'Twas the week before Thanksgiving, and throughout the Crowe house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even an incestuous mouse;
The crucifix was hung by the window with care,
In hopes that Brother Justin soon would be there;
Iris was nestled all snug in her bed,
While visions of smelly whips danced in her head;
The Bible sat proud on the bedside table,
While I recapped the scene, as best as I'm able;
When out on the hall there arose such a clatter,
I hit TiVo fast-forward to see what was the matter.
And there he stood, like a ghost in the night,
Brother Justin was back, and ready to fight;
He tenderly stoked his dear sister's face,
And she awoke with start, and reached for the Mace;
"Shhh," he whispered, covering her mouth.
And that's when the scene started to go south;
For the hand was soon replaced by lips and a tongue,
Almost as if he wanted to lick big sister's lung;
But alas, this moment of perverse sibling bliss,
Was interrupted by my shouts of, "And then they kiss!"
"Now, Chris! Now, Cathy! Now, Leto and Ghanima!
On, Judith! On Charles Bon! On, Billy and Brenda!
Their love is so wrong! It leaves me appalled!
There'll be InYay and therapy and vomit for all!"
And so Iris sat up, and stared at her brother,
With much the same look Michael Jackson gets from his mother;
And then Justin exclaimed, about this episode you won't want to miss,
"There'll be baptisms for all, and hot sex with my sis!"
Carnieland. A still sleepy Ben is again watching Adrienne Barbeau's snake act, as the camera fades wildly in and out of focus. Boy, those former Six Feet Under directors sure do love their Bong Cam, don't they? Adrienne, meanwhile, is attired in her finest Snake-arella leather pantsuit, and I find myself experiencing a minor wave of late-seventies erotic nostalgic frisson. A non-Pa Pimperson barker exhorts the crowd to tip their lovely dancer, mostly by claiming that the snake she's waltzing with could kill her in "the blink of an eye." Insert your own obligatory symbolic reference to Ben's inability to sleep here. The rather boisterous audience members shower the stage with coins, and Ben scampers out from his position in the wings to begin collecting them. And then we get a really weird cut, as we immediately go to a shot of him handing over a full bag of coins to Adrienne, when we just saw him starting to pick them up less than a second ago. Ordinarily, I wouldn't even bother mentioning something like that, but we've already had issues with coins vanishing off the floor on this show, so who knows what it could mean? After handing over the money, Ben leaves awkwardly without saying another word. He's also got even more dirt than normal on his face this week, so maybe we're just supposed to assume that his lips have finally crusted over and he's switched to photosynthesis instead of eating.
Later that night, long after the show has ended, we find Jonesy and Ma Cooch getting it on in that wooden shower stall the carnies have. What's really odd about this scene, however, is that it's pretty clear they've been in there for quite some time already, and yet there's still steam coming off the dripping water. Yeah, right. I can't even get that much hot water in my own home, never mind in whatever Depression-era porta-potty contraption the rousties have managed to rig up here. Then again, why the hell am I bitching about minor continuity details when there's a hot naked woman on my screen? Not to mention her hot (although unfortunately fully-clothed) daughter, no less, as Libby also stumbles across this illicit and adulterous little tableau. Much like Sofie last week, however, Libby just stands there and watches silently while Ma squeals like the proverbial little red pig. As a public service announcement, I'd just like to be sure that everyone reading these recaps is fully aware of the fact that the proper response to walking in on your parents having sex with each other or anyone else is to SCREAM IN TERROR AND THEN RUN AWAY AS FAST AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN. And then go seek professional psychiatric help. Ew. In any event, I've decided to skip recapping all the lurid details of this scene, but that's just because I'm cruel, and I like to torment the Limpies whenever I can. And also because I'm writing this at work, and I don't want my boss to wander by and think I'm composing a letter to Penthouse Forum or something. I will say, however, that Jonesy is a bit of a groaner.
California. Iris is still sitting up in bed staring at her brother, so apparently no time has passed since last we left them. That doesn't exactly bode well for Jonesy's sexual stamina, now does it? Maybe the steamy water thing wasn't a continuity error after all. Justin quietly castigates his sister for never having told him about his powers, or even the fact that he's a murderer, but Iris isn't interested in listening to him whine. "You were always gifted," she explains. "But you needed time to develop those gifts." Justin isn't exactly satisfied with that explanation, which seems weird, because I'd have to assume that people have been puking up coins or banging their heads into columns around him for his entire life, so wouldn't he be used to it by now? I mean, Ben was resurrecting kittens all the way back in third grade, and Brother Justin doesn't exactly strike me as the remedial reading type. But maybe he really was, because Iris snarls at him to "stop acting like a child." "I've cared for you since we came to this country," she continues. "And I have lived with the burden of this knowledge. You have a destiny. And now is your time to fulfill it." We get a dramatic "dun dun DUH!" zoom into Justin's face, and then the scene ends.
Back in Carnieland, Ma Cooch is returning to her tent, still toweling off after the shower-sex session. She climbs into bed beside Pa Pimp, who's wide awake and ready to get funky now that two weeks of diligent Carmex applications have finally resolved that pesky chafing problem. He signals his desire by clutching Ma's left breast (which is the larger of the two, if memory and my TiVo's pause button are serving me accurately), but Ma puts off his advances by announcing that "the red tide is in." Boy, Nicole Yorkin and Dawn Prestwich sure do love their bizarre euphemisms for menstruation, don't they? But wouldn't Pa Pimp be pretty familiar with his wife's biological clock by now? It's not like he can pimp her out while kitty's got a nosebleed or anything, so he's actually got a legitimate business reason to keep track of that sort of thing. And furthermore, if he's really that horny, why doesn't he just ask her to do the special thing with the feather? Ahh, logic. Thy name never was Carnivàle.
“ Wow. Masons and Manson, all in the same episode. Nice. ”
Once his sermon is completed, Justin turns back to Father Walton, and demands to be baptized. "I baptized you when you were six years old," replies the confused Father. Justin insists that he do it again, and Father Walton reluctantly dips his thumb in Holy Water and traces a cross on Justin's forehead. When he pulls the thumb away, however, the water has turned to blood. Wow. Masons and Manson, all in the same episode. Nice. Father Walton is shocked, and Iris takes advantage of his befuddled silence to stand up and shout that she wants to be baptized as well. She joins her brother on the altar, which sets off a chain reaction amongst the congregation, and pretty soon everyone is demanding to a baptism of their own. Father Walton looks down at his protge a second time, only now the blood is gone, and only the angry stare of Clancy Brown remains.
Our final scene of the night takes place back in Carnieland, where Lodz is seated in his new trailer, relating the story of Ben's dream to Management. "He spoke to me," Lodz confirms. "He knows we have the boy." "Of course he knows," answers Management. "But we'll find him. And then the blood will flow." And with that, the camera pulls back through Management's curtain in a truly nifty shot, and we fade to black in deepest depths of hiscloset? Den? Lodge? Whatever. The end.