagined," calling the show a "spooky supernatural adventure that tightly entwines magic and the mundane," and Time termed it "magical" and "spectacular."

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=22780

At the time the premiere episode aired, I felt it was almost too much information at once, and watching it again, I tend to agree with myself. What made the first season so great was its slow thoughtful development, but viewers complained, and this episode feels like a direct response to those complaints. That's not to say the premiere is bad on any level, quite the contrary, but it does stand out, and its rapid-fire revelations mark a shift in the manner of storytelling for the series. While later episodes do settle down a bit more into what viewers may be used to, this season is less about establishing mystery and more about the journey to the finish line.

Another area in which the show has changed gears is that there is a decreased focus on the different sideshow attractions and creative carny schemes. A few fun nuggets slip in from time to time, but with the exception of the "Cootch Show" Dreifuss family -- Stumpy (Toby Huss), Rita Sue (Cynthia Ettinger), and Libby (Carla Gallo) -- there isn't a great deal of material dedicated to the inner workings of the carnival itself or those who work there. It's unfortunate that this charming aspect of the first season didn't find its way into this season as much, but in truth, there is so much happening in every episode to further the primary plot that there just isn't room for anything else. On the whole, that is a very good thing, and the scenes with the Dreifuss crew are so great that they would dwarf other subplots anyway.

Fortunately, the faith of those who continued to watch is well rewarded, as the answers delivered throughout this season show that there is a grand story being told that is worthy of our patience. Much has been made about HBO's cancellation and the story threads left unfinished, but it is important to note that the overwhelming majority of this chapter is completed by the series finale,

Still, there is a maddening cliffhanger, and taken in context with Knauf's post-series remarks, it is unbelievably tragic that the rest of the story will not be told. Considering the cost of the show and its dismal ratings, it's impossible to fault HBO -- in fact, they should be praised for giving us a second season when the numbers really didn't warrant it -- but it's still quite painful to know that quality like this is being created by talented and inspired people, and yet it is so rarely embraced by a lazy and disinterested public.

http://www.dvdtown.com/reviews/carnivale-the-complete-1st-season/2523

While the regular networks are concentrating their efforts on creating ´procedural´ crime and medical shows ("CSI" and "Medical Investigations") that offer stories that usually wrap up in one episode, HBO is already an old hand at serials--shows that deftly develop its characters and story throughout an entire season. Literally, these are the shows that seem to consume its audience for months at a time, prodding them to follow each episode religiously, in case, God forbid, they happen to miss something that is discussed at the water cooler the next morning.

"Carnivàle" tells two parallel stories that at first glance, seem to have no connection at all with one other. It alludes the viewer to the fact that the Great Depression and the Dustbowl condition that the country experienced in the 1930s may be the work of something more sinister and supernatural and not man-made. And this is a tale of two individuals who are on opposite sides fighting for and against humanity.

In the first half of the series, the pacing is decidedly slow as the show meanders along at an unhurried pace, with both the main characters, Ben and Brother Justin (and the audience as well), going on a journey of self-discovery.

As viewers will find out as they watch "Carnivàle", the tiniest nuggets of clues are deceptively put out each episode and as the story moves along, each piece of the bigger puzzle becomes clear and how they fit into the overall agenda will slowly but surely become, just as this reviewer found out the hard way, the viewer´s sole obsession.

Creator and writer, Daniel Knauf pegged Season One of "Carnivàle" as one of self-discovery for the characters and one that lays the groundwork for a whole new dimension of stories set to air for Season Two next month.

http://dvd.ign.com/articles/572/572339p1.html

f there's to be a major complaint, it's that we're still left with a lot of questions when the first season of Carnivale draws to a close. The show certainly dazzles with unpredictable plot twists and scares with disturbing themes and imagery.

Goosebumps are inevitable. But while there are truly spectacular moments like these, there are also a couple of episodes where nothing eventful seems to happen. And although by mid-season we understand that every generation there is a creature of light and another of darkness born and both are destined to battle for supremacy, the first season barely explores the idea before it's over. It's a testament, however, to the overall presentation of the supernatural theme, brought to life with picturesque cinematography and top-tier acting, that we can't wait for the next season to start.

The show's breathtaking environments, saturated with dirt and artistically shot so that every scene looks as though it were meticulously storyboarded before the cameras ever rolled, comes to life with a new level of detail. Colors beam.

http://dvd.ign.com/articles/720/720352p1.html

For fans of the Daniel Knauf-helmed show, situations like these border on the ordinary, which is partly why Carnivale is both an entertainingly surreal and refreshingly original series.

The second season of Carnivale is much better than the first, further defining characters, separating heroes from villains, and aligning the paths of two conflicting factions in a suspenseful showdown. But there's also bad news, which is that the series comes crashing to an offensively abrupt end in season two, and since the show will never have a third, viewers will be left wondering what might have happened.

Although still fascinating, Carnivale's first season began slowly and rarely sped up, focusing on an avatar of light named Ben Hawkins who did not want and could not control his powers, and an avatar of darkness named Brother Justin Crowe, who struggled with issues of morality. In the second season, Knauf's storyline brings these characters together and simultaneously illuminates other players and topics that were in season one shrouded in mystery. As a result, season two moves at a quicker and more calculated pace, which makes for a much more captivating watch.

Carnivale envelopes watchers in a convincing, atmospheric world filled with locations that are sometimes hauntingly ugly and occasionally fantastically gorgeous. Whether it's a devastating dust storm, a cornfield, or an apocalyptic vision featuring a nuclear explosion, it looks like it belongs in a top-tier movie and not in a television series. Beautiful cinematography courtesy Jim Denault and a moody score from Jeff Beal propel the visual and aural presentations beyond most television efforts.

