In a dry and waterless place
"On the heels of the skirmish man foolishly called the war to end all wars, the dark one sought to elude his destiny and live as a mortal. So he fled across the ocean, to an empire called America, and by his mere presence, a cancer corrupted the spirit of the land." -- Samson, "Carnivàle"

While Samson would seem to be talking about Boy George, it turns out that Justin, the preacher, is the embodiment of pure evil. We can kind of see this, now, thanks to little hints, like the way his eyes sometimes turn black and his voice rumbles like thunder, and -- oh yeah, he made this random woman rip her clothes off and claw at her skin, leaving a big bloody mark across her chest. That seemed pretty telling.

But you can never be sure. After all, really eerie, wicked things like that happen about once every 10 minutes on "Carnivàle" (Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO), or about as often as a 6-train pulls into Grand Central. It's getting to the point where Ben gets visions of snakes and massive explosions and ominous tangled trees, and you figure he overslept or he's just got a little indigestion or something.

Meanwhile, it seems clear that Justin isn't the only one possessed by the devil: The bearded lady, Management, Apollonia, Samson, the stripper family ... they all seem possessed to me. And did Iris kill those children and burn down the church? Will that creepy inmate track down Hawkins and say something premonitory to him before Hawkins busts his face in? Where do Andra, Jessie and Leah factor into this -- are they Justin's archangels?

I don't know about you, little chai lattes, but I find "Carnivàle" almost as creepy and depressing as "Supernanny," and that's saying a lot. Still, there's that feeling you get when you don't watch it. You know, there are smart people behind this show, and the acting is really good, and most of all, it's so stunning and beautifully shot. How could you miss it, when surely something is about to happen?

But then, when you read the summaries on the Web site, you can recognize how little actually happens in each episode: Justin acts strange, Iris throws him a look. Ben wakes up and looks confused. Justin has a vision. Ben finds a strange mark on his hand. Justin gets a great big tattoo. Ben has a vision.

And when you ask yourself what's likely to happen eventually, it's obvious: Ben has some kind of a showdown with the inmate disciple, then Ben has a showdown with Scudder and probably kills him, then Ben and Justin face off, and a few more from the traveling carnival die dramatically along the way. Will that be enough action -- punctuated by very sparse, enigmatic dialogue -- to sustain you for another 10 weeks?

Probably so, you blindly devoted HBO zombies! And really, how dare I shun the true path, the one that leads to every whim and passing fancy of those HBO development executives? "If you try to escape your destiny," they whisper to me, "the world will not escape its terrible fate!" And so, critics were rendered mute by fools who spoke many words but said nothing, for whom oppression and cowardice were virtues, and freedom, an obscenity.

I love to count! One! Two! Three!
"Everything is numbers." That's Charlie, the mathematical genius, and it sounds like he's talking about ratings, but he's not. He's explaining to his brother, Don, the tenacious detective, that he needs to come up with a complicated equation to help him crack his serial rapist case. Charlie, played by David Krumholtz, is one part Zach Braff of "Scrubs" and two parts Fred Savage of "The Wonder Years." Don, played by Rob Morrow, is about five parts Rob Morrow with one part David Duchovny doing a guest spot on "CSI: New York." And looky here! It's Navi Rawat, Ryan's knocked-up girlfriend from "The O.C.," playing a grad student who's Charlie's slow-simmering love interest.

Despite the reenactment flashes and the Hollywood one-liners spewed out in the first scene ("Murder is the ultimate act of possession"), which call to mind the swarming "CSI"-bots that control half of our prime-time viewing slots, "Numbers" has an original feel. Including Charlie the whiz kid in the loop is a good idea -- he's much cuter and spunkier than your typical detective, and we like the little love crockpot he's got going with Rawat. The dad, played by Judd Hirsch from "Taxi" and "A Beautiful Mind" (ahem), is also a nice touch.

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