Altered Carbon, S02

A disappointment, really. The second season of this series never even approaches the glory of the first season.

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Over the course of the second series, we know we are moving toward some kind of greater understanding but even in the penultimate episode when we do finally understand, we don’t really care that much because the side-plots are so weakly woven together and the visual treats we were given in the first season are not given in the second. Too, the casting is wrong. The lead guy seems to overact and there is no chemistry between him and the lady of his life.

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I’ve read that they discontinued this series because it was just too expensive to make (and not balanced out by viewership), but I would guess it was because they didn’t know where to take the plot. The first season is somewhat loosely based on a book of the same name published in 2002, but the second season goes off in it’s own direction. [Spoiler: skip to the next paragraph] The underlying thrust of the first season is truth and justice, but in the second, it’s about deposing bad-guys. The ending feels terrible because, while the bad guys get theirs, the spirit of the planet, which is seeking it’s own justice, is blown to smithereens.

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They left plenty of plot holes open at the end of this in the hopes that they’d be able to continue, but it didn’t get continued, and really, it should have ended at the end of season one.

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All that said, like any good science fiction, this crates a world so solid that it gives us unique vocabulary words with which to talk about it. If you watch it with someone else you will, no doubt, find yourself using the words ‘meth’, ‘sleeve’ and ‘stack’ without hesitation while discussing it.

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Not really recommended.