Carnivàle

Oklahoma Dust Bowl, 1934. 18-year-old Ben Hawkins is a young man who lives with his physically sick, God-fearing mother. After his mother dies from a long illness, Ben unceremoniously buries her in the back yard of his home which is then repossessed for outstanding late payments.

A practical joke which has him clean an old dirty trailer leads Ben to a piece of the puzzle of his past -- a tuxedo-clad man named Henry Scudder who Ben keeps seeing in his dreams and who may be his long-lost father. Meanwhile, Brother Justin and his sister Iris have a conversation with Justin's mentor.

When the authorities of the cash-poor Oklahoma town of Tipton refuses to let the carnival set up show, Samson takes Jones' advice and temporally reinvents the troupe as a religious-revival show with Ben as the center act of a healer. Brother Justin's promise to the migrants of their new church upsets his regular congregation.

On the road to Babylon, Texas, the carnival encounters a horrific dust storm, called a 'black blizzard.' Intrigued with clues about his past, Ben follows Lodz into an abandoned house where the seer tests Ben's powers. Meanwhile, a lonely Sofie socializes with a handsome café owner.

The carnival finally arrives in Babylon, a tapped-out silver mining town in rural Texas with few inhabitants. Samson tries to improve the troupe's spirits with a night of revelry at the local bar while Sofie and Libby (one of the chooch dancers) get closer and decide to attend the local cinema.

Thirsty for payback after the murder of Dora Mae Dreifuss, one of the chooch dancers, Samson and the rest of the carnies, including Stumpy Dreifuss and Rita Sue, get caught up in an obscure, but fascinating phenomenon called "Carnival Justice" to root out the person responsible.

While Brother Justin rediscovers his "birthright" on the banks of a river, Iris gets some unexpected support from an attentive radio reporter, named Tommy Dolan, whom offers to spread the word about Brother Justin's parish. Also, Samson goes to work on the bally, and Libby and Sofie see stars on the western horizon.

Samson sends Ben on a road trip to enlist a new attraction, where Ben encounters a longtime carnival rival named Phineas Boffo. Meanwhile, back at the carnival, Sofie debates whether to defy her mother and join Libby on the bally of the chooch tent.

Ben tries to stave off the torments of his dreams by staying awake, but the lack of sleep is taking its toll. Meanwhile, Samson looks to drum up new business by resurrecting several tried-and-true scams, including "turtle boy" and "man eating chicken".

Brother Justin returns to Mintern from his stay in the asylum to chart out a new direction for his ministry. Libby catches on to her mother's deception of her lustful fling with Jones, while Sofie accuses Apollonia of "breaking the rules" when she forces Sofie to tell the truth to their tarot clients about their bleak futures.

With Management's blessing, Lodz hatches a devious plan to "reach" Ben, who is vulnerable after letting his guard down after his night of seduction with Ruthie. Rita Sue upstages Catalina's debut routine in the Gay Paree tent. Meanwhile, Sofie reads Stumpy's cards and doesn't like what she learns.

Faced with a crisis of life-and-death proportions of whether or not to cure Ruthie from a snake bite, Ben turns to Lodz for advice, and he ends up talking with the mysterious and unseen entity, Management, for the first time. Meanwhile, Stumpy and Rita Sue strike a deal with each other, and Jones, to save their marriage.

As the spiritual powers of Ben Hawkins evolve, the entity Management reveals its identity (the Russian soldier in Ben's dreams) to Ben, and then exposes him to a vision of the cataclysmic disasters (a nuclear explosion) that awaits the world if Ben doesn't identify and conquer his nemesis: Brother Justin, the creature of darkness.

Ben travels on his own to Alamogordo to seek out Father Kerrigan, a former preacher residing in a lunatic asylum - who knew his father, and who tells him to beware of a mysterious tattooed man that both Ben and Brother Justin see in their dreams.

When Carnivale sets up show in Ingram, Texas, Ben sets out to find some people who knew Scudder and stumbles into a bizarre moonshiners' camp, which proves both painful and revealing. Meanwhile, Stroud continues his quest to find Scudder by investigating the mining accident in the ghost town of Babylon.

Still held captive in the moonshiners' camp, Ben meets his blind and elderly grandmother who reveals some family secrets and a mysterious face of death. Meanwhile, Lila confides in the rest of the riggers that she suspects Samson was responsible for Lodz' demise.

When the Carnivale stops outside Creed, Oklahoma, they receive an uninvited visitor, Varlyn Stroud, who begins asking questions to Jonesy, and later to Samson, about where to find Scudder. Meanwhile, Rita Sue bails out Stumpy for his $400 gambling debts, but he bets (and loses) all of the money on a big fight anyway.

On the road to Damascus, Nebraska, Samson and the troupe stop to help when they run into a rival troupe that has fallen on hard times. In Mintern, Dolan tries to help Iris and Justin find a solution to their legal problems while Iris is surprised when she learns of Justin's real plan: to frame Dolan for the ministry fire.

When Carnivale finally arrives in Damascus, Ben gets closer to finding his father when another vision of a man with the shredded face leads him to the town's seedy hotel. Ben then goes to investigate further, and finally meets his father, who is working as a clerk at the hotel.

Ben and Samson have a heated argument over some bad news that Ben tells him about the death of Management, and Samson learns from Ruthie about seeing Stroud abduct Scudder. Ben suggests that they must track down Stroud at once so he will lead them to Brother Justin.

While driving down a desolate highway in rural Utah on his trail of Stroud, Ben comes across Jones and Libby, the victims of a vigilante group blaming Jonesy for the Ferris wheel accident, leading Ben to try to heal Jonesy. Back at Carnivale, Ruthie has another possession by the deceased Lodz.

Following another one of Ben's visions, he and Joney set out to find Stroud and they soon arrive in the Wyoming state capital where from a discarded newspaper in a recently vacated hotel room, they finally learn the name and location of Ben's nemesis.

When Samson announces that the carnival's next stop is the Christian camp of New Canaan, California, both Lila and Stumpy challenge his authority. Jones arrives back with the troupe and gives Samson the information that he and Ben found about Brother Justin.

In the cliff-hanging season finale, Samson devises a grand plan by scheming with Ben, Jones, and the entire troupe to lure Brother Justin to Carnivale for his confrontation with Ben. Meanwhile, Stroud wants to protect Justin who correctly suspects that the carnival is setting a trap for him.