In contrast to the first season, the second chapter of Carnivale is rarely meticulous, let alone tedious. With so many plot points to explore and some truly chilling sequences along the way, season two races with Knauf's vision and never hits the brakes. The problem is that the storyline eventually smashes into a brick wall - not one planned by the writers, but one thrown into the show's path by HBO, which decided not to renew Carnivale for a third season. The series does have an epic meeting and much is learned, but when the curtain falls there is no satisfying closure, only lingering questions. Thing is, even without a traditional conclusion, Carnivale is still better fantasy - better entertainment, period - than any show that dares to call itself a competitor.

http://www.ugo.com/channels/filmtv/features/carnivaleseasontwo/review.asp

HBO's Carnivale gained a respectable cult following in its first season, as it promised to be the first television series that came even a little bit close to capturing the dark, quirky mood, tone and characters of David Lynch's Twin Peaks.

Carnivale Season One was beautifully shot, expertly directed and filled with bizarre and engaging characters [...] The story is set in California during the Great Depression, an era that is difficult to recreate on film but which Carnivale does perfectly. The series looks and feels authentic and the actors play the various supernatural goings-on with an almost casual air, making for an engrossing drama that isn't afraid to take its time and unfold slowly.

However, Carnivale Season One lacked story momentum - the 12 episodes seemed like a hodgepodge of character vignettes and thematic introductions rather than a plot that was constantly moving forward. This weakness - and it is a large one - didn't necessarily detract from the enjoyment of the series but did make for some frustration as the writers refused to reveal where they were going - if they even knew at all. Ultimately, the first season seemed like it was a lengthy prologue to a much bigger and more coherent story - much like X-Men was to X2.

http://carnivaleinterviews.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_archive.html March 08, 2004 Knauf Beth

Dan: Yeah, by far. And not only that, but what’s been really frustrating to me -- and I’ll tell ya one thing I would like to… Ya know, and it’s always smart to diss critics… And I won’t. The criticism on the show has been very, very… Even though negative criticism, more often than not, are things I agree with a little bit, at least I understand it. But what I have been a little bit impatient with is the characterization of the show as having gotten “mixed reviews.” I’ve got copies of every review we got, and I’d say that about forty to fifty percent of them weren’t just positive, they were raves, and another twenty percent of them were positives, and then the balance of them were negative. The show was overwhelmingly well reviewed, from the very get-go. It just kinda bugs me when they say “critically mixed” and, ya know… It’s just, to me, I think one person reads that another guy is saying it, and it just becomes a self-perpetuating truth. The critics were fairly supportive of this thing from the beginning. And it bothers me that it seems as though… There was one guy who actually announced that the show was not being picked up.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/TV/09/11/sprj.caf03.carnivale/

Though the show has earned good marks from reviewers, its outlandish characters may prevent it from having the breakout success of other HBO series such as "The Sopranos" and "Sex and the City."

"I think it will get mostly positive reviews but some people will be put off by the general weirdness of the show," Adalian said.

But Adalian's take is mixed. He's not sure audiences will stick with the show. People will "either passionately love it or passionately not know what the hell is going on," he said.

http://www.aintitcool.com/?q=node/16096

TV Guide says: ? one of the weirdest, spookiest and most hypnotizing mind benders since Twin Peaks. � the 12-episode series feels as if John Steinbeck and Stephen King had collaborated on a a hybrid of The Grape of Wrath and The Stand. � Getting there is the fun � Whether we ever figure it all out is besides the point. In Carnivale, the dark is a magical place to be.

The Hollywood Reporter says: Although it can be a tad confusing in the early going, mainly because of some puzzling and violent images from who knows where, those who sit tight are well-rewarded by a stimulating and imaginative work of TV literature. � By and large, the characters are as fascinating as the performances �

Variety says: an absolute visual stunner with compelling freak-show characters - but the series unfortunately takes a leisurely approach toward getting to a point. � Much like Sci Fi's equally creepy "Taken" and, to a lesser extent, "Twin Peaks," the logic of the piece probably won't be clear until the conclusion of the 12th and final episode - if then. �

USA Today gives it three stars out of four and says: You may find its oddity appealing, or you may find it off-putting, but its distinctiveness is unmistakable. Next to Carnivale, Twin Peaks looks like JAG. �Beautifully shot and expertly acted, Carnivale at least in the early going is as much about mood and atmosphere as it is about plot. That might be fine if it were able to maintain that mood, but too often it slips from wondrous to ridiculous. � Though the plot becomes more assertive in the third hour, I'm still not convinced Carnivale has much more than atmosphere to offer.

Entertainment Weekly gives it a C and says: what was HBO thinking' � Unfortunately, Carniv�le appears to be engaged in an age-old battle of its own, between good and boggy drama. � Clea DuVall's character also amazes with her anachronistically postfeminist attitude. � Perhaps the biggest mystery of all is how Carniv�le wound up cast as HBO's next big thing -- the show that would fill Carrie and Co.'s Manolos.

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117925844.html?categoryid=32&cs=1

the series is again intriguing but less than satisfying -- a concept more notable for the unusual time and space the show occupies than what it achieves dramatically.

that it's interesting, just never entirely fulfilling.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,483299,00.html

But it's an unfortunate symbol of why the first three episodes of Carnivale (debuts Sept. 14, 9:30 p.m. E.T.) are as frustrating as they can be spellbinding.

Which of the two magic men is the creature of light, and which is of darkness, is for Carnivale's creator, Daniel Knauf, to know and us to find out ver-r-y slowly.

Carnivale leaves enough loose threads to knit an XXL sweater, and from them it might weave a story that really does defy expectations. But for a show that prides itself on strangeness, it is the most conventional HBO drama in years. If you took away the nudity and profanity from The Wire and Six Feet Under, they still couldn't air on network TV: their morality is too vague, their characters are too complex. Clean up Carnivale, and you'd have something not unlike ABC's spooky Miracles from last season. Carnivale's myth and Manichaeism may lure viewers inside the tent, but weirdness is merely a dime-store novelty. Capturing the ambiguities of life and of people is still the most elusive magic of all.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/news/cult/2004/09/13/14282.shtml

It's clearly got something more than hype going for it - but we're not quite sure what it is.

