Altered Carbon S1E3: "In a Lonely Place" (continued)

Laurens' self-congratulatory ramble is interrupted by a mild commotion from the buffet room below the mezzanine he and Kovacs are on. Isaac, the resident Bancroft failson, has somehow gotten into a physical altercation with one of the guests, and is being escorted away by miserable looking household staff. Laurens dryly remarks that his son could never hold his liquor. That seems like a problem that a resleeve could fix, but maybe they'd rather wait for him to be a bit older before doing that.

Kovacs asks him if - like some of my commenters on the last few episodes - he thinks Isaac could have killed him. Laurens chuckles sadly and says that he only wishes Isaac would grow the balls to try something like that. Then, out of nowhere (god, characters are doing that a lot in this episode...) Kovacs tells him that he's responsible for Isaac turning out like this by denying him the chance to grow up and replace his parents as humans are psychologically meant to do. This prompts Laurens to go on a bizarre speech in defense of deathlessness that makes no goddamned sense.

What the fuck does he mean "if he'd lived in this time" he could have his lost companions back? CORTICAL STACKS EXISTED BACK THEN. THAT'S WHY KOVACS IS EVEN HERE! We saw the half-melted stacks of the other Envoys at that museum exhibit. They were every bit as (im)mortal as most modern people are. Unless Laurens is saying that if they'd been alive today he'd have arranged a super special satellite personality backup for all of them on his own dime, I have no fucking idea what he's talking about.

He finishes with a cliched ramble about how people like himself are the new gods, and then tells Kovacs to go on and investigate the guests.

So, with that pretentious bit of college sophomore screenwriting over with, Kovacs insinuates his way into private conversations with several of Laurens' prime suspects. The first confesses to having hated Laurens for the longest time, but says that he's since realized that there's no point. It's impossible for meths to actually be rid of each other, so a century ago he just resolved to stop caring. The second, while she hates Laurens even now, is horrified by a precedent ever being set of meths being successfully, permanently murdered. Both of them at least seem earnest, but they may or may not actually be. Snooping around further, Kovacs sees Miriam sneaking away from the crowd, and follows her to a very badly concealed hidden door.

Really? People like the Bancrofts letting marks like this develop on their precious, shiny floors? Even if the door wasn't something that was meant to be hidden, I'd have trouble believing this.

Kovacs enters the hidden door, whichy leads to a hidden hallway, terminating in a hidden room where Miriam is getting it from the chief of security. Neither of them notice Kovacs until he calls attention to himself.

Miriam's reaction to Kovacs' present is off. And, notably, she doesn't react much at all when Kovacs intimidates the security guy into leaving. Her mannerisms in general are less Stiffler's Mom, and more Cher from "Clueless," and then Kovacs tests her by asking her his own name, which she fails to provide. So, she fesses up to being Naomi Bancroft, one of Laurens and Miriam's older children who moved out some time ago.

She just gets a weird thrill out of stealing her mother's backups from cryo and attending social events in them. And also using them to have sex with the help, for some probably not very mentally healthy reason.

Also, when Kovacs refers to her as "kid," she gets indignant. She's 67 years old, and demands to be treated like an adult.

...

Oooh boy. The scene with Kovacs criticizing the Bancroft family planning earlier might have been poorly written, but holy fuck is his position from it being validated. There's some just plain grotesque arrested development going on with these kids.

That said, hat's off to the actress. I still feel like she's playing Miriam as a joke, but her performance as Naomi - and, moreso, as Naomi trying to impersonate Miriam - shows that she's capable of considerable range.

...

Kovacs muses aloud that if the plasma pistol that they think killed Laurens was in a safe only he or Miriam could unlock, maybe someone else could have accessed it using Miriam's biometrics in conjunction with learning the password(s). She tells him that she'd have to be insane to do that, though. Laurens' will specifieis that in the event he should die a true death, none of his children will get anything. They live their lavish lifestyles by his generosity, and will be on their own without its continuance.

Well fuck.

I feel like he should have mentioned that to Kovacs before. Would have kinda saved him the time and trouble of investigating certain suspects.

