Carnivale Revisited--"Hot and Bothered"

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Episode Guide--Season 1, Episode 10: "Hot and Bothered"

You don't have to be Sigmund Freud to figure out that sex drives this latest installment of Carnivale.  Jonesy and Rita Sue continue to go at it like rabbits (Libby catches glimpse of her mom's torrid lovemaking).  The cuckolded Felix, meanwhile, couples with a sultry Chicana named Catalina, whom he then recruits as the new cootch dancer to replace the deceased Dora Mae.  Jonesy (again) locks lips with Sofie, but pulls back guiltily.  Ruthie finally beds Ben.  Even Brother Justin (returning home at last) gets in on the act, planting a hardly-chaste kiss on his sleeping sister's lips.

Justin is also hot and bothered when he returns to the pulpit in his Mintern church.  Yet his inspired sermon about spiritual rebirth seems stocked with duplicitous rhetoric.  Both he and Iris are steadily emerging as a pair of nefarious characters, ones using the facade of religion to conceal much darker designs. 

Seeking information about Scudder, Samson and Ben visit a nearby Templar lodge in Loving, New Mexico.  The members, though, play dumb when Samson questions them (in his inimitable manner). 
And Ben fails to take note of the mural painted on the wall of the lodge, which contains the figure of a tattooed man in a field (the same man Ben keeps having visions of, and who apparently raped Sofie's mom Apollonia).  Yes, folks, the puzzle pieces are starting to link up and the plot lines to converge as the first season draws to a close.

On the drive back to camp, Samson fills Ben in about the Carnivale's history.  An eastern outfit, the Hide and Teller Company, was bought out by Management "just after Scudder took a powder."  Management has been searching for Scudder ever since.  Samson doesn't know the reason for his boss's obsession, but offers:
"Something happened in the old country.  Something real bad.  Badder than you can imagine.  Badder than anyone can imagine."  

Following his prolonged bout of self-enforced wakefulness, Ben konks out after sleeping with Ruthie.  Ever the opportunist, Lodz sneaks into Ruthie's trailer and insinuates himself into Ben's dream.  But in that dream, Scudder steps out of character to deliver a stern message to Lodz.  And with that, it becomes terribly clear that Ben is an unwitting pawn in a sinister game, a power struggle that traces back to a World War I battlefield and points toward future massacre.

Colorful, complex characters.  Sexual intrigue.  Machiavellian schemes.  These are some of the elements that make Carnivale such compelling viewing, and they are all on display in this scorching episode.