With so little revealed, it's almost impossible to pass judgment on the show - it's hard to tell if this is just good, or going to be great.

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?id=13501

While it's tempting to draw comparisons to series like Twin Peaks, Carnivàle stands apart with a bold and stylistic vision, bringing a unique perspective to the age-old battle between good and evil.

Part of what makes this carnival so interesting is the way it blends old-fashioned parlor tricks and carny schemes with the genuine supernatural abilities of the performers.

Enhancing the cast of interesting and mysterious characters is the overall production value of the show itself. The creators have remarked that it's quite possibly television's most ambitious undertaking, and it's pretty difficult to argue with that assessment

From set design to costuming to art direction to cinematography, the level of detail that goes into each scene is staggering,

Thankfully, the casting department really hit the nail on the head with these actors. As the two leads, Nick Stahl and Clancy Brown are nothing short of brilliant. Ben Hawkins is a very isolated and quiet character, and yet he carries a significant part of the series on his shoulders. Without the right actor it could be disastrous, but Stahl brings a level of thoughtful emotion to the character such that a glance or a stare speaks volumes. Brown also has a difficult task capturing the duality of Brother Justin, a man who presents a physically intimidating presence but who wants little more than to be a subdued and loyal servant of his Lord, and he succeeds on every level. [...] While there are two clear lead characters, Carnivàle is still very much an ensemble show, and the performances of all the supporting characters are essential to the show's success.

I must admit that this is a very difficult review to write. In many ways, Carnivàle is as maddening as it is fascinating. In fact, at this time, I cannot think of show that demands more from its audience than this one. It demands patience as well as a disciplined attention to detail. Even the smallest scene carries significant importance, and cryptic clues are doled out at a very high frequency. Without paying close attention, it's tempting to assume that the show is unnecessarily cryptic and misleading, but watching these episodes for the second time on DVD, I am confident that this is most certainly not the case.

as well as HBO's track record for mostly only airing a show as long as it remains compelling, not to mention the fact that there isn't the typical padding you find in a show that runs 20+ episodes a year, I do have faith that the second season will continue building on the momentum established in this set and ultimately provide a satisfying resolution. If not, I'll certainly be quite disappointed, as this first season establishes a fascinatingly cryptic and yet oddly coherent canvas, and I cannot wait to see the next chapter of this tale.

Carnivàle is an incredibly ambitious undertaking that demands more from its audience than many are willing to invest. While I found it immensely enjoyable, even moreso on the second viewing where the episodes flow back-to-back like chapters in a novel, I can see how it will not have the same effect on everyone. The world created in this show is often drab and depressing, and the mythology it builds requires a very attentive viewer to avoid getting buried under the intricacies of the story. That said, if you are intrigued by stories about the battle between good and evil, you feel comfortable with a plot that develops with a deliberate and character-driven pace, and you can appreciate one of most impressive visual presentations ever on television, the first season of Carnivàle is an absolutely captivating program, and I Highly Recommend it.

; http://www.empiremovies.com/dvd/reviews.php?id=2150&carnivalethecompletefirstseason.htm

I guess what I'm really trying to say is that Carnivale is the type of show you really have to watch and invest in to understand. The show is about faith - and you've got to have that faith to sit down and give the show your time. And like faith, when you have it, in the end you'll be rewarded for it.

http://filmfreakcentral.net/dvdreviews/carnivale.htm

Sometimes gripping but mostly boring, the other episodes are primarily concerned with who's sleeping with whom under the big top

Flashbacks and repeated dreams become tedious eventually, as does almost every segue to the Brother Crowe/Iris parallel story--which just isn't as interesting, visually or otherwise, as the carny bits. If not for such powerful moments as a funeral that involves a dead carny's compatriots dropping a personal item of theirs onto the corpse before burial (and for the show's aesthetic achievements), "Carnivàle" would just be a twelve-hour tease.

The whole shebang, in fact, feels a lot like a super-extended preview of subsequent seasons of the show, and in playing every bit the introduction to what's envisioned as a healthy run, it demonstrates the usual growing pains of an inaugural year.

And that's what's so frustrating: "Carnivàle" is methodical about the progress of its development to the point that whole episodes go by on a low simmer that feels suspiciously like noodling and filler

http://www.dreadcentral.com/index.php?name=Reviews&req=showcontent&id=1066

Whoever said there’s nothing new under the sun? Originality isn’t dead. People just don’t bother looking for it anymore.

Such is the case with HBO’s "Carnivale", a revelation in television over-shadowed in its day by simple-minded programming the likes of "New York Skanks Discuss Orgasms" and "Improv Movie Industry Show #5." Critics scoffed at the series, throwing around words like "pretentious" and "confusing", while general audiences scratched their heads, opting for reality television and whacky sitcoms. But like every truly great series, "Carnivale" grew and matured, gaining a small cult-sized niche of dedicated viewers that kept it alive for two wonderful seasons; a fan base that will continue to grow with the long overdue release of the second act.

Season One was deliberately paced and took its time to establish every character and story arc. Ambiguity was the name of the game, and at the end of its run viewers were still unsure who was on what side, which made more than a few people impatient.

To do an episode breakdown would be pointless. That would be like reviewing chapters in a book. "Carnivale" is one long, complex story, and if you don’t start from the beginning, you’ll be completely lost. That being said, all the stand-out moments occur this season as the players seize their destinies. Conflicts turn bloody. Ben discovers his family. Justin’s powers take shape. Management’s identity is revealed. The events in this year are truly explosive, and it’s a testament that the series doesn’t lose any of its mystique in the process.

