(Season 3, Episode 12)
After watching the series finale of Carnivale, all I could think about was how and why HBO canceled this show. I just don’t understand it. I suppose it had to do with ratings and money, as most of these decisions do, but I’m still pretty pissed. I can only imagine that Daniel Knauff, the creator and brains behind the show, is even more pissed than I am, even all these years later. The show was so richly developed, with an intricate mythology and an obvious long-term plan. I just can’t even imagine having a huge story to tell and being cut off a third of the way through. Hopefully the rest of the story will be told at some point in the future.
“New Canaan”
Well, the finale certainly lived up to expectations. The focus was on the great showdown between Ben and Brother Justin. It was pretty spectacular, complete with Justin hacking through a crowd of people with a scythe and gutting a freshly healed Balthus. Apparently, despite the reverend’s best efforts, the power of Christ did not compel Brother Justin, who ran him through with the scythe.
The final confrontation between Ben and his nemesis happened in the middle of a cornfield, as Ben had dreamed about earlier in the series. Justin ended up dead (for a little while anyway), and Ben was wounded badly. One of the final scenes showed Ben in Management’s trailer, behind his curtain. I’m curious if the wound would have been bad enough to keep Ben in the trailer like Management, or if he was just going to be the power behind the carnival now that everyone knew his secret.
The focus of the show was clearly going to shift focus to Sofie, and I can only imagine what it had in store for her. It seems like the “Omega” was a lot more complicated that I first thought. I had figured that it just meant that she was the last in the line of avatars, and seeing as “creature of light” and “creature of dark” status seemed to alternate by generation, I was figuring that she was going to be like Ben. However, as she shot Jonesy, had her eyes go black, and then raised Brother Justin from the dead at the end of the episode, it seems like there was a whole lot of evil in her. She clearly still had some good, too, though, as she displayed Ben’s powers. It certainly would have been interesting watching how she was going to develop, along with her relationship with Justin.
Perhaps, somewhere, someday we’ll see more Carnivale. I’m not holding my breath though. We still haven’t seen anymore Twin Peaks….
Clacked by Bob Degon
on Jan 27, 2010 @ 12:00 EST5EDT
Yeah I still have no idea why they ever cancelled this show.
FYI, at the very beginning of your post, you called it Season 3, Episode 12. Ya might wanna change that :P
Here is the part that drove ME crazy.
Okay, so Ben drives the blade of his avataric knife deeply into “the dark heart that exists where the branches come together” just as he was instructed to in his vision, and then pushes the rest of the blade all of the way in using the palms of both hands. The handle of the knife has been broken off, so the blade itself is completely embedded in his chest/heart. Then several hours elapse between this scene at night, and the carnies finding Ben collapsed on top of him the next morning, enough time that the entire carnivale has been dismantled and packed onto the trucks.
So I am assuming that an avataric knife wound to the heart of the dark avatar would most certainly be Coup de grâce, ergo, Brother Justin is all the way dead.
Right?
When Ben tries to bring Ruthie back to life he is told by Management that the ONLY way to bring a life back is to take another life, so Ben kills Prof. Lodz.
But in the final scene, Sophie is laying hands on Brother Justin and the cornfield they are in starts dying.
So how is she able to:
1) Start to “heal” him? He is dead
2) “Heal” him around the avataric knife blade that is all the way in his chest/heart. She didn’t have, at the very least, a pair of needlenosed pliers with her.
3) Bring him back to life without explicitly choosing another life to take.
To this day I wish HBO and Knauf would find a way to bring this great show back on air. (I’m wishing the same thing for Rome.) For the life of me I can’t see why HBO moves forward with shows just to cancel them for cost. Its not like they didn’t know what to expect when the show was originally picked up.
HBO doesn’t even list it on their site. They still list Deadwood, Sopranos and 6 ft under. It seems they are disowning it. If only they would go all the way and release the rights so someone can do something about continuing the story at least in Comic form like is being done with Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.
HBO dig this idea: You are owned by Time Warner, and so is DC Comics, which also publishes the Vertigo comics, like Sandman. This series would make an excellent Vertigo series. Think about it, make peace with the fans of this story.
The best character of the whole bunch was Sampson. HBO should at least do something that allows this great character to be used in some form, preferably a visual form that uses the same actor.