I really enjoyed the first season of Altered Carbon. I enjoyed the second season even more. It was sharper, tighter, more effective in narrative in just about every way.
I did miss Joel Kinnaman as Takeshi Kovacs. In a universe in which brain, soul, whatever you want to call it - in Altered Carbon it's become "stack" - can be relatively easily inserted into any sleeve aka body, it's not surprising to see Tak in a new sleeve in Season 2. Not to mention that he gave up his Kinnaman sleeve at the end of Season 1. Anthony Mackie does a fine job as Tak in the new sleeve in the new season. And we get the benefit of two Taks in the second season - a younger Tak played by Will Yun Lee - who has a much larger role in the second season. But I miss Kinnaman, whose acting I've admired since The Killing.
But my favorite character is the AI Poe, perfectly played by Chris Conner. He had an appealing mix of vulnerability and savvy, loyalty and stubborn independence in the first season, and all of this is heightened in the second season, by his digital mind not being all there, literally, having been damaged in the first season. I can't think of an AI I've liked more in any science fiction on the screen, maybe only Star Trek: The Next Generation's Data, if we consider an android an AI, though the two kinds of artificial beings are very different in many ways. Season 2 also has the addition of Dig 301, well played by Dina Shihabi. Dig makes a great apprentice, guardian angel, and eventually loving partner for Poe.
The master plot is fast moving and hard hitting, with Simone Missick doing a good job as Trepp on the gritty ground, and Renée Elise Goldsberry effective as Quellcrest, more tortured than ever by what turns out to be the Elders, an indigenous intelligence with super powers on Harlan's World, where the action takes place and Tak urges her to change her modus operandi of fixing things then dying. Torben Liebrecht rounds out the crucial cast as Carrera, an at once brutal and cunning military man, with his own very complex axe to grind, a condition common to all the major characters in a story in which the only way any human can succumb to death is via destruction of the stack at the base of the head.
I was talking to a reporter from The Washington Post the other day about what it's like to watch television in our Coronavirus age. Series that take place in our present, such as any hospital show, seem oddly out of synch with what is going on in our world - they have no mention of Coronavirus, since it was not yet known when the episode was made. I mentioned Altered Carbon as a series which doesn't have that effect, since it takes place so far in the future. "How far in the future?" the reporter asked. "Thousands of years," I unthinkingly replied. (Here's the article.) Actually, Altered Carbon takes place less than 400 years from now.
It's a measure of how well Altered Carbon has created its future world that it feels so timeless. Back to our own 2020 world, if you're home and looking for a high-concept, engaging, story-book colorful series, I'd recommend Altered Carbon, both seasons.
See also Altered Carbon 1: Roads, Spit, and Immortality
"As otherworldly, mystical and far-out as the subject
matter may be, the songs burst with love and warmth
and humanity." -- Evan LeVine, Swan Fungus, 3 February 2020
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