A lot of people may be hesitant to view an unfinished series. It should be noted that the chess pieces do in fact collide in the last episode with a quick and bittersweet showdown (it was never intended to be the finale) that nonetheless gives a satisfying closure to the main story arc. So, yes, patient fans will be rewarded with some resolution by show’s end. That doesn’t mean you won’t be cursing HBO for giving it the axe.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117896254.html?categoryid=1682&cs=1&query=carnivale

Although certainly interesting, "Carnivale" is also unsatisfying and incomprehensible -- like something David Lynch would have made in high school. As for "K Street," just what we needed, a docu-drama hybrid that further blurs the lines between fact and fiction ... badly. That the series caused a stir in Washington is another sign of the political and media elite's disconnect in relation to pop culture.

http://carnivaleinterviews.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_archive.html

Dan: Yeah, by far. And not only that, but what’s been really frustrating to me -- and I’ll tell ya one thing I would like to… Ya know, and it’s always smart to diss critics… And I won’t. The criticism on the show has been very, very… Even though negative criticism, more often than not, are things I agree with a little bit, at least I understand it. But what I have been a little bit impatient with is the characterization of the show as having gotten “mixed reviews.” I’ve got copies of every review we got, and I’d say that about forty to fifty percent of them weren’t just positive, they were raves, and another twenty percent of them were positives, and then the balance of them were negative. The show was overwhelmingly well reviewed, from the very get-go. It just kinda bugs me when they say “critically mixed” and, ya know… It’s just, to me, I think one person reads that another guy is saying it, and it just becomes a self-perpetuating truth. The critics were fairly supportive of this thing from the beginning. And it bothers me that it seems as though… There was one guy who actually announced that the show was not being picked up.

http://www.filmjerk.com/reviews/article.php?id_rev=134

As a pilot, this sets things up very well. While I feel Sophie’s attack was very contrived, and that Ben perhaps has a few too many tragedies piled on him for one day, as a whole this sets up the course of the show nicely, while leaving many, many questions to be answered in future episodes. The premise is so unusual, and has the potential to be truly creepy. The weakest element is the dialogue, which is merely purposeful and plain, although, with a plot this baroque, simplicity is probably the best way to go. I’m looking forward to this show, and can’t wait to see how the plot elements entwine in future episodes. While I don’t see this as being a water cooler show, or a huge ratings success, I do envision this as having a strong and loyal cult following which hopefully will be what HBO expected when it green lighted a show about a dust bowl carnival full of freaks with superpowers.

http://www.dvdfanatic.com/review.php?id=carnivalefirst

The only drawback to the show, which is entirely a matter of personal taste, is the fact that Carnivàle is not for those with a short attention span; the story is slow and takes its time. In fact, in the first 12 hours, not much more than character development is presented. However, the incredible mystery and occasional shocking moments of supernatural power will keep you riveted. Some – as I – would say THAT is the beauty of the series, and in fact, is nothing short of a grand display of brilliance. Those that can appreciate a slowly building story that you know will pay off eventually (as there is always the ‘final showdown between good and evil’) will love Carnivàle. I read somewhere that someone called it the “period drama for people who don't normally like period drama.” – That sums it up pretty well. It is simply fantastic!

http://dvd.ign.com/articles/572/572339p1.html

And we can't really blame the characters for being miserable.

Except that Carnivale, created by writer and producer Daniel Knauf, doesn't follow any formula. In fact, you might say that it successfully bucks the cliches and trends that so commonly soil many of today's most popular television franchises. Perhaps this is because HBO isn't afraid to take a chance on something different. Or maybe it's just sheer luck. Whatever the reason, there is some compelling, if disturbing entertainment to be found lurking beneath the dust in the show's 12-episode first season.

We are led to believe that Hawkins, quiet and hard working, but unable or unwilling to make many friends, is destined for greatness.

From the opening sequence to the fade out on episode 12, Carnivale successfully draws you into the Depression-engulfed world of its many oddly likeable characters.

If there's to be a major complaint, it's that we're still left with a lot of questions when the first season of Carnivale draws to a close. The show certainly dazzles with unpredictable plot twists and scares with disturbing themes and imagery.

brought to life with picturesque cinematography and top-tier acting,

off-the-wall characters

http://dvd.ign.com/articles/720/720352p1.html

Carnivale is both an entertainingly surreal and refreshingly original series.

The second season of Carnivale is much better than the first, further defining characters, separating heroes from villains, and aligning the paths of two conflicting factions in a suspenseful showdown.

As a result, season two moves at a quicker and more calculated pace, which makes for a much more captivating watch.

Dust and depression are still rampant as the traveling Carnivale makes its way through America.

n contrast to the first season, the second chapter of Carnivale is rarely meticulous, let alone tedious. With so many plot points to explore and some truly chilling sequences along the way, season two races with Knauf's vision and never hits the brakes. The problem is that the storyline eventually smashes into a brick wall - not one planned by the writers, but one thrown into the show's path by HBO, which decided not to renew Carnivale for a third season. The series does have an epic meeting and much is learned, but when the curtain falls there is no satisfying closure, only lingering questions. Thing is, even without a traditional conclusion, Carnivale is still better fantasy - better entertainment, period - than any show that dares to call itself a competitor.

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/05/18/091105.php

I'm not sure how to do this prematurely cancelled series justice,

When outlining the plot it's easy to see this as a typical hero's journey, but there is something much more than that going on when you watch an episode of Carnivale, its the way these stories are executed. Almost every frame is a perfectly balanced still photo of a different, more magical and passionate time in America.

I think the most important thing that separates the wheat from the chaff in this show is that Mr. Knauf and the other writers have pushed the boundaries of those preconceived ideas.

