Saturday, March 7, 2020

You Had One Job: Altered Carbon Season 2



Altered Carbon Season 2

I just watched one episode of the new season of Altered Carbon and that was enough for me. Enough, I say! I loved the first season of the show but after reading the book knew I would have hated it. So glad I saw the show first. Then I was gifted the rest of the series of books (except the fourth one) so I like to think I know a metric shit ton about the universe of Takeshi Kovacs. In that post (click here for that) I mentioned some of the differences between the first book and the first season of the show. Now that I have read the books I was being super judgmental of this new season. From the start I was pissed! Well, maybe not pissed so much as insulted by the terrible writing. Also, Netflix is notorious for having shitty second seasons. 


The basic premise is that people avoid death by having their consciousness into these things called stacks and can be inserted into new bodies or synthetic ones pretty much living forever if possible unless someone destroys the shit and they are dead for reals. Anthony Mackie replaces Joel Kinnaman which is not an issue since he switches up bodies with no problem. Except in this show. He loses his fucking mind whenever he wakes up in a new body. Speaking of new bodies he starts off in the body of a lounge singer. Some lady is looking for him and talking to the Edgar Allen Poe AI who can not say where. He is a ghost at this place since the hotel is gone I guess. This guy brings money for Kovacs and people claim they are him and start brawling. Turns out the singer is Kovacs who is shot by the lady looking for him.


He wakes up in a virtual reality and promised to keep this body as well as find out where Quellcrist Falconer is. They are running with this bullshit story! They really doing it! I was so pissed because after finding out that he never even met her in real life and that she was a legend people talked about and used her teachings I am mad that he had this whole relationship with her and they are still doing it in the next season. I watched this with someone who never finished the first season and even with that being the case she should have been able to watch this (including the recap) and understand some of what was going on. I have read three books and watched the first season and shit was baffling to me or straight up made no sense.


They have taken Kovacs and Poe and made them a team he can bring with him. I get it. He was my favorite character of the first season but having him in a necklace is just silly in a reality where people sleeve themselves into new bodies. For those that don't know Kovacs from the books, when he wakes in a new body he adjusts extremely fast and learns what the body can do. In this series he freaks the fuck out and goes insane as he adjusts. It is done just for the visuals because an Envoy that goes insane when he wakes up would be the worst kinda soldier. Oh, and this fucker stabs himself to get information from...himself. The pain gives him flashbacks so he can remember things he forgot. Who wrote this shit?! At this point they start throwing away very important information from the books regarding skeletons from Mars, song spires, and Harlan's World. He got back to that planet in the third book and it was a big deal. In this he just goes, like, whatever.

I would watch this just to hate-watch it and I'm not trying to do that anymore. I am this close to giving up on Hunters and seeing what else I can watch. I have also started watching Avatar: The Last Airbender and season two of Brockmire. There is zero need for me to continue watching Altered carbon if this is how the shit is starting off.

Click here for previous You Had One Job.

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