Carnivàle: New Canaan, CA   First Watch 
June 24, 2015 5:14 AM - Season 2, Episode 12 - Subscribe

Samson devises a grand plan; Justin forces Iris to face her fear of heights; Ben performs his most important healings.

Congratulations, adventurer, you've made it to the end of the Carnivale series first watch!
posted by drezdn (6 comments total)
 


Finally, I can comment again! After starting the first watch, somewhere in the first season I started binge watching and didn't want to comment and accidentally spoil something.

I really enjoyed the series, but can accept that its ambition was much greater than its execution. I really wonder if it would have been more successful if it was made much more recently, after the prices of CG came down (plus quality went way up) and the public was used to rambling mystery shows.
posted by drezdn at 9:42 AM on June 24, 2015


I liked the series a lot. Thanks for all your work drezdn.
One thing that did niggle me, and it was really highlighted in this final episode, was how the ressurection/healing power was obtained. At times everything in the general vicinity had the life sucked out of it and at other times just one person was affected.
posted by unliteral at 6:36 PM on June 24, 2015


I think it depended on the level of control the avatar had over their powers. When Ben was first starting out, he had to suck the power from all the living things nearby (plants, fish, etc). After gaining management's knowledge, he had much more control.

Sophie had just came into her powers and so she lacked control.
posted by drezdn at 8:02 AM on June 25, 2015


Ah! That makes sense.
posted by unliteral at 7:13 PM on June 25, 2015


Well, I appreciate fanfare for introducing me to this series when it had slipped by me. But mostly for the superb first season. As with so many shows of this general type, the writers and showrunner seem much better at the mystery than the reveal. But more than that, the bottom seemed to drop out of it in the second season. The writing is weaker and more padded -- notably the Dreifuss family drama takes up massive screen time without progressing the plot, half the other Carnies were quietly given their papers and the rest have nothing to do. And Clancy Brown, so amazing in S1, starts through no fault of his own to ooze cheese in S2.

It was a bad sign when they gave him the solid black eyes thing, a much overused supernatural horror device which I'm pretty sure never happens in S1, and the voice and manner of Management took on a completely different, massively less interesting character. Mainly, everybody just got a lot less interesting. Sophie became a different person. I liked the scary grandma / crazy Deliverance cousins, though, that was a throwback to S1.

I'd recommend S1 to anyone, though, it's some top tv.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:32 AM on July 6, 2015


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