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SUNDAY NIGHT BLISS --
"CARNIVALE" AND "DEADWOOD"
March 4, 2005
It took long enough, but HBO's dark fantasy "Carnivale" is finally the show I always hoped it would be. Where the show's first season was confusing and uneven, it's now-in-progress sophomore year is compelling and super focused. Most importantly, "Carnivale"'s heady storylines are finally moving forward--a big change from season one, when little of note happened from week to week.
The turnaround couldn't have happened at a better time. "Deadwood," the best show on TV, starts its second season on HBO this Sunday at 9 p.m. "Carnivale"'s remaining episodes will follow at 10 p.m., making this the best two hours of TV on any channel on any night.
After all, where else can you find two of the small screen's best villains? On "Carnivale," the big bad is Brother Justin Crowe (Clancy Brown), a Great Depression-era Methodist minister who lays plans for great destruction while he builds a following as a popular radio evangelist. Crowe is the centerpiece to the show's ever-expanding mythology--a convoluted, but increasingly-intriguing story about an ages-long war between good and evil that will somehow reach its climax when the first atomic bomb detonates.
Crowe is the dark figure at the center of the tale, and Brown plays the part to perfection. The whole preacher-as-the-bad-guy angle could easily register as contrived, but Brown sells the concept by expertly crafting Justin Crowe's two different faces--the inspiring face of a leader he wears when bellowing to his cult-like congregation, and his real face, the one with a deceitful demon lurking just beneath the skin.
The character of Crowe was good in season one. Now that the rest of the show has crystallized around him (including a renewed sense of purpose for Crowe's light-side counterpart, carnival worker/mystic healer Ben Hawkins), Brother Justin has earned his spot among the best villains TV has to offer.
Among the best, except one, that is.
You see, to call "Deadwood"'s conniving saloon owner Al Swearengen one of TV's best villains is to do the character, and Ian McShane, the actor who portrays him, a terrible disservice. Swearengen isn't just one of television's coolest black hats; he's one of the best all-around characters the medium has ever produced. In fact, if McShane can keep it up for a couple more seasons--we may be witnessing one of the greatest acting performances of all time, in any medium. I promise you, this is not hyperbole. Have you seen Nicholson in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"? De Niro in "Raging Bull"? If you have, good. That should give you an idea of how good McShane is as Swearengen, an oily, foul-mouthed, sadistic criminal, who nonetheless operates on a skewed but legitimate (at least to him) sense of morality.
McShane lords over the frontier town of Deadwood from his saloon balcony, harshly manipulating the town's denizens against each other like his own personal chess pieces. He pontificates, schemes and rolls his eyes at the surreal nature of it all. And, yes, he cusses. And cusses and cusses and cusses and cusses, until the four-letter words roll off his lips like poetry. There are many, many things to love about "Deadwood," but it's McShane who puts it at the top of TV's must-watch list.
Brother Justin Crane is one of today's best television heavies, but even he is dwarfed by the roguish brilliance of McShane's Al Swearengen--a villain for the ages.
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