Carnivale Revisited--"Tipton"

Episode Guide--Season 1, Episode 3: "Tipton"

The brilliant parallelism of Carnivale's storylines continues in this third episode of the series.  Brother Justin establishes his migrant-devoted "Dignity Ministry" (in a building that formerly housed a Chinese brothel and opium den), but encounters disapproval from Mintern officials who do not like the idea of "Okies" within the town limits.  Meanwhile, the Carnivale folk engage in some "old-time evangelism" of their own: after the sheriff of the small town of Tipton refuses to let the Carnivale operate (he doesn't want to see his cash-strapped townspeople fleeced), Samson and company recast themselves as a religious revival troupe.  Ben receives top billing in this carny confidence game as the healer "Benjamin St. John," and the irony, of course, is that Ben (unbeknownst to his co-workers) is an actual healer.  By episode's end, though, Samson has started to suspect that there's more to the roustabout than meets the eye, just as Iris has begun to realize that her sibling Justin's powers extend beyond inspirational speaking.

This simultaneity of the Mintern/Midwest storylines, though, does not confound the sense of chronological progression.  The episode skillfully fills in more of the show's backstory even as it churns up future plot complications.  We learn that Henry Scudder had the healing touch as well (by this point it's become fairly obvious that Scudder is Ben's father).  A dying ex-lover of Scudder then tells Ben that when the man left her fifteen years earlier, he headed towards Babylon, Texas.  Oddly enough, that's the Carnivale's current destination, and for some reason Samson and Jonesy seem distressed by such prospect.  What's waiting in Babylon?  The travelers have some more dust to shake (as Samson would say) before viewers get to find out.