Previously: Takeshi Kovacs was brought back to life to solve a murder.
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Fallen Angel
Marines: Hey, we open looking up from a body of water again. Kovacs’ Voice Over [KVO] tells us that peace is an illusion as we pull back in the shot and see we are just outside Bay City. A dad and son are out on the bay, fishing. We watch as a body falls from the sky and into the water. Dad and son are shook. Son grabs the body and says they can’t leave her here. Dad asks if he wants them to get arrested. She isn’t their problem. The son reluctantly lets go of the body and watches her sink.
Jessica: It seems harsh, but it tells us more about this world. It’s a place of little trust, particularly among strangers. A place where you will be under suspicion for reporting anything, particularly a crime. Also, I hope they can afford to send that kid to a therapy robot or something.
Mari: Truly.
KVO finishes his very serious talk about peace and tells us that war is all we know. Flashback to the Lethal-Praetorians walking amongst a field of bodies, covered in ash. One man is still alive and he laughs without humor, as he shouts “long live the uprising! Long live [Renee Elise Goldsbery]!” Kovacs wakes up from that nightmare to find he’s in his AI hotel bed, ash falling over his body. He wakes up from that dream within a dream to find he’s in his AI hotel bed, a crow perched near him. Poe is also in the room, standing next to a woman.
Kovacs gets out of the bed butt ass naked and tells Poe he doesn’t want a prostitute right now, thanks so much. Poe rushes over to cover Kovacs’ nudity with a briefcase and say this is not a prostitute. She’s actually Bancroft’s attorney. She asks for her briefcase back. Kovacs asks Poe where his clothes are. We keep getting butt shots of Kovacs, because apparently this show has the butt equivalent of HBO’s Boobie Budget. Kovacs tells Poe to take the attorney downstairs and oh yeah, maybe don’t let random people into his room.
Ortega wakes up and she greets “Hawkeye,” which seems to be Siri-like technology. Hawkeye wants to know if Ortega wants info on her target. Ortega sarcastically says that she slept well, how about it? Hawkeye doesn’t understand the sarcasm. Ortega drops it, finishes getting ready, and tells Hawkeye to just let her know if Kovacs goes anywhere.
Jessica: That was similar to some one-sided conversations I’ve had with Siri. Seems like technology both changes and doesn’t in the future.
Mari: We next join Ortega sparring with her partner, who lets her know that normal people start their mornings with coffee and toast. Ortega gets angry and punctuates her punches with “I. don’t. want. toast!” Like, damn girl. What did toast do to you? Abboud keeps goading her, bringing up her lack of personal life. Ortega repays him with some actual kicks and a flip to bring him down to the ground. Abboud isn’t deterred and keeps providing his unsolicited advice: she can’t let Kovacs rattle her this way. Ortega takes her punches to a bag, while Abboud keeps lecturing. He’s only stopped when he hears a beeping he knows to be a tracker, which is funny, because none of their open cases have a warrant for that kind of thing. He pulls Hawkeye out of Ortega’s back and says that if he saw this, he’d have to report it, so it’s a good thing he didn’t. Ortega starts to respond, but Abboud cuts her off to say he doesn’t want a thank you. He wants her to stop. Kovacs is a non-issue. Ortega asks if he thinks she doesn’t know that. Partner leaves, Ortega punches the bag a few more times until she splits her knuckle, then she asks Hawkeye about the target’s location.
A receptionist greets them, they are scanned for identity confirmation, and the receptionist says Director Nyman will be down in a moment. (J: I thought it was interesting that their ID scans seem to bring up all their faces, present and past. Both had several.) As they wait, Kovacs tells the attorney, Prescott, that he’s going to need to interview Bancroft’s personal and business associates. Prescott says no. Kovacs sasses that she’ll just have to go back to Bancroft then, and tell him it’s too socially awkward for Kovacs to save his life. Prescott tells him, for the record, that she thinks him totally unqualified for this investigation. Kovacs lights a cigarette, which Prescott immediately puts out. Kovacs lights another one, saying he hates these things, but they’ve sleeved him into a hardcore nicotine addict.
Director Nyman meets them, having cleared his schedule in order to help them in any way possible. Nyman is taking them around on a tour as he explains that at Psychasec, they provide augmented, design-enhanced sleeves for an elite clientele. That last bit is delivered with a LOOK at Kovacs. They walk through a bunch of projected models. One is a naked woman who says, “best sleeve money can buy. Put your wife in me.” (J: Ew.) Despite Kovacs’ disparaging remark, Nyman continues that their primary business is in clones, which cost more than most people make in a lifetime. Kovacs recaps: Meths only. Nyman adds that they are people wealthy enough to not do “anything as pedestrian as dying.”
