DISCLAIMER: Carnivale and its canon characters are the property of HBO and the show's producers; no copyright infringement is intended.
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Some fans don't believe a "timeline fix" is needed. (Perhaps its oddity is a nod to Chaos Theory? I'm being serious here, not sniping.) But others would feel more comfortable if it made sense. The first two episodes of Season 2 take place in early November of 1934, and in Episode 6 we learn we've reached early September of 1935. Even allowing for the carnival's travels and performance stops, it doesn't seem possible that ten months have passed. Belyakov had been insisting on the need for haste in following up on clues, wailing, "The End Times are upon us!" Moreover, the dialogue and characters' concerns never seem to indicate the passage of enough time during or between episodes to account for the leap forward.
I've concluded that the only place a months-long break can possibly be fitted in is between Episode 2, "Alamogordo," and Episode 3, "Ingram." Any scenario has to account for both Ben and that pesky Varlyn Stroud being delayed. The one I've come up with would require a longer conventional story-with-dialogue than I want to write, or could write while the timeline problem is fresh in fans' minds. So what I've written is a straightforward narrative, somewhat like an HBO Episode Synopsis, but more detailed. In my opinion, it still qualifies as fan-written fiction based on "Carnivale." And it begins with my explanation of Stroud's travels in Episode 2...
(A later note: After I posted this, I learned that series creator Daniel Knauf had given an interview on Feb. 15, 2005 - when the last episode to have aired was Episode 6 - in which he said, "We're in early 1935." So he's apparently decided "September" was a bad idea, and it's no longer canon that we've gotten there! But I'll keep this posted, if only for the sake of my ideas about Stroud.)
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After escaping from prison, Stroud phones Justin to ask for more specific instructions. Any hints as to where he should start searching for this Scudder person? Justin tells him the one thing he knows for sure is that Scudder had a connection - possibly brief, and years ago - with a Templar Lodge in Loving, New Mexico. So Stroud might start there. But it will be helpful if he can uncover additional information on his own. Especially if he can find and investigate connections with places that will be on his way from where he is now (unspecified) to New Mexico. Anything that sheds light on Scudder's nature or character will be useful.
So Stroud makes calls to some sources he's used in the past. He's still changing the license plates on his stolen car when he hears the phone ring inside the house he's using (having killed its owner). One of his sources, a corrupt minor official, is calling back. He's learned that in one year - 1916 - a Henry Scudder signed the check for payment of taxes on a farm in Oklahoma. Before 1916, the taxes had been paid by a man named Hawkins. After 1916, they were paid by a woman who signed her name as Flora Scudder for two years, then went back (presumably) to signing herself Flora Hawkins. Stroud's source hasn't been able to learn whether the man named Hawkins was Flora's father, or a deceased or divorced husband.
Stroud knows that region is now in the Dust Bowl, and many farm families have left. But it's on his way, so he drives there to check the place out. The only interesting find he makes on the former Hawkins Farm is a relatively new grave.
He then pays a call on the local minister to ask him for information. He pretends he's looking for Henry Scudder because the man's due a small inheritance.
At first this seems to be a dead end. The young, harried minister has only recently been assigned to the area, to attend to the spiritual needs of people who are, in most cases, either preparing to leave or just passing through. He's never met Flora Hawkins (though he's heard of her as a good Christian woman), doesn't know whether she's alive or dead, and has no idea whether she's ever been married. He's never heard of Henry Scudder.
But on reflection, he remembers something. There's quite a scandal going on over in Tipton, Missouri. Locals are demanding their sheriff be removed from office. His offense? A man had been in the area - seen by many people - who was an escaped convict with a price on his head. But Tipton residents didn't learn that until a month later, when they saw Wanted posters on visits to other towns. They discovered Sheriff Lyle Donovan had received a supply of those Wanted posters days after the fugitive was in Tipton, but hadn't put them up because of an old family friendship. Townspeople are furious - not because a criminal is still at large, but because they've missed out on the reward money someone could have gotten for turning him in.
