The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Sometimes "dark" is just murky

Abbygal, having recalled that just before season two began I was gearing up to give it a second chance, passed along word of cancellation of HBO's Carnivale, delivered by the series' creator Dan Knauf. (Apparently the word became official the middle of last week, btw.) Much of the creator's announcement was calm and reasonable, and presumably his later mentioning that he considered their decision to cancel to be "bone-headed" was largely done with his small audience of devotees in mind, as even he had pointed out that the show was hugely expensive to produce and didn't have the audience size to support it. The assertion that it was "thrown into a hopeless time -slot" is ludicrous. Sunday night at 9 worked so very terribly for six seasons of Oz, five of The Sopranos, four of Six Feet Under (with a concluding sixth and fifth season of each to come), Band of Brothers, and others, and, my, isn't Deadwood simply floundering there?

Please. That it was placed at 10 pm for part of that, is that supposed to have been the breaking point?

HBO has over the past several years created a time and a night when many of us found ourselves steering towards them because this was their golden spot. Some of the best items to be seen on television have been concentrated there. The spot where they'd put the latest jewel to play out its season, and then as soon as that wrapped either shift in a returning one or start up a new one.

The mess that was Carnivale was what knocked me out of that ritual - twice, between the first season and again in the second - when even the deterioration of much of the most recent season of Six Feet Under didn't completely do it. I gave the show a chance the first time out, though I soon lost interest. As noted near the start of the year I gave it a concentrated, second chance by watching the entire season over the Christmas/New Year's break, and dove in. As noted the next day, the second season opened with some promise mainly because it appeared to be focused. That didn't last long.

If effort had been made to craft the show more carefully, to keep from slopping layer upon distracting layer onto the plot and characters rather than go somewhere with it, to give it a firm sense of destination rather than trying to make a bunch of carrots dangling from a stick seem like a finish line, it could have gone very well. The fans of the show have made a deep emotional investment in it, and much like the comics fans who remain devotees of Chris Claremont and his vision for the dozens of characters in Marvel's mutant titles, I can't help see it as more than ultimately misplaced faith. I'm not damning any of the fans for this, as anyone who pokes around my blog knows that I put entirely too much time into some trivial crap.

The show had promise. The cast was good. The Depression-era setting was very nicely handled by the visual effects team. The show had the lure of ancient prophecy, and two characters endowed with powers they didn't really understand, one believing in a Great Purpose and the other wishing for a normal life, and in time trying to understand his past. There were literal matters of life and death, and an ability to restore life at the cost of more death. Over it all was the specter of apocalypse, which from our modern perspective we saw was a nuclear blast. Ultimately, though, it came across as a wandering, meandering... shambling mass of loose ends and accumulated plot complications masquerading as a tale.

Maybe the problem wasn't at all in the hands of creator Dan Knauf, but in the system HBO appears to have in place regarding these shows? In each of the series I've at least occasionally had cause to lament the writer and/or director of the week, and I have no idea who gives these people ther jobs. Telling the story could easily become a nightmare if the execs made a round robin format part of the deal, especially if the series creator and sometimes writer/director didn't have nearly absolute powers to veto any decisions made by other writers. Writers who had their own visions of who the characters were, or who had their own agendas to push at the expense of anything else. I often lamented that weekly shift as accounting for the increasingly irritating ups and downs for Six Feet Under. Most likely the show would have been far better with at least a consistent writer or even very small team of writers.

I'd like to see Knauf address that issue, but I wouldn't blame him for avoiding it given that it would probably make him persona non grata in several places, and his career is doubtless at an extremely vulnerable juncture. He has to put the bravest face on, blame it on economics and timing, and move ahead before the weight of a another dropped series (he has the 2001/02 Wolf Lake behind him, too) drags his career to the bottom. He doesn't have much else in the way of credits nor anything officially on his plate according to his imdb entry.

Most likely, if I were to take in the second season as a whole it would be viewed more charitably -- much as the first season was. Still, I can't see how that would be due to much more than it being concenrtrated enough that I would be able to just focus on the parts that work and more easily ignore the rest. I wouldn't look forward to seeing what state matters would be in by the end of the second season, though, with a third season (at least) intended by the writers.