List of Carnivàle episodes

Carnivàle is an American fantasy television series created by Daniel Knauf for HBO. The series premiered on September 14, 2003, on HBO and finished its two-season run of 24 episodes on March 27, 2005. Until late in the second season, each episode is split into two distinct but slowly converging storylines taking place in the United States Dustbowl of the mid-1930s. Nick Stahl starred as Ben Hawkins, a young Okie farmer with strange powers who joins a traveling carnival; Clancy Brown played his adversary Brother Justin Crowe, a California preacher who uses his similarly strange abilities to rise to power. Carnivàle was originally intended to run as a trilogy of paired seasons, with each pair being called a "book" and the series as a whole spanning the years from 1934 to 1945, but the series was canceled after two seasons due to low ratings. These two seasons complete the first book covering the years 1934 and 1935. The second book (seasons three and four) would have taken place around the years 1939 and 1940, and the third book (seasons five and six) would have played in 1944 and 1945, leading up to the end of World War II and the explosion at the Trinity test site.

The character of Samson, the diminutive co-manager of the carnival, sets up each season with a monologue, giving glimpses of the show's complex story and good-versus-evil mythology. By telling the story visually and deploying dialogue sparely, Carnivàle is a demanding show with a lot of subtext, and similar to reading chapters of a book, viewers need to watch episodes of Carnivàle in the right order or risk being spoiled with too little or too much story information. Many reviewers found the story too slow and confusing, but praised the show for its cinematography and realistic portrayal of the 1930s. Carnivàle received much award recognition in mostly technical categories, including fifteen Emmy nominations with five wins.

The stops of the carnival throughout the Southwestern United States play a significant part in the show, with many episodes bearing the name of the location of Ben and the carnival. Some stops like Alamogordo, New Mexico are of historical significance; others are fictional. The only episode titled after Brother Justin's location is Season 1's "The River". Both seasons of Carnivàle were filmed in Southern California, with the carnival set being moved to movie ranches and Lancaster. Brother Justin's story in the fictional Mintern, California was shot at Paramount Ranch in Malibu. The permanent filming location of the carnival in Season 2 was Big Sky Ranch, which was also used for Brother Justin's new home in fictional New Canaan. The show's interiors were filmed at Santa Clarita Studios.