The connection with Scudder? Word has circulated in the Milfay area that the fugitive in question is the son of Flora Hawkins! But the minister doesn't know his name, age, or for what sort of crime he's wanted.
Stroud (who proceeds to kill the minister, on general principles) is left to guess whether this fugitive is the son of Henry Scudder or the product of an earlier marriage of Flora's. (The man named Hawkins was in fact her father, but Stroud doesn't want to take the time necessary to establish whether he was father or husband.) It seems likely that Scudder's relationship with Flora was brief, and a son of theirs would only be about 18. Stroud decides that a fugitive whose crime or crimes justify a significant price on his head is probably an older man, a career criminal. If he's no kin to Scudder, he himself is of no great importance; and he'll be hard to track down. Lyle Donovan, on the other hand, will be easy to find, and may prove a treasure trove of information about Flora's relationships.
Stroud makes a quick visit to Tipton. After killing Donovan - from whom he's learned only that Scudder was either a friend or a lover of his late mother - he finds the postcard Scudder sent Becca from Babylon.
He takes care at this point to assure that Wanted posters of him won't drift into the region where he's really headed: he calls a number of his old cronies (who are not so much "friends" as deathly afraid of him), and instructs them to spread the word that he's been spotted numerous times on his way back to, and then in, his old base of operations, Milwaukee.
Delighted with his progress, he assumes Donovan's identity and continues on into Texas. But he's over-confident, unaware he's being followed. While he's still hundreds of miles from Babylon, he stops for lunch, tries to cross a street - and is struck by a speeding car. He sustains multiple injuries, including two broken legs.
To add insult to injury, the hit-and-run driver is never apprehended. Who was he? Becca Donovan's longtime servant, Walter! Walter is an elderly black man; in the course of his life, he's seen many things that would undermine a person's faith in police and courts. Stroud got off lightly: Walter had intended to kill Lyle's murderer himself.
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Shortly before Stroud landed in the hospital, the carnival had finally left Loving. (Sofie had been gone a week before she was found: we hear the first of Justin's weekly Church of the Air broadcasts at the end of "Los Moscos," the second at the beginning of "Alamogordo.") Ben didn't suggest that he get a head start; he was tired from driving to Alamogordo and back, needed a good night's sleep. Next morning he gave some thought to going on ahead, but was talked out of it. Aside from the possibility of his encountering supernatural enemies, his leaving the carnival so soon after Lodz's disappearance might have aroused suspicions that he'd killed him. And those Wanted posters couldn't have been gotten out of circulation yet, even if the Loving area police had bought the story of his death.
But after a stop or two, he convinces Belyakov he should go on ahead. Haste may be crucial, if only because the Crone is presumably an aged woman who could die at any time. Even if the carnival were to make no more stops, its heavily-laden trucks would have to proceed slowly. And realistically, it has to make stops - to avoid suspicion, and to keep its people from quitting. The traveling carnival provides a good cover for individuals who can't risk having fixed addresses, where their strange comings and goings could be observed by neighbors. But if they want to continue using it for that purpose, it must be run conventionally enough that it can pass for a "normal" carnival. Ben will be taking a calculated risk by going on alone, but he believes it's the best alternative.
So he strikes out on his own - driving a truck whose Carnivale logo has been painted over, and when he has to give his name, using an alias. Unfortunately, he's recognized from the Wanted poster and arrested. He has to pretend he's never heard of this Ben Hawkins, to whom he must bear a coincidental resemblance. He can't even tell his captors Ben Hawkins died in a fire in Loving: there's no way he should know such a thing. He languishes in jail, while Belyakov and Samson try in vain to learn what's become of him.