...then again, as Kovacs leaves Naomi behind him and returns to the foyer he muses that this situation might have caused sufficient resentment in one or more of the children for their hatred to overpower their material self-interest. True. It also occurs to me now that maybe one or two of them managed to grow into something like emotional adulthood despite the everything and became stable enough on their own to not need daddy anymore.

He makes his way to the dining room, and finds a drunken Isaac enthusiastically picking a fight with some traditional-looking Japanese guys by insulting their heritage. Kovacs, in his fluent Japanese, apologizes to the men for Isaac's behavior, and then grabs Isaac and drags him aside to ask some questions. Those men were the Japanese businesspeople that Laurens had just made a big deal with the day before his murder. Is Isaac trying to sabotage it? Is there something going on there?

Isaac's "we're all backed up" part suggests that Laurens kept the hacking attempt a secret from most, even within his own family. In which case, Isaac is either smarter than he seems, or innocent in the murder. Yeah I'm leaning toward innocent.

Kovacs is interrupted in his interrogation by lawyer Prescott, who tells him that bullying the boss' children is just going to create headaches for both of them. Beside her, a woman with a creepy, dead-eyed stare and way too much makeup expresses disappointment that a legendary hyperintelligent Envoy turned out to be this crass and brutish. When Kovacs asks who the hell this woman is and why she's been told about him, it is revealed that she - named as Clarissa Severin - is an accomplished treasure hunter and antiquarian, though as a meth I imagine she must own business assets as well. One of her most recent accomplishments was discovering that there was still one intact Envoy cortical stack gathering dust in some forgotten Protectorate vault somewhere, and exploiting the historical obsession of even richer idiot Laurens Bancroft with the Falconerite movement to convince him he should revive said Envoy to use to investigate his murder.

As Prescott then puts it, Kovacs current existence was born of the conjunction of Laurens' self-indulgent historical hangups, and Clarissa's business sense and salesmanship.

It also turns out that Prescott's venom toward Kovacs is a product of jealousy. Him being Laurens Bancroft's favored pet just by virtue of what he is, whereas she's had to spend decades being his loyal toadie and pulling cutthroat maneuvers against his other toadies before she could even get invited to a party like this one. She and Kovacs are the only two non-meth guests at this party (as far as she knows), and she feels like she's earned it and he hasn't.

After parting ways with these two, Kovacs muses that he doesn't think the killer was a meth. Going through that much trouble to attempt to permakill Laurens would have required someone to really strongly want him dead, and frankly none of these people care enough about anyone besides themselves to be so motivated.

Next thing that happens is show and tell. Everyone takes turns getting up on a stage in the foyer and showing the unique thing that they brought to the party as per the host's instructions. The first one we see is Isaac, who has gotten ahold of what he claims is the mummified hand of a legendary planet colonization leader.

Oh gee who could have seen that part coming. :/

After everyone groans and glares and Laurens sinks his face deep into his palms, Isaac gets off the stage and is followed by Clarissa Severin the creepy artifact-hunter. She starts off her display by saying that downloading human minds into nonhuman bodies is technically illegal, but "laws don't apply to people like us." Cue evil chuckling from all the other rich people. Holy fuck could this writing be any lazier? The bad dialogue still only somewhat undercuts the horror of her showing, though. The mind of a serial killer who had been slated for permanent death, resleeved in a small boa constrictor using a custom-made cortical stack.

With reptilian brains being as primitive as they are, trying to operate in one has caused extreme, seemingly permanent, degradation of the human consciousness. She tried resleeving him in a human body a little while ago to see what state he was in, and he could do nothing but wriggle and gasp on the cot until she put him back in the snake.

Pretty horrifying, even if the dialogue - both of Severin herself and of the other guests' reactions - are just cringey.

While this is all going on, Hubert enters the house's security monitoring station. The man watching the feeds tells him he's not supposed to be in there, but Hubert does a convincing job of acting a put-upon waiter just trying to get away from the asshole guests, and manages to get the man to accept a drink. While he's taking it, Hubert puts him in a headlock and pokes him with the tip of the gigerknife they bought.

