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Jan. 17th, 2005 11:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
progWhile eating my tasty sandwich I watched the most recent episode of "Carnivale", and have observations that depend on knowledge of the first half of the first season, which I missed. So, if anyone feels like filling me in...
Has Brother Justin actually done anything bad, outside of being all scary? Only those few in his most immediate presence -- his sister, and now that escaped prison trusty -- have proven themselves to be murderous monsters, while Justin himself has existed only as a growing but murky threat. He hesitatingly embraces the strange powers that grip him, but is apparently not entirely sure why he does so. The show clearly wants us to think that he's headed down a very dark path, but is never quite clear about what's so bad about it (except that it seems to attract the wrong crowd...).
In fact, the show seems to be intentionally suggesting a disconnect between what the apparent good-guy characters think is going to happen to the world, and what we the audience know as the real past (with a 70-year gulf separating us). Specifically, "Management" foresees humanity ending in nuclear devastation, but may in fact be jumping to conclusions. When he gives Ben a vision of this terrible future, he doesn't show him any tragic visions of Hiroshima, or "Day After"-style vistas of ruined American cities; instead, he shows what we immediately identify as the Trinity A-bomb tests. I'm interpreting this to mean that Management has seen only these tests and, since it's still years before nuclear weapons are actually invented, all they can conclude is holy crap the world is gonna blow up.
That, or Management is the real bad guy, knowing damn well what the vision really means and using it to deceive Ben into unwittingly bringing about a truly destructive future. But I don't think there's much reason to believe that yet, and anyway I like the other explanation more. It doesn't explain why Management foresees only the tests, though. I have ideas, but they're all stretches, so I'll wait.
At any rate, when we add in the same vision's suggestion that Justin will somehow be instrumental in helping the Manhattan Project succeed, things start looking really interesting. I can't wait to see what happens with all of this, and hope the show doesn't screw it all up somehow.
Has Brother Justin actually done anything bad, outside of being all scary? Only those few in his most immediate presence -- his sister, and now that escaped prison trusty -- have proven themselves to be murderous monsters, while Justin himself has existed only as a growing but murky threat. He hesitatingly embraces the strange powers that grip him, but is apparently not entirely sure why he does so. The show clearly wants us to think that he's headed down a very dark path, but is never quite clear about what's so bad about it (except that it seems to attract the wrong crowd...).
In fact, the show seems to be intentionally suggesting a disconnect between what the apparent good-guy characters think is going to happen to the world, and what we the audience know as the real past (with a 70-year gulf separating us). Specifically, "Management" foresees humanity ending in nuclear devastation, but may in fact be jumping to conclusions. When he gives Ben a vision of this terrible future, he doesn't show him any tragic visions of Hiroshima, or "Day After"-style vistas of ruined American cities; instead, he shows what we immediately identify as the Trinity A-bomb tests. I'm interpreting this to mean that Management has seen only these tests and, since it's still years before nuclear weapons are actually invented, all they can conclude is holy crap the world is gonna blow up.
That, or Management is the real bad guy, knowing damn well what the vision really means and using it to deceive Ben into unwittingly bringing about a truly destructive future. But I don't think there's much reason to believe that yet, and anyway I like the other explanation more. It doesn't explain why Management foresees only the tests, though. I have ideas, but they're all stretches, so I'll wait.
At any rate, when we add in the same vision's suggestion that Justin will somehow be instrumental in helping the Manhattan Project succeed, things start looking really interesting. I can't wait to see what happens with all of this, and hope the show doesn't screw it all up somehow.