Damned metaphor; too accurate. How does Oliver Twist end, anybody know? No, you don’t. And so despite impressive storytelling, populated with well-imagined characters and a fascinating mythology, the last episode of Carnivàle totally sucked.
Well, let me rephrase: the last five minutes of Carnivàle totally sucked. Too many loose ends. Yes, it’s a TV show. I don’t watch TV — except when I do watch TV, like if I can watch a cultish-ly popular HBO series released on DVD. It’s an intriguing, overarching storyline of the good-vs-evil sort set in the great depression. HBO signed up for three “books,” of two seasons each. And yet I just finished watching season 2… damned thing up and got cancelled. We, the fans, are left high and dry, with no more quaint antediluvian dialect to entertain (am I a fan? right I am. but what fer cryin’ out loud is a fandom?) Sure, you can go and read the collected Wikipedia spoilers the writers have admitted to planning, but that feels like cheating cuz, y’know, it is. Even then, they don’t make sense and there’s so many other open questions that complicate and tantalize. I guess all that’s left to do now is watch all seven seasons of Buffy: Vampire Slayers.
…lolz j/k