The Texas police holding Ben have wired Oklahoma, but weeks pass (bumbling bureaucracy!) before they hear back that those Wanted posters have been recalled due to Hawkins' death. They think the report of the fugitive's death must have been false, so they send Ben's fingerprints to Oklahoma. He despairs at that point. But after more weeks, the Oklahoma police respond that they'd trashed their records of Hawkins' prints after writing him off as dead. Alas, that isn't the end of it: they'd like Texas to send them the man.
Ben is transported to Oklahoma in chains. But no one can be found who can say for sure whether he's Ben Hawkins. All his former neighbors have fled the Dust Bowl. Even the police officers and judge who would have remembered him are gone. And negative publicity resulting from the film I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang has led to investigations and calls for reform of the penal system; all the guards who would have remembered him have dropped out of sight.
Nevertheless, he's waiting for the proverbial ax to fall. He knows there's one person, probably still in the area, who can make a positive identification: Lyle Donovan. He believes the Tipton sheriff will do it, if only out of fear that someone else already has, and he's being "tested." But then he learns Donovan was recently murdered!
Ben would never have harmed Donovan himself. But he can't help thinking, with a wry smile, that the killer did him a favor...
Meanwhile, the carnival had reached Ingram, but couldn't accomplish anything. Belyakov was in no condition to go in search of the Crone himself. The only carnie he might, grudgingly, have trusted to do it was Samson. But Samson can't drive any of their vehicles, owing to his small size. Belyakov wouldn't consider confiding in Jonesy, so they continued on their way, making more random performance stops.
Ben is finally released. Then he has to hitchhike back to Texas...and when he gets there, spend weeks just searching for Carnivale. He's decided there's no point in seeking out the Crone while he has no idea where the carnival is. He may need Belyakov's help in interpreting clues; it could in any case be risky to proceed alone on the basis of information he hasn't been able to share with him.
The upshot of all this is that many months elapse between Carnivale's departure from Loving and its second stop in Ingram, with Ben once more on board. Ironically, he's getting back in action at about the same time as Stroud.
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Stroud considers his visit to Babylon productive. He's fascinated by the discovery that Scudder was the only miner not killed in the 1921 cave-in. Does he have supernatural powers? Or did he, for some reason, plant explosives to cause a cave-in that would kill everyone else? That would mean he has the psyche of, and in fact is, a mass murderer.
Going on at last to New Mexico, Stroud forces Frank Mooney to tell him about Scudder's son and his "midget" companion. He kills Mooney, checks in with Justin, then has to decide how to pick up the cold trail of Scudder's son. Young Scudder (as Stroud thinks of him) had been so interested in Father Kerrigan that he'd probably gone straight to Alamogordo. But a carnival had been in Loving at the same time. The youth's association with a "midget" suggests they might have been employed by the carnival. And when it left Loving, it had been headed for Texas.
Stroud makes a quick, unproductive visit to Alamogordo - leaving several dead bodies in his wake. But he eventually picks up the trail of the carnival, on the chance "young Scudder" is still with it.
Scudder's boy, he muses. I'll do like Brother Justin told me, o' course. But if the kid's anythin' like his old man, it mighta been wiser to plan on whackin' him right away!
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This is a fairly good fit with what we've seen in the show. It's possible Sofie had ignored that deck of Tarot cards for months, until someone - Ben - actually asked for a reading; that prompted her to ask him to burn them. It's also possible Lila only began trying to stir up trouble after discontent had mounted during the carnival's months of dawdling in the Southwest.
Similarly, Rev. Balthus could have been kept in the hospital for months, while Justin was renovating the long-abandoned farmhouse and making it livable. And Justin may not have begun his sexual torment of maids until he and Iris were settled in that sprawling "new" house, where her bedroom is farther from his.
What's hardest to reconcile with this timeline is the packing for a move that we saw underway in the Crowe home in "Alamogordo," and the unpacking in "Ingram." Both sequences involved china, normally one of the last things to be packed and the first to be unpacked. Nevertheless, this is the only point in the season where "lost months" can be inserted. So what we saw being packed and unpacked must have been the Crowes' rarely-used china!
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(The End)