Carnivale season 2 | complete (first response)

I can’t say too much as Chibi-R is still watching it, but overall I wasn’t too impressed, nor was I disappointed. Visually the production never falters, and for the most part the atmosphere maintains its left of field nature that was asserted so well in the first season.

In a discussion with Chibi-R though, he mentioned that I’m not fond of story-arcs, and indeed this is true. The second season of Carnivale took the show where it needed to go, and I suppose I felt that in doing so it left behind many of the subtle grace we saw in the first season, and more importantly lost much of its ambiguity. I suppose my struggle with narratives in this kind of production is this; that initially the narrative seems secondary to the subtexts and symbolism presented, and the focus seems squarely on the ambiguous nature of the characters and their actions and experiences. When the focus shifts to the narrative, many of those things either become defined and their ambiguity anulled, or they are totally forgotten in place of what is supposed to be an engaging story. The story of Carnivale though really does have its core well and truly in the concepts of good and evil, and while the first season did a good job of keeping things less defined and introspective, the second season begins to place characters squarely in their respective roles of heroes, villains and observers. The atmosphere of the show began to be crafted around the narrative, and it really wasn’t that engaging.

The second season was decent, good even. There were some absolutely stunning moments in it that even topped many of the first season’s showings, however from a personal perspective, the narrative was never going to be enough to engage me.