The series was cancelled a year ago, and the message boards on Yahoo are still active with over 6,000 members. The last 20 posts dealt directly with fan debates over the mythology behind the show, the meaning of good and evil, and the birth of a fan's baby. There is a file floating around the internet entitled "The Gospel of Knaufias" which attempts to piece together a kind of "bible" fans can use as a companion guide. Just two weeks ago there was a live fan convention called CarnyConLive, where a majority of the actors from the show turned out and fans were actually able to meet their favorite characters as well as the writers and artists that made this show such a phenomenon.

http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/carnivaleseason1.php

Carnivàle could be one of the greatest feats of the history of television, depending on what's in store as the show continues. It perfectly captures the look and feel of the Dust Bowl during the depression, and its strange cast of characters is unusual and compelling. HBO has come to be known for its unique voice in the television world, and this may be its most refreshingly different offering to date.

Although there are many things that Carnivàle gets right, its most impressive accomplishment is its historical positioning in the Depression. The situation of the area during this time period informs every other aspect of the series. Desperate times bring strange things out of the woodwork, among them the quest of the characters to find some sort of comfort in both the superstition of the carnival troupe and the assurances of the church. This belief in magic became suddenly important again, as the confidence that came with the 1920s suddenly began to fall apart. Likewise, church quickly began to take on apocalyptic overtones, bringing paranoia and fear to a generation of churchgoers. The series also looks back to World War I, the conflict that forever changed our understanding of the nobility and honor of battle. It also looks ahead to the explosion of science over the course of the following generation, which replaced for many that need for superstition and religion with the promises of technology and consumerism. Each detail in the series has been deliberately placed in order to capture the tone and ideas of the time.

One of the things that makes Carnivàle so fascinating is its refusal to make put anything into black and white terms. In a story of a carnival, it would make sense to either focus on the real magic behind the scenes, or else use Ben Hawkins as a way to expose the trickery behind the process. In an epic tale of good vs. evil, it would make sense to draw the battle lines early, and demonstrate the difference between the good and evil characters. Fortunately for us, series creator Daniel Knauf is much more creative than that. There is a lot of trickery going on in the carnival, as Ben quickly discovers. The carnies use all of the classic tricks to pull money from their gullible and desperate audience. However, there are also mysterious powers at work here, perhaps more than most of them could possibly imagine. As well, even by the end of this first season it's unclear which of the two major characters is good, and which is evil. As in the carnival itself, many things are left to the imagination and speculation at this stage.

When you see interviews or hear the commentary tracks by Daniel Knauf, it's obvious that he has really taken the time to plan the series. Most shows are structured tenuously, unwilling to hold off on some plot point because the show could be canceled at any time. On the flip side, many later seasons of shows feel poorly scripted, as though the story is continuing because the fans want more, not because it was designed to run that long. Everything in Carnivàle feels deliberate and planned, and I have no doubt that the series will continue to blossom into one of the most compelling and valuable offerings ever to be produced on television.

Despite my glowing review, Carnivàle is not for everyone. It's frustratingly ambiguous, and the dark overtones, religious references and strong content could alienate a number of viewers. More adventurous viewers that are looking for a world of magic in which to lose themselves could not ask for something better, though, and there is also the promise of a lot more to come. This could very easily become one of the coolest cult series in the history of television,

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407E3DF103BF931A2575AC0A9659C8B63 Twin Peaks)

Carnivàle is not a would-be Ingmar Bergman film, or a homage to Fellini, despite its creators' more artsy cinematic touches. It isn't even a Dust Bowl version of Twin Peaks, though some of the more bizarre imagery and characters echo that television series by David Lynch.

Even before the first plot point drops, however, viewers are warned to brace themselves for myth and allegory. To each generation was born a creature of light and a creature of darkness, Samson, a dwarf played by Michael J. Anderson, who had a small part in Twin Peaks, says in an introduction. And great armies clash by night in the ancient war between good and evil.

Mr. Knauf seems in the thrall of the apocalyptic, though sometimes the language can seem less like Scripture and more like an old Star Trek script. There was magic then, nobility and unimaginable cruelty, Samson intones. So it was, until the day that a false Sun exploded over Trinity. And Man forever traded away wonder for reason.

The story is actually very basic. No adventure can proceed without a romance and a quest. Ben rescues Sofie, the daughter of a creepy catatonic fortuneteller, from an an attack, setting off a love-hate relationship that could be dragged out for many episodes. And propelled by weird dreams and scraps of memory (soldiers in the trenches of World War I, a tattooed man running through a jungle, a legless boy, etc.), Ben searches for the father he apparently never knew.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2003/09/12/carnivale_atmosphere_gets_lost_in_pretentious_new_hbo_series/ (Twin Peaks, Grapes of Wrath)

the show isn't interested in being merely a human-scaled metaphor; it has its sights set on major allegory.

The show doesn't make it clear which character plays for the light team and which is standing up for darkness, but the two men seem to be moving toward an explosive, biblical confrontation of some kind.

The writers also like to use mystifying dream sequences, and each episode is punctuated with anarchic imagery from the restless sleep of Ben and Brother Justin.

Some of the big puzzle in "Carnivale" involves Ben's parentage. He met the carnies coincidentally, but his family tree is rooted among these strangers who move from town to town, offering citizens a night of decadence. When he's not engaging in reticent flirtation with Tarot card reader Sofie (Clea DuVall), he's pursuing leads about his own past.

As Justin, Brown is a plus, too, preaching with an uncomfortable degree of passion.

But in its effort to be important, the series is diminished.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/TV--Radio/Freaking-hell/2004/12/14/1102787083353.html (Twin Peaks)

About four years ago and nearing 40, Daniel Knauf, a Californian health insurance broker, was starting to accept that his hopes of one day leaving the day job and making a living as a screenwriter may have to be shelved.

He had had some success in 1994, managing to get his skewed take on a Western starring a blind gunfighter, Blind Justice, made as a telemovie. But the rest of his attempted films fizzled in the hands of studios, reportedly for being "too damn weird". Knauf, a big fan of dark-side directors such as Stanley Kubrik, Tim Burton, Tod Browning and David Lynch,

He sprinkled enough magical gifts over the carnival's cast of mind readers, fortune tellers, snake charmers, catatonic psychics, conjoined twins, bearded ladies and lizard men to make the bizarre and the macabre appear just about routine.

