Carnivale Revisited--"Day of the Dead"

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Episode Guide--Season 1, Episode 11: "Day of the Dead"

"Something's building, kid.  I can feel it," Samson tells Ben, and viewers will agree wholeheartedly after encountering this penultimate chapter of Carnivale's Season 1 narrative.

Complications and machinations are the order of the day, in an episode set against the backdrop of the Mexican carnivalesque celebration, El dia de los Muertos.  The lesbian attraction between Sofie and Libby continues to develop (at least until Apollonia intervenes by sending her daughter a disturbing vision).  In her heart, though, Sofie wants Jonesy, and discusses the matter with Rita Sue, not knowing that the latter is having an affair with the man.  Jonesy (hoping to make things work with Sofie) finally breaks things off with Rita Sue; Rita Sue salaciously upstages Stumpy's new cootch dancer Catalina; Catalina convinces Stumpy (struggling to deal with two women now) to sit for a tarot reading with Sofie and Apollonia.  The end result is that Sofie learns (thanks to Apollonia's whispers in her head) of Jonesy's relationship with Rita Sue--plus the fact that Libby knew about it and never said anything.  What Sofie does with all this late-gained knowledge should make for a riveting season finale.

Meanwhile, Father Norman--having witnessed holy water turn to blood when he made the sign of the cross on Brother Justin's forehead in the previous episode--worries that Justin might be possessed by a demon and in need of an exorcism.  Reporter Tommy Dolan then approaches Norman with some disturbing news.  Dolan has been doing some digging, and has learned that Justin was in an asylum during the weeks he was missing.  But that's nothing compared to the bombshell Dolan drops next: that Justin's car was seen at the Dignity Ministry late on the night the place was burned to the ground (killing the orphans housed inside).

Ben decides at last to trust Samson, telling him about his repeated visions of Henry Scudder.  Samson can't shed any light on the cause of these visions, and when Ben presses him for more detail about the momentous event that happened back in the Old Country (which Samson had alluded to in the prior episode), all Samson is sure of is that Professor Lodz was centrally involved.

Lodz, having conspired with Management to carry out a scheme to "reach" Ben, is quite the busy blind man in this episode.  Proving what a snake in the grass he really is, the Professor travels into town on the day of the Mexican festival and arranges to purchase something terribly poisonous.

"Day of the Dead" is Carnivale at its finest.  The nightmarish surrealism that has marked the series all season long recurs here (the episode opens with an unsettling dream sequence in which Ben watches Justin dispense razor blades instead of Eucharist wafers to his congregation).  And the storytelling in this episode is nothing less than superb.  First, there's a shocking revelation, as we learn at last who actually torched the Dignity Ministry.  The episode then concludes with a cliffhanger, which finds one of the troupe members on the precipice of extinction.  El dia de los Muertos might literally turn out to be a day of death, but one that is no cause for celebration whatsoever.