This image capture tells you everything likely wrong with CARNIVAL ROW in one frustrating moment.

What we’re going to get: a ham-handed Victorian dystopia where the Bad Guys were hit with the Idiot Stick five billion times in order to keep them from doing a few simple things that would have been obvious, but also would have keep them from creating the precise dystopia that could later be used to create dull, slanted, yet hyper-topical social commentary about our times. (Sprinkle ‘presumably’ and ‘probably’ in the previous sentence, where needed.)

What we could have gotten: Fantasy steampunk Cthulhu.

Now I’m pissed. I was assuming that whoever’s doing CARNIVAL ROW just didn’t have a clue, OK? It wasn’t entirely their fault, really: they had an idea, didn’t know what to do with it, so they messed it all up. But a clip like this shows me that the creative team could conceive of the concept of Gaslight Cthulhu; and then they decided that running with that would be less interesting than Oh, noes, they won’t let any of the faerie fly.

…Jackwagons.

Moe Lane

PS: At this point, I’m waiting for somebody I trust to come in and confirm for me that this show WASN’T crap before I’ll watch it. And I’m the damned target demographic!