Speaking from Los Angeles, Knauf says his first draft weighed in at 180 pages, about twice the length of the average feature film. Even then, he says it felt too compressed to do his story justice. He realised this would never be made as a film, and wrote it off as a learning experience.

"Then in the mid-'90s I met a couple of TV writers at a Writers' Guild retreat, and started thinking maybe this is for television. I took the first act and made it into a pilot," says Knauf. Even so he realised having it produced would be extraordinarily unlikely, since he had no contacts in television, and he shelved the project again until four years ago.

"Around the turn of the century my career was just not working out. I was thinking, 'well, I'm going to take one last shot.' I created a website and posted an online resume, and the first act of the Carnivale pilot."

Amazingly, a TV production scout found it and passed the script on. About 12 years after he wrote his first draft, the television writing novice Knauf has a 12-hour series with five Emmy awards on his resume.

Knauf cites The Lord of the Rings author, J R R Tolkein, as well as mythology, as influences on his writing. His preoccupation with the "final battle" of good and evil comes through in the somewhat oblique introduction to the piece, spoken by the diminutive ring-leader of the troupe, Samson (Michael J Anderson).

Like Angels in America, Carnivale deals with some of the Big Questions through a range of often harsh, and unpalatable, scenarios, and its cast features a quirky variety of non "underwear models". But unlike Angels, there are no household names or Oscar winners in Carnivale's line-up, a fact that would have made the project an even more risky prospect for the network that eventually backed it, the boutique cable service HBO.

What can freaks teach us? "That there are more of us than there are of them. We are the freaks. Inside I think we are all freaks: we all feel alienated and distanced. As a viewer, I feel more in common with the freaks than with Jennifer Aniston."

Knauf says so-called "freaks", people born with striking physical anomalies, have always interested him, and it is a fascination that probably grew from having a father confined to a wheelchair by childhood polio.

"People defined him by that disability, it all had to do with the wheelchair," says Knauf. "One of the beautiful things about Tod Browning's work in Freaks is, five seconds after being shocked or even repulsed by their appearance you stop seeing it, and just start taking them as a person. That's what I wanted to play with, and hope I was successful with it."

Knauf, a practising Catholic, says his writing has always been concerned with dark themes, and realises this has made the ideas more difficult to sell in an era when American television is preoccupied with "cops, lawyers and doctors". The success of shows such as Angels and Six Feet Under (set around an undertaking business) proves audiences are desperate for variety.

He hints at his feelings about much of television in a line early in the first episode of Carnivale. Tarot reader Sophie, who channels the insights of her psychic but catatonic mother, Apollonia, tells Ben that the people in the towns they visit are "sleepwalkers". "What we do is to wake them up," she says.

Says Knauf: "Audiences are just starving for something different. If we think about sleepwalkers, there's sleepwalker TV, that even if it's well done they're still just bad guys, good guys, cops and doctors."

Knauf blurs the edges of "good" and "bad" guys from the first few minutes of the series, and forces viewers to confront preconceptions about how heroes should look or behave. Ben Hawkins, ostensibly the hero of the piece, arrives at his destitute and dying mother's house in the first scene with a leg iron and chain still dangling from an ankle.

By the end of the episode, Knauf has not let slip any clues how and why it got there. He paints Hawkins as a taciturn hero, repelled by the appearance of the "carnies" and initially hostile and suspicious of them and their bohemian ways.

Conversely, the starchy preacher, Brother Justin Crowe (Clancy Brown), whose story plays out in parallel to Hawkins, but whom we increasingly feel is due for some End of Days-style confrontation with him, appears a pillar of his Californian community, and a leading moral light.

The tension between the way these two characters appear, and what we, and they, gradually discover to be their true natures is built steadily, and cleverly. Some of the most arresting grabs used to build atmosphere are the repeated flashes of Hawkins' grotesque dreams.

Jerking between flashes of World War One trench warfare, strange body parts, a tattooed torso running through a jungle, another man running for his life, they are among the production's most filmic, and craftily unsettling moments.

Happily for Daniel Knauf, and despite his fascination with all things bizarre and apocalyptic, he says his own dreams are not filled with images such as these. And he hopes the dream that counted, putting the insurance business behind him, will stretch to another three or more series of Carnivale to come.

http://www.ata-tarot.com/reflections/11-01-03/carnivale.htm

(Don't bother to order Tarot cards from the program thinking you will get the deck shown in the opening scenes. You will not.)

Major message: nothing is as it seems. Sub-message: This is a story about polarities, which are also so prevalent in the Tarot cards, and yes, of course, in life itself. Not only is the story split into the two obvious camps of good and evil, but it is further polarized into pairs and twinning at every level.

In this polarity pairing, we have the convict who appears to be a criminal and yet turns out to be a healer, and a minister who has some very evil aspects to him when he gets angry.

A battle between good and evil, not only in the world, but inwardly in this two pair of characters. Both Ben and Brother Justin are further linked by the mythological "dark night of the soul" experiences. Brother Justin may well be acting out the archetype of The Devil, but that is not yet clear.

http://www.filmaffinity.com/en/film989259.html

Wrapping its first season in Nov. 2003, CARNIVALE sparked critical raves. Us Weekly called the show "positively addicting," terming it "a magical mystery tour de force," while TV Guide hailed it as "HBO's latest appointment-TV drama." The New York Times described CARNIVALE as "richly imagined," calling the show a "spooky supernatural adventure that tightly entwines magic and the mundane," and Time termed it "magical" and "spectacular."

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=22780

At the time the premiere episode aired, I felt it was almost too much information at once, and watching it again, I tend to agree with myself. What made the first season so great was its slow thoughtful development, but viewers complained, and this episode feels like a direct response to those complaints. That's not to say the premiere is bad on any level, quite the contrary, but it does stand out, and its rapid-fire revelations mark a shift in the manner of storytelling for the series. While later episodes do settle down a bit more into what viewers may be used to, this season is less about establishing mystery and more about the journey to the finish line.

