Carnivàle/Old Cherry Blossom Road

Old Cherry Blossom Road
Season 2, Episode 4
Airdate	January 30, 2005
Production Number	204
Written by	Dawn Prestwich, Nicole Yorkin
Directed by	Steve Shill
← 2x03 Ingram, TX	2x05 → Creed, OK
Carnivàle — Season Two

Old Cherry Blossom Road is the fourth episode of the second season of Carnivàle, and the sixteenth episode overall.

Guest-Starring:

Co-Starring:

Featuring:

Plot Overview

Ben is taken by the three men to see the author of the poem he found, the Crone. Upon meeting her, the older woman informs Ben that she is his grandmother. The other men Ben met earlier are his cousins. Ben's grandfather, Hilton Scudder, was one of the founding members of the Ku Klux Klan. She gives him Scudder's old trench knife from when he fought in the war.

Scudder's knife

Ben finds a plaster mask of Scudder's face in the Crone's things. While looking at it, the mask opens its eyes, and Ben drops it in shock. Inscribed in the plaster is "Evander Geddes, Creed, Okla. 1924."

Scudder's Death Mask

Dolan presents his findings to Justin, who is reluctant to convict his sister on such flimsy evidence. He demands better proof from the reporter. Meanwhile, Iris sets out on her own at night, and sets fire to a bag of clothes. We can assume that this was what she was wearing the night she set the fire at the Dignity Ministry. What she doesn't see is Dolan watching her.

Arc Advancement

Happenings

• Upon returning to the carnival, Ben finds the remains of Sofie's burned Tarot deck, which he returns to her, even though she doesn't want them.
• 

  
  Varlyn arrives at the Templar Hall in Loving, NM. After gaining the information he was looking for, he rigs the entire place and blows it up.

Characters

• 

  

  Celeste
  Justin continues his brutal relationship with the new maid. Iris finds Celeste curled up on the floor of Justin's bedroom, entirely devastated by her sexual encounter with Justin.
• Burley continues to vocalize his distaste about working with Sofie. He also asks Stumpy if he'd be able to pay for some time with Rita Sue. Stumpy refuses, but Burley does not seem ready to take no for an answer.
• Ruthie continues to see visions of dead people. While hanging her laundry, she smells smoke, then sees a black-veiled Apollonia standing in the field. The smell of smoke (which Sofie experience in the previous episode) seems to be a leftover of Apollonia's death and precedes the presence of her spirit in this world.
  

  

  Apollonia
• Stumpy continues to cope with is debt, which Libby is aware of but Rita Sue is not.
• Rita Sue begins to suspect that her daughter may have feelings for Jonesy. This is one of the many references this season to Libby following in her mother's footsteps.

Dream Sequences and Visions

• When the Crone gives Ben the knife, he has a sudden vision of himself stabbing Justin in the chest with it during one of the preacher's sermons. Simultaneously, while Justin is delivering his sermon, he has a vision of Ben rushing up and stabbing him, and collapses.

Trivia

Allusions and References

• The Crone takes Ben to the graves of his uncles, Owen and Gilbert, and his grandfather, Hilton, who all died on the same day. She refuses to explain why this is, but Ben finds out that the night Henry was born, his grandmother went insane and slit the throats of all the men.
• Ben asks the Crone where he should go in search of Scudder, and she directs him to where "the dog and wolf howl at the moon," a reference to the Moon card of the tarot.

Quotes

• Burley: What's Jonesy got I ain't got?
  (Rita Sue ignores him.)
  Burley: Cat got your tongue?
  Rita Sue: No, I thought maybe it was a rhetorical question.
  Burley: Nothing retardical about it.