Nyman leads them to the Bancroft family vault and explains that the worker in the room, Gus, was there the night Bancroft needlecast back. The room is a cylinder that looks to go up pretty high and is full with embedded circular rooms, each containing a clone. Kovacs approaches a window and looks in on a clone of Miriam Bancroft. She opens her eyes and looks at him. She’s also naked, which brings our boob count in this episode to 3, I think, now. So this show also has a Boobie Budget, in case you were wondering.
Kovacs asks if the clones are aware. The tech says no. They are empty bodies, electrically stimulated periodically so as to not lose muscle tone. Kovacs asks to see any footage of Bancroft’s arrival. Kovacs knows from experience that after you resleeve a bunch, you start to go crazy when you are resleeved. The tech calls it personality frag, but says it only happens when you jump into many different sleeves. You can keep resleeving into a cloned body as much as you want and live forever. Nyman explains how the needlecast happens, and Kovacs says it must not be completely secure if someone tried to hack into Bancroft’s satellite the night he died. Prescott chimes in and says that the police think it was dippers– people who steal snippets of Meth memory during uplink. She explains that black market value for those kinds of memories is huge.
The tech wheels over a computer to Kovacs so he can see the footage he requested. We watch a clone calmly open his eyes as Bancroft is needlecast into it. Miriam is on hand to kiss him once he’s awake. The footage cuts there and Nyman explains that they only record the moment of entry in order to protect their client’s privacy.
In walks Bancroft himself, also naked, in a full frontal shot, saying that he very much values his privacy. Altered Carbon is quickly working its way to becoming equal opportunity nudity. Nyman greets the Bancrofts, as Miriam is also there, and then the Bancrofts greet Kovacs. Mr. Bancroft wanted to be here to observe Kovacs’ investigation firsthand. Kovacs confirms that Miriam was there when Mr. Bancroft resleeved. She says that she likes to be present whenever he travels. The footage Kovacs saw was taken 6 hours before Bancroft was killed.
I thought the recorded moment was the moment Bancroft arrived in his body after he was killed, but that’s wrong. He was actually traveling to Osaka for business and this is when he got back from closing a trade deal. As they mentioned, it was 6 hours before he died. Kovacs asked what happened next. Miriam went home. Prescott answers that security cameras at Suntouch House recorded Bancroft arriving home in the morning. Prescott has basically been answering all the questions, which Kovacs notes. Bancroft doesn’t do anything for himself, highlighted by the fact that two people are dressing him. The zoomy camera man shows us Bancroft putting on his wedding ring, with Miriam in the background. (J: Zoom.) Bancroft menacingly asks Kovacs to take a walk with him.
Back out in the hall with all the model sleeves, Bancroft reminds Kovacs that if he dies or this doesn’t get solved quickly enough, Kovacs goes back on ice. Kovacs volleys back and tells him to quit with the threats. This is an investigation, so it comes with questions Bancroft might not want asked and answers that he may only think he wants. If Bancroft doesn’t like that, might as well put Kovacs back on ice now. Bancroft says he respects that, but it doesn’t actually sound like he respects that.
Prescott walks Kovacs out, and he asks for footage from all the suspects interviewed and any threats Bancroft received. They spot Ortega down in the reception area. She’s surprised that Kovacs took the job. Prescott sasses her to go and do some actual policing. Kovacs asks if she has any leads on who tried to kill him at the hotel. Ortega says the lack of a live witness is proving tricky, but she’s working on it. Ortega’s eye lights up with her tech as she answers a call and tells someone that she’s coming. Kovacs walks away from her, but she turns to yell that she’ll be seeing him if he doesn’t get himself killed. He drily asks who would want to kill him.
Poe opens a door and steps into a dark room where people are playing cards. Their images cut in and out, so we’re not entirely sure this is real? But of course it isn’t because Poe isn’t real.
Jessica: This scene was super creepy and introduces an interesting new aspect, what with the AI hanging out with each other and even spouting some rise-up-revolution type talk. There are a lot of moving parts in this show. For the record though, I love Poe.
Mari: Bay City PD. Ortega heads to her desk. Abboud comes over and asks where she’s been, since she didn’t answer his calls or messages and she missed the morning briefing. She tells him to stop hovering. Ortega’s boss, Captain Tanaka, comes