Another area in which the show has changed gears is that there is a decreased focus on the different sideshow attractions and creative carny schemes. A few fun nuggets slip in from time to time, but with the exception of the "Cootch Show" Dreifuss family -- Stumpy (Toby Huss), Rita Sue (Cynthia Ettinger), and Libby (Carla Gallo) -- there isn't a great deal of material dedicated to the inner workings of the carnival itself or those who work there. It's unfortunate that this charming aspect of the first season didn't find its way into this season as much, but in truth, there is so much happening in every episode to further the primary plot that there just isn't room for anything else. On the whole, that is a very good thing, and the scenes with the Dreifuss crew are so great that they would dwarf other subplots anyway.

Fortunately, the faith of those who continued to watch is well rewarded, as the answers delivered throughout this season show that there is a grand story being told that is worthy of our patience. Much has been made about HBO's cancellation and the story threads left unfinished, but it is important to note that the overwhelming majority of this chapter is completed by the series finale,

Still, there is a maddening cliffhanger, and taken in context with Knauf's post-series remarks, it is unbelievably tragic that the rest of the story will not be told. Considering the cost of the show and its dismal ratings, it's impossible to fault HBO -- in fact, they should be praised for giving us a second season when the numbers really didn't warrant it -- but it's still quite painful to know that quality like this is being created by talented and inspired people, and yet it is so rarely embraced by a lazy and disinterested public.

http://www.dvdtown.com/reviews/carnivale-the-complete-1st-season/2523

While the regular networks are concentrating their efforts on creating ´procedural´ crime and medical shows ("CSI" and "Medical Investigations") that offer stories that usually wrap up in one episode, HBO is already an old hand at serials--shows that deftly develop its characters and story throughout an entire season. Literally, these are the shows that seem to consume its audience for months at a time, prodding them to follow each episode religiously, in case, God forbid, they happen to miss something that is discussed at the water cooler the next morning.

"Carnivàle" tells two parallel stories that at first glance, seem to have no connection at all with one other. It alludes the viewer to the fact that the Great Depression and the Dustbowl condition that the country experienced in the 1930s may be the work of something more sinister and supernatural and not man-made. And this is a tale of two individuals who are on opposite sides fighting for and against humanity.

In the first half of the series, the pacing is decidedly slow as the show meanders along at an unhurried pace, with both the main characters, Ben and Brother Justin (and the audience as well), going on a journey of self-discovery.

As viewers will find out as they watch "Carnivàle", the tiniest nuggets of clues are deceptively put out each episode and as the story moves along, each piece of the bigger puzzle becomes clear and how they fit into the overall agenda will slowly but surely become, just as this reviewer found out the hard way, the viewer´s sole obsession.

Creator and writer, Daniel Knauf pegged Season One of "Carnivàle" as one of self-discovery for the characters and one that lays the groundwork for a whole new dimension of stories set to air for Season Two next month.

http://dvd.ign.com/articles/572/572339p1.html

f there's to be a major complaint, it's that we're still left with a lot of questions when the first season of Carnivale draws to a close. The show certainly dazzles with unpredictable plot twists and scares with disturbing themes and imagery.

Goosebumps are inevitable. But while there are truly spectacular moments like these, there are also a couple of episodes where nothing eventful seems to happen. And although by mid-season we understand that every generation there is a creature of light and another of darkness born and both are destined to battle for supremacy, the first season barely explores the idea before it's over. It's a testament, however, to the overall presentation of the supernatural theme, brought to life with picturesque cinematography and top-tier acting, that we can't wait for the next season to start.

The show's breathtaking environments, saturated with dirt and artistically shot so that every scene looks as though it were meticulously storyboarded before the cameras ever rolled, comes to life with a new level of detail. Colors beam.

http://dvd.ign.com/articles/720/720352p1.html

For fans of the Daniel Knauf-helmed show, situations like these border on the ordinary, which is partly why Carnivale is both an entertainingly surreal and refreshingly original series.

The second season of Carnivale is much better than the first, further defining characters, separating heroes from villains, and aligning the paths of two conflicting factions in a suspenseful showdown. But there's also bad news, which is that the series comes crashing to an offensively abrupt end in season two, and since the show will never have a third, viewers will be left wondering what might have happened.

Although still fascinating, Carnivale's first season began slowly and rarely sped up, focusing on an avatar of light named Ben Hawkins who did not want and could not control his powers, and an avatar of darkness named Brother Justin Crowe, who struggled with issues of morality. In the second season, Knauf's storyline brings these characters together and simultaneously illuminates other players and topics that were in season one shrouded in mystery. As a result, season two moves at a quicker and more calculated pace, which makes for a much more captivating watch.

Carnivale envelopes watchers in a convincing, atmospheric world filled with locations that are sometimes hauntingly ugly and occasionally fantastically gorgeous. Whether it's a devastating dust storm, a cornfield, or an apocalyptic vision featuring a nuclear explosion, it looks like it belongs in a top-tier movie and not in a television series. Beautiful cinematography courtesy Jim Denault and a moody score from Jeff Beal propel the visual and aural presentations beyond most television efforts.

In contrast to the first season, the second chapter of Carnivale is rarely meticulous, let alone tedious. With so many plot points to explore and some truly chilling sequences along the way, season two races with Knauf's vision and never hits the brakes. The problem is that the storyline eventually smashes into a brick wall - not one planned by the writers, but one thrown into the show's path by HBO, which decided not to renew Carnivale for a third season. The series does have an epic meeting and much is learned, but when the curtain falls there is no satisfying closure, only lingering questions. Thing is, even without a traditional conclusion, Carnivale is still better fantasy - better entertainment, period - than any show that dares to call itself a competitor.

