Carnivale: HBO’s Weirdest Show
HBO has been behind some of the greatest television series of all time, and part of their success is their willingness to take risks on different projects. From crime dramas like The Sopranos, to period pieces like Rome or Deadwood, and even fantasy epics like Game of Thrones. They have never been afraid to try new things when it comes to their original programming, and it’s what has propelled them to the top of the tv market. However without a doubt the strangest show that they have ever attempted is Carnivale.
It’s hard to describe what Carnivale is even about. One the one hand it’s about a traveling carnival show set in Dustbowl America during the 1930’s. But on the other hand, it’s about gnostic mysticism, templar conspiracies, and ultimately the battle between good and evil. Created by Daniel Knauf, the series ran for 2 seasons. The creator had big plans for the series to span 6 seasons and cover a lot of ground while slowly explaining the vast mythology he had written, but ultimately the series was canceled due to low ratings.
Even among HBO fans, Carnivale remains a very niche show. Like my channel has pretty much become dedicated to critically acclaimed dramas at this point, and I’ve gotten maybe 4 comments asking about it. It’s definitely a slept-on series, but it’s also a very interesting show. It’s basically Twin Peaks meets Avatar the Last Airbender, and that alone makes it worthy of exploring in a retrospective. So let’s take a look at Carnivale, the weirdest show HBO has ever done.
Like I said the series follows a traveling carnival as they make their way around Dust Bowl America during the 1930’s. The main character is Ben Hawkins, a mysterious boy who joins the carnival after his mother dies. It’s revealed that Ben has the power to heal people, though this power comes at a great cost. Using his powers to bring back life causes death, and though he doesn’t know why he has this ability, it was no accident that he was picked up by the carnival. The mysterious Management has big plans for Ben, and reluctantly he is caught up in a struggle going back to the beginning of time between the forces of light and the forces of darkness.
The darkness is personified in Ben’s opposite, Brother Justin Crowe, a Methodist priest. Justin is played by the incredible Clancy Brown, most known for voicing Lex Luthor in a bunch of cartoons. Though unaware of his true nature at first, Justin uses his own powers of influence to build a massive religious following intent on bringing an age of darkness into the world. Both Justin and Ben are thus set on a course to destroy each other, and to learn how to master and control their destinies.
One of the things I love about this series is the setting. Dust Bowl America isn’t a common setting in fiction aside from Steinbeck, but the show really nails the aesthetic and the historical accuracy. I love how they are able to make the country look so bleak and creepy, while at the same time highlight the camaraderie between the characters that allowed them to survive such a depressing time.
Speaking of the characters, there are a lot of great ones in the show. My favorite is Samson, the diminutive acting boss of the carnival for the mysteriously never seen Management. Game of Thrones gets a lot of praise for being the first show to have a positive portrayal of a dwarf character, but Carnivale predates that show and had a wonderfully complex character in Samson. Like all the other characters he has his flaws, but he tries his best to balance the needs of his people with what he has to do to serve Management’s greater interests.
However while I’ll praise some characterization like Samson and Sophie, the vast majority of the other carnies are not nearly as developed. Pretty much all the story not devoted to Ben and Justin is instead devoted to the Dreifuss family and Jonesy. And while their story was interesting for a time, it was really frustrating that we never really got to learn about the other members of the carnival. Where was the storyline for the lizard guy or the conjoined twins? Hell even the carnies they do occasionally focus on like Ruth or Lila are underdeveloped.
And even the main characters are hard to decipher at times. Take Justin. He’s the central antagonist of the series of course, and he’s the avatar of darkness and evil. But he’s also supposed to be a human character, just like Ben is a character even though he’s the avatar of light. But it’s hard to understand his character and motivation. Is he evil just because he represents darkness, or is it a matter of individual character choices? Instead of him being evil because of his character flaws, it just seems like he’s possessed by evil because he’s darkness incarnate or something. It makes what could have been a really interesting foil to Ben instead a flat and relatively uninteresting villain.
And that is the big missed opportunity about the show for me. This could have been the Deadwood of dust bowl America, a show about strange but relatable characters in an interesting environment. There was a lot of potential for engaging stories about life in the carnival, but instead the show focuses the majority of the narrative on the mythology behind Ben and Justin and their role as Avatars.
The mythology behind the series was extensive. Creator Daniel Knauf wrote this massive backstory for the characters and the magic, drawing inspiration from gnostic and Hindu mysticism, rolled together with other kinds of occult weirdness. However most of this backstory is never directly stated to the viewer. Instead it’s represented through these surreal visual sequences. Some of the mysteries of the series get directly answered, but a lot more of it is metaphorical and left open to the viewer's interpretation.
However, here is where we get into the big problems of the series. The show was just way too esoteric. Like the mythology of the series does add to the whole mysterious vibe the show is going for, but a lot of the surreal imagery is just indiscernible. Matt Roush of TV Guide called Carnivàle "the perfect show for those who thought Twin Peaks was too accessible". And while I think that Carnivale is actually more easily understandable than Twin Peaks, at least for me, I feel that a lot of the visual sequences don’t actually mean anything. Even the other writers of the show admit that they don’t understand what is happening half the time either.
Now Knauf definitely had a vision for what he wanted to do with the show. After the series was canceled he released an outline of his plans for the series to fans online called The Pitch Document. He planned for six seasons, however instead of each season being an individual story, two seasons together would make up a book, again just like The Last Airbender. The next book would have been about Ben and Justin traveling through Europe looking for magical talismans and dealing with the aftermath of their confrontation, and the final book would have been about world war 2 and the development of the nuclear bomb, something that had been hinted at since the beginning. The ending of the series would have had Ben and Sophie reunite and then intentionally walk into the bomb, ending the cycle of the Avatars and removing magic from the world forever.
But again while this sounds cool, Knauf was just way too ambitious. Instead of writing complete and satisfying seasons, he wrote stuff that will never pay off because he was looking too far ahead. He was so focused on creating this crazy, decade spanning mystery plot, that he neglected the important part of storytelling which is the moment to moment character interactions. It’s rare a show makes it all the way to the end without getting canceled, so it’s important for showrunners to make the episodes they do have as satisfying on their own as possible, as you never know when it might be the end. And given Carnivale’s extremely niche appeal, it was pretty much always destined for the chopping block.
It’s hard for me to recommend Carnivale. On the one hand it’s a deeply unsatisfying show, both because its ambitious storyline will never be finished, and because of the missed opportunities for a real character driven narrative. But at the same time it is also a really fascinating show. It’s the Twin Peaks of HBO, and if you like that style you’ll probably find a lot to love in Carnivale. And for all my problems with the series, there was enough interesting material to make me want to do a retrospective on it immediately after I finished watching it, and that tells you something about the quality.
Either way I hope you’ve enjoyed this retrospective, and stay tuned for more content, coming soon!
