I should have known Damascus was going to be AWESOME!
Wow. I've kind of been saying all these things since the beginning, i.e. Management was Justin's daddy, etc., however, seeing all that in one episode, a shortened one I might add, was almost too much to handle. But why might Carnivale play all it's cards in one episode? I thought the same thing, and then quickly realized one thing in particular...Sofie. She's the third piece of the puzzle that we aren't too sure about. Was the former Usher her daddy? Was the Usher Scudder? We won't know until we see the feebly old tree tattoo on Scudders chest. It's hard to say.
I'm still going with my theory that the powers are offset by generation, i.e. Child of Light bears the next Child of Darkness (or Usher if this is somewhow different) (Management birthed Justin), Scudder (former darkness/maybe usher), birthed Ben, and Sofie was the child of an Usher be it Scudder or just the former one.
I also think that Management made a move at Ben so that Ben would kill him and gain his powers, and knowing that Ben would protect Scudder. Just goddamn 'wow' for this episode. I guess it could have also been called:
Sampson gets a nubby handjob. (I'm sorry but this was really creepy)
Jones goes in the backdoor.
Prophet fight.
Scudder: The Peace Lovin' Hippie Who took doing acid to the next level.