It was clarified during the shopping scene that the agent secreted by this knife is nonlethal in small doses, which means that just being pricked by the tip will induce unconsciousness while a deep stab is certain death. Useful little dagger. Hubert advises the man to drink plenty of water and mind the lingering side effects after he wakes up, and to not tell anyone or he'll definitely be fired, as he drops him onto the floor and takes over his position at the console.

Hubert, this had fucking *better* be something Kovacs entrusted you with and not you doing literally the one thing he made you promise not to do before bringing you up here and agreeing to help you.

...granted, Kovacs introduced himself to Hubert by breaking into his house and beating him up, and he doesn't exactly have insurance that Kovacs will go through with his own side of the bargain. But then, Kovacs also arranged treatment for his daughter, so...yeah, scratch those second thoughts, Hubert is being a dick here.

Cut back to the foyer. It's the end of show-and-tell, and Laurens himself takes the stage to present his own unique item. Yeah, no prizes if you've already guessed where this is going. It's Kovacs. He points Kovacs out among the crowd, and brags about having the last Envoy in his possession.

...wouldn't it have been hilarious if Kovacs wasn't in the room at that moment, though? Really, think about it. Kovacs was snooping all around the house. He easily could have decided to slip out to the parking lot to bug someone's aircar while everyone was distracted, or decided to go up to the security room to check some footage of a guest he deemed suspicious. I guess Laurens would have probably just remotely called Kovacs in before going up onstage if he didn't already see him in the foyer, but still, it's a funny thought.

Also, Laurens has just completely sabotaged his own investigation here. Does he think any of the guests are going to let their guard down around Kovacs after this? He just threw his element of surprise out the window for no goddamned reason.

...

I wonder.

If Laurens is obsessed with Envoys, and Severin informed him that she'd found one in storage...could he have faked this entire murder mystery just to watch Kovacs try to solve it? Is this all just a stupid game that he set up for his new pet?

That's actually very plausible. The police said it looked like a botched suicide attempt. Everyone else who's reviewed the case says it looked like a botched suicide attempt. Kovacs only has Laurens' own word and the presence of those mysterious hired thugs trying to stop him that it wasn't.

If Laurens is taking the investigation so un-seriously as to flaunt Kovacs identity in front of the people he allegedly wants him to investigate, that could be a sign that the investigation was, in fact, never serious. Laurens seems like he really might just be bored enough and deranged enough to do something like this.

Well, if so it'll be kind of hilarious when his self-indulgence results in the Neo-Falconerites burning the Protectorate to the ground with him in it.

...

Everyone claps, as if they have some kind of proof that Kovacs actually is what Laurens says he is. Afterward, Kovacs asks Laurens what the fuck that was, didn't he say he's not going to consider him property when they first started their arrangement? Laurens just cryptically says that in this world, it's kill or be killed be the owner or be the owned. O...kay?

After show-and-tell, everyone goes over to the arena to watch the duel. It's a fancy zero-gravity fighting pit, apparently, so that's kinda cool. As the married gladiator couple take up positions and wait for the antigrav to turn on, we briefly cut to Hubert doing *something* at that security console. Is he going to sabatoge the antigrav? Unintentionally, perhaps? Well, for now, the duel starts without issue. The married couple launch themselves through the air at each other and start their bloody, weightless fist fight.

Surprised it's not a knife-fight, given that earlier in this episode Laurens mentioned having a fondness for zero-G swordplay.

As the battle begins, Miriam asks Laurens if he doesn't think it's slightly poor taste, having a married couple fight to sleeve death. Huh, I guess these performers are new to the Bancroft residence, if she's not already used to them. Laurens just shrugs and smugly reminds her that they're doing this of their own free will for payment. How much economic pressure they are or aren't under is left to our imagination at least for now, not that Laurens would care either way.

