Frankly, I think things are "going somewhere," but not it's not for everyone's tastes, that's for sure. If you want things wrapped up neatly in a tidy package in a single episode, you're not going to find that here--it's going somewhere, but it's taking it's sweet time (and, frankly, I'm enjoying the ride). However, if you like mystery, continuing story, drama, and grit, there's lots and lots o' that. And, outside of
Joan of Arcadia, it's one of the very few places where you're going to see God dealt with on television--and perhaps the only place where you'll see that subject dealt with in the context of the supernatural, good vs evil, souls in peril kind of way. That context alone draws me to the series and makes me stay with it--even if it were not so finely crafted, I would probably be tempted to give it a chance, as I was attempting to do with
Miracles last spring when it was strangled in its crib. Well! More than I wanted to say! Sorry about that!
Meanwhile, for those interested in the series, I saw an interesting article about Adrienne Barbeau at
zap2it:
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Adrienne Barbeau Goes All the Way for HBO's 'Carnivale'
By Kate O'Hare
As part of a full plate, Adrienne Barbeau has appeared on Broadway (including "Fiddler on the Roof" and Rizzo in the premiere of "Grease") and entertained the troops in Southeast Asia.
She's also done scores of TV movies and feature films -- including "The Fog," "Swamp Thing," "Creepshow" and "Escape From L.A." -- was married to director John Carpenter (with whom she has a son), co-starred in "Maude," released a CD and performed in concert.
On top of all this, in 1997, in her early 50s, she gave birth to twins.
And as the wife of comedy writer Billy Van Zandt, Barbeau's the sister-in-law of Springsteen bandmate and "The Sopranos" star "Miami" Steve Van Zandt, aka "Little Steven."
Even after all this, doing HBO's phantasmagoric drama "Carnivale," which premiered Sept. 14, has got Barbeau on a natural high.
"Oh, it's so good," she says. "And it just gets better. There are more romances, with the sexuality and the interactions and the angers and the rages, it's great."
The series, created by Daniel Knauf and executive-produced by Ron D. Moore ("Roswell," "Battlestar Galactica"), follows two men whose lives eventually converge during the Great Depression.
One is Ben Hawkins (Nick Stahl), a chain-gang escapee with healing powers, who hooked up with a mysterious traveling carnival after the death of his mother in the Dust Bowl. The other is Brother Justin Crowe (Clancy Brown), a California evangelist prone to visions, who upsets the locals by ministering to unwanted migrant workers.
According to the show's premise, one man represents light and the other darkness -- but who stands for what remains an open question. Barbeau plays Ruthie, a snake dancer who works in the carnival as a barker for her son, strongman Gabriel (Brian Turk).
Barbeau recalls, "When I first read it, my thought was, 'It's "X-Files" out of Marjoe Gortner by David Lynch.' Somebody else said 'Grapes of Wrath' and Stephen King, but I don't see Stephen so much as 'X-Files.' Everybody is likening it to 'Twin Peaks,' but I never saw that.
"I also think -- and I think Dan Knauf mentioned this -- it's basically 'Star Wars.' It's an epic of good vs. evil. Someone else said, 'It's as though Satan and Jesus were reincarnated on Earth, but we don't know which is which.'"
As a Californian of Armenian heritage, Barbeau says she didn't know a lot about the Great Depression, portrayed in "Carnivale" as a ravaged battleground for larger forces.
"It's interesting," she says. "In one of the episodes, I have a line to Ben Hawkins -- he's frightened about something, and I say, 'It's the times. It's hard to feel safe. It's hard to be happy.' If you think about it, we could be saying that now. It's hard to feel safe. There are a lot of parallels today."
The role of Ruthie also afforded Barbeau the opportunity to do two things she's never before done on screen -- dance with snakes and have a human-on-human love scene.
Regarding the snakes (a Bolivian milk snake and a six-foot diamond boa), Barbeau says, "I had a great time. I didn't have any feeling about them one way or the other. They didn't bother me. But, when the time came, and I realized I was going to be dancing with them, doing choreography, having this sort of erotic experience with snakes, I went out and found a snake dancer to train with, and I developed an affection for them.
"If you didn't have to feed them live rats, of course ... I did have one deposit the dead rat that he had eaten on my costume in the middle of a scene. You basically work with the snake, tell him where you want him to be, then go along with him."
As for the other thing, Barbeau says, "I have a hot, sexy love scene ... or I hope it is. I actually had thrown my back out, so my experience doing it is hopefully not what the audience is going to see. It's my first love scene with somebody who is not a monster. I may have kissed somebody, I don't remember. The only time I remember having a love scene is with the Swamp Thing.
"The impression of me is that I was a sex symbol, but I never had a sexy role. But I had torn a disc, and I was in so much pain. Oh, Lord. I was looking forward to it, and when the day came, it was like, 'Let me get through this without screaming.'"
Barbeau also reveals that the scene is with a younger man -- "Young enough to be my son," she says -- but she won't say who. Apparently, HBO didn't get the TV memo about giving love lives only to young characters.
"No," Barbeau says, "that's ABC. This is HBO. On HBO, you can have the bearded lady, who is a nice, zaftig woman, having a love scene. You can see the hoochie-coochie dancers, who are Rubenesque, having a love scene. This is not the 20-year-old stick-figure model.
"And the Siamese twins, right toward the end, one of them starts being enamored of one man."
Barbeau, though, still is working on getting a love scene with carnival roustabout Jonesy, played by Tim DeKay. "We keep teasing about how we've been bribing Dan Knauf to write us a love scene, but we'll see."
And there is more of Ruthie to be revealed. "We learn why, in the first part of the season, she is no longer dancing with snakes. We don't know yet who the father of her son is. We don't know everything about her, but more is revealed as time goes on."
CYBERSPATIAL ANOMALIES: Barbeau maintains an official site at
www.abarbeau.com, which includes information on her film and music careers. HBO's official site for "Carnivale" is at
www.hbo.com/carnivale/. Along with show info, it features games, carny lingo and a screensaver.
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