[edit] DVD reviewers' opinions (not so reliable)

[edit] medium

Ben slowly but surely discovers that he has supernatural powers, including the ability to raise the dead, and that he's somehow linked to the menacing Brother Justin Crowe (Clancy Brown), a preacher who's also discovering his own powers. The two have never met, except in dreams, and we're on the road to an eventual showdown of good vs. evil. [...] The conflict here seems much more concrete, and the two central characters have a much clearer idea of where they're going - or where they think they're going.[17]

They [HBO] are able to tell stories in a far deeper way, targeted for an audience with more than a modicum of intelligence and attention span. [...] This is an atmospheric tale with a theme as old as time, the clash of good and evil. [...] As the opening of the first episode explains there is born to each generation a man of light and one of darkness. While the identities of these two are not kept a secret for long the enjoyment comes not from the audience discovering their identities but the self realization of the characters. [...] Both men are plagued by dreams and begin to discover they have supernatural abilities. A traveling carnival is the perfect way to present this story. Like the carnival the plot never takes a direct line to its exposition, it meanders, rover around giving up pieces of it gradually. [...] He plays his role as a somewhat confused young man, desperate to discover his past and understand why he is able to perform the miracles he is able to do. He can heal but there is a price, the life is taken from whatever is nearby. [...] (repeat monolog)[18]

The theme was one that is as old as story telling, the ultimate clash between absolute good and evil. Two main stories were driven towards each other, slowly, with purpose and impact. On the side of good is Ben Hawkins (Nick Stahl). [...] He was also the ‘Prince’, an avatar of great power who could heal and even resurrect by drawing life from his surroundings. Ben was his generation’s ‘creature of light’, destined to save the world from the ultimate evil. That evil came in the form of Brother Justin Crowe (Clancy Brown). On the surface Brother Justine was a minister but he used that guise to hide the fact that he was the ‘creature of dark’ whose purpose was to bring the world to a fiery destruction. He had the ability to create a vision that would show a person their greatest sins, usually forcing him to bend to the will of Justin. As Ben strikes out from the carnival to find his father, Henry 'Hack' Scudder (John Savage) and discover the mystery of his powers and fate Brother Justine is building an army or the displaced. [...] Also present in the carnival is Sophie (Clea Du Vall), a tormented young woman who is able to mentally communicate with her paralyzed mother Apollonia (Diane Salinger). As the season reveals she is bound by blood to the coming conflict and try as she does is unable to prevent her part in the end game. [..] If Ben is to bring her back to life then a human life must be taken in exchange. This brings out the secondary theme of the series, fate versus free will. Ben has the ability to save his friend but the cost is one that he is not easy with. This leads to his quandary over what he discovers is to be his fate, save mankind. [...] He is driven to find Scudder and uncover his past and understand his future, Ben is also initially unable to accept his power and the part he has to play. Standing at 6’ 3’ Clancy Brown has played many a towering and powerful villain. In this series he is at his best. [...] Daniel Knauf created a rich and wonderful complex world with this series. There is a whole mythology created, one that is parsed out to the audience in tauntingly delightful little pieces. [...] This is a series that requires a commitment from the audience but your patience will be richly rewarded. [...] Knauf also balances the typical fight between good and evil with a fantastic twist, destiny versus free will. While most of the characters have destiny to fulfill they are also plagued by their free will. For example, Ben wants to do what is right but there are times that doubt and hardship almost overwhelm him. [...] (repeat monolog)[19]

Daniel Knauf’s epic weaves the complex tale of two "avatars" – chosen men who must wage war in the struggle between good and evil. [...] and at the end of its run viewers were still unsure who was on what side, [...] As the season opens, Management informs Ben that he is a soldier for the light, forced to face and kill Justin, The Usher of Destruction. That’s right. What our good Brother mistook for divine intervention was really his own demonic powers.[20]

[edit] uncategorized

  1. ^ Wallenstein, Andrew (August 15, 2003). Marketing HBO's 'Carnivale'. hollywoodreporter.com. Retrieved on 2007-08-05.
  2. ^ Daniel Knauf at Yahoo Carnivale HBO (registration required) (March 23, 2005). Retrieved on 2007-07-28.
  3. ^ Character Management to Ben Hawkins in the episode "Alamogordo, NM": "You have seen the Usher. The tattooed man. [...] Samhain, Necrotus, Khaybet, Lord of Shadows. A thousand names in a thousand books, but they all mean the same. The Usher of Destruction."
  4. ^ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named yahoo_msg12275
  5. ^ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named yahoo_msg33015
  6. ^ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named pitch_summary
  7. ^ Daniel Knauf at Yahoo Carnivale HBO (registration required) (June 10, 2007). Retrieved on 2007-08-01.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k http://dvd.ign.com/articles/572/572339p1.html
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o http://www.theage.com.au/news/TV--Radio/Freaking-hell/2004/12/14/1102787083353.html
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h http://www.filmjerk.com/reviews/article.php?id_rev=134
  11. ^ a b c d e f http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2003/09/12/carnivale_atmosphere_gets_lost_in_pretentious_new_hbo_series/
  12. ^ a b c d e f g h http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/carnivaleseason1.php
  13. ^ a b c d http://www.dvdfanatic.com/review.php?id=carnivalefirst
  14. ^ a b c d http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/05/18/091105.php
  15. ^ a b c d http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407E3DF103BF931A2575AC0A9659C8B63
  16. ^ a b c d e http://dvd.ign.com/articles/720/720352p1.html
  17. ^ http://www.ugo.com/channels/filmtv/features/carnivaleseasontwo/review.asp
  18. ^ Carnivale: Season 1. hometheaterinfo.com (June 30, 2006). Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
  19. ^ Carnivale: Season 2. hometheaterinfo.com (June 30, 2006). Retrieved on 2007-08-31.
  20. ^ Kasch, Andrew (September 8, 2006). Carnivàle: The Complete Second Season (DVD). dreadcentral.com. Retrieved on 2007-07-31.