Kovacs stands at Laurens' side, unentertained and unimpressed. In the security room, Hubert is still retrieving data or planting a virus or something in the skycastle's main computer. The gladiators punch each other bloody, with a pair of meth guests just laughing and teasing each other when one of the fighters' nose is broken and sprays blood all over their fancy dresses as the duel floats near them. One of them even licks it off her own hand where it got splashed, because lolevil. Then, when the duel comes near where the Bancrofts and Kovacs are standing, Laurens suddenly tells the gladiators that he'll give them both upgraded new sleeves if they can take Kovacs out, and pushes him into the ring.

Ortega, the token legal authority here, tells a technician to shut off the zero G field, but he says he can't do that safely until everyone is clear. The gladiators both start going for Kovacs' neck.

And here, we have one of the most painful missed opportunities for an awesome character moment that I've ever seen.

Based on Kovacs' behavior so far, the situation he's currently in, and Laurens' apparent level of interest in him, what do you think he would do in this situation?

Yeah. That would have been awesome. Unfortunately, it's not what Kovacs does. Instead, he actually fights and seemingly gives it his all. Worse, the music, framing, and cinematography are all convinced that the outcome of this battle actually matters, when I'm not even remotely sure that it has any stakes at all.

You could think of Kovacs' cooperation here as another case of "surrendering for now to get in place for a later attack," like when he submitted to Miriam's advances. Playing Laurens' game instead of utterly and hilariously embarrassing him in front of the entire Meth community might be a better move in the long term, despite how gratifying the latter might be. Except...

...Kovacs voicecalls Hubert and asks him where the hell he is and why he doesn't have is back.

As in, he wants Hubert to come and help him fight. Even though that would also be screwing with Laurens' shenanigans. So no, it seems as if Kovacs is actually taking this battle seriously rather than just playing along.

...what does he think would happen if he had Hubert intervene here anyway? That would likely just get Hubert permakilled. I very much doubt Kovacs is in danger of that, but Hubert certainly would be if Laurens discovered him without anyone except Kovacs and Poe knowing where he was when he vanished.

None of these actions from Kovacs make any sense at all. What is he trying to do?

Not that this scene makes Hubert look any better, by the way.

...the hell with Laurens. Kovacs is going to kill Hubert for this.

It actually would have been funny if Hubert took the same attitude toward this scene as I am. "Kovacs, what do you even want me to do that won't make the situation worse? Just let them kill you, the rich jackass will have you in a new sleeve soon enough." But that's not what he says, and his thought process isn't implied to be anything as rational as that.

The fight escalates when Laurens tosses a shuriken into the zero gravity field for whoever can grab it. One of the gladiators does, and strikes a nasty wound in Kovacs' back with it; he was already at a disadvantage due to being unused to zero-G combat, and now he's clearly going to lose. That is, until Ortega sees Hubert finally hurry into the room with his gun drawn, snatches it out of his hands, and shoots out the antigrav system.

...which causes Kovacs and both gladiators to fall two dozen feet to the floor, landing on their backs or sides with a trio of sickening cracks and writhing in shared agony.

Kovacs' writing might not measure up to his baseline in this scene. Hubert might be making me hate him. But, try as one might, there is simply no outdoing Detective Kirsten "Garfield Minus Garfield" Ortega.

As the more injured male gladiator wriggles helplessly, unable to move or speak, Kovacs and the female fighter pick themselves slowly, painfully up. The woman is panicking; without battle to sleeve death actually having happened, there's nothing in the contract to guarantee a replacement sleeve, and she and her husband can't afford to replace his seemingly paralyzed one out of pocket. Wow, nice going Ortega. Kovacs rises to the occasion by tossing the shuriken into the man's chest, killing him off, and then telling Laurens that since he won he should get the same prize they were offered. Two upgraded sleeves.

I kind of have trouble believing that this sort of eventuality - in case of malfunction etc - isn't covered in their contract. But eh, dystopia, cheapskate meths, who fucking knows.

Laurens agrees to Kovacs' terms. Then we jump ahead to the guests leaving. For some reason, the waiter who mysteriously had a souped-up illegal gun on him never gets acknowledged by Laurens or any of his family or staff. Before he returns to the surface as well, Kovacs has another one on one chat with Laurens. The latter telling him that he hopes he learned an important lesson tonight.

O...kay, I guess he does care about that after all then.

Or maybe he realizes that Kovacs is eventually going to exploit her for information or something unless he nips it in the bud. That would be a much more charitable interpretation of his behavior, honestly.

If that is actually Laurens' reason for coming down on Kovacs for this, he does a good job of hiding it though. When Kovacs asks him why the hell he cares what Miriam does in her free time considering what Laurens himself gets up to in his, Laurens goes on this incomprehensible tirade about how a mere mortal could never understand the way an entity like him feels about a woman he's loved and lived with for over a century, and that Kovacs shouldn't even try to make sense of it because it is beyond his comprehension.

That's so transparent and moronic, even for Laurens, that I'd be sure he was actually trying to preempt Kovacs doing anything sneaky with leverage if this episode didn't already have such shit writing. It does though, so who can tell.

Laurens asks Kovacs if he's gathered any leads at the party. Kovacs might have taken the opportunity to point out that Laurens kind of made that impossible when he gave the game away halfway through, but unfortunately at this point I'm not convinced that the writers realized that that's what they made Laurens do, so obviously Kovacs couldn't think of it either. That's that for their conversation.

Stepping out onto the veranda to depart, Kovacs asks the waiting Hubert where the fuck he was during the leadup to that debacle. Again, I'm not sure what Hubert could have actually done about it if he'd been there, but given his mission parameters it's still something he should be taken to task for. And...Hubert responds by holding up a thumb drive and explaining that he retrieved the surveillance data of the house's comings and goings from the night Lizzie was assaulted. With a tone and expression that suggest he expects this to actually mean anything to Kovacs.

Earlier in *this very episode* Hubert was hesitant to work with Kovacs because the latter didn't care about Lizzie.

If this scene had Hubert playing this to the effect of "sorry bro, but I had to," or "if you were in my place you know you'd do the same," then I could roll with it. It would reflect poorly on Hubert Bartholomew Maximillian Elliot, but it wouldn't reflect poorly on the writing. But that's not how it's playing this.

This writing is reminding me of the really bad late seasons of Game of Thrones. Where characters constantly just repeat their motivations and personality traits at each other regardless of the circumstances, even when doing so would appear to contradict those motivations and traits.

And then Kovacs just...shrugs that off and keeps irritably, but still casually, chatting with Hubert as if everything is still fine between them.

...

This seems like a situation where the sunk cost fallacy is a problem even for Envoys.

While I still don't see how Hubert could have actually made a difference in the situation that arose, the fact remains that he wandered away from Kovacs, did the thing he promised he wouldn't do, and then blew Kovacs off when he was requesting backup until he finished extracting the data. The situation *could have* been one where Kovacs had an actual reason to need Hubert, and Hubert has demonstrated himself to be so unreliable in such situations that you could fairly call him worse than useless. Kovacs has absolutely no reason to continue interacting with this person at all after this. He can find a more reliable ally to work his Envoy charisma magic on. He hasn't spent that much time on Hubert yet (though admittedly he's spent a fair amount of money buying Poe an advanced therapy degree). He won't be too deep in the hole if he spends more of it on someone else.

Maybe this is a cognitive pitfall that Falconer's teachings leave one vulnerable to. Or else it's just bad writing.

...

Ortega then comes up to them and the three of them all just repeat how disgusting the meths are to each other for a minute, in case the audience was stupid and didn't notice.

She returns Hubert's handgun, and Kovacs introduces the two of them properly in a manner that suggest he still cares about either of them. Hubert's actual first name is Vernon, apparently. I don't think that was mentioned until now, which is kinda weird, but I may have just missed it. Then Ortega whines at Kovacs about him getting into trouble all the time, and sourly tells him that she has other jobs to do besides babysitting him.

Yes. Ortega does in fact have other things she's supposed to be doing. It's Kovacs' fault that she's been kept away from her proper duties. All his fault. She's been helplessly pulled along in this.

So, they part ways. Vernon asks Kovacs if he needs backup wherever he's going next, and Kovacs gives him this completely incredulous look before telling him "I'll catch up with you later." Lol. Also, he parts ways with him when they're still on the skycastle forecourt. I'm assuming Kovacs has a ride down to the surface, but does Vernon actually have a separate one of his own? Lol, I guess Vernon's going to spend the night hiding in the Bancroft dressing cabinets and stealing from the garbage cans to feed himself.

Jump ahead, and downward, to Kovacs returning to Licktown to talk to Alice at the brothel again. He enters, still pretending to be Ava Elliot in a male sleeve, and finds Alice beaten bloody and looking traumatized. It couldn't have been Laurens this time, he's still back at the skycastle trying to figure out what those strange noises in the dressing closets are being caused by. When Kovacs comforts her, she whispers "they made me do it" and jams a syringe into his neck.

Man, NONE of Kovacs' recruits are paying off for him, with the dramatic exception of Poe. Maybe Quellcrest Falconer's alien hyperbrain wisdom wasn't actually all it's cracked up to be.

As Kovacs collapses to the floor, vision blurring, the show starts playing Death Have Mercy, in a manner that suggests that this third episode monkey wrench is supposed to actually make us think the main character is dying. Even as the cyborg thugs from the other night come back and retrieve him, notably without killing him or even his sleeve.

You know...with how seriously I'm inclined to take the show at this point, I think I have a much more fitting song to play over this scene. I'm gonna do that while watching the rest.

The cyborg thugs congratulate each other on the successful plot, one telling the other that he knew she'd do it if they beat and threatened her enough.

♫ HMMMM WATCHA SAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYY~ ♫

They then snap Alice's neck, though they don't appear to do anything to her cortical stack. Granted, I doubt anyone who cares about her can afford to resleeve her, but maybe Kovacs himself will eventually.

♫HMMM THAT YOU ONLY MEANT WEELLLLLLLLLL....OF COURSE YOU DID HMMMM WATCHA SAAAAAAAYYYY~♫

They drag Kovacs out of the building. He blacks out, and next thing he knows he's being wheeled through some kind of lab or hospital facility. The thugs are much more formally dressed and presentable looking now, apparently having just been blending in with their previous attire.

Through all this, the song keeps playing.

♫HMMMMM THAT IT'S ALL FOR THE BESSSSSSSSST...OF COURSE IT IS HMMMMMM WATCHA SAAAAAAAAAY~♫

The episode ends with them shoving Kovacs into a cryocell or something.

♫OOOOOOOOHHOOOOOOOHHHHHH WHAT DID SHE SAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAY???~♫



Fucking hell that was stupid.

At this point I'm probably taking this story as seriously as that actress did when she looked over the script and decided she was going to play Miriam Bancroft as Stiffler's Mom because why the hell not.

I'm not sure if I respect Ortega's actress more or less for her attempts to play her own schizophrenic authors' crash victim of a character 100% straight. She's putting SO much effort into it. You can really see her trying her hardest to make Ortega work. But, at the end of the day, I think she and the audience both would have had a lot more fun if she realized this character was a fucking Bojack Horseman sketch come to life and played her accordingly. A little maniacal cackling here and there, maybe talk to the makeup department about some hints of feces being rubbed on her skin, it would have really helped sell the part.

*Most* of the stuff in the first half of the episode worked. The midpoint onward was just miserable, except for the unintentional comedy. The most disappointing part was how poorly Kovacs - a character who's normally the highlight of the show along with Poe - ended up being written, just coming across as another second-rate Hollywood mannequin like all the rest.

The person who commissioned this series told me that episode three was a low point, so hopefully it'll improve again after this. Thing is, pretty much all the flaws of this episode are fundamental issues with the series as a whole. They were just a little more concentrated than usual here, and we had a rare case of the otherwise well-executed main character falling victim to them as well. The sheer pretention of some of those dialogue scenes...and they were 100% the authors' pretention, not just Laurens'.

...oh my god lol I just realized they have a character named "Poe" hanging around while doing a futurist reenactment of the first half of "The Masque of the Red Death." Is Kovacs eventually going to upload Poe into the skycastle computer so he can crash it and kill everyone aboard? That would be so hilariously stupid and self-congratulatory, oh my god I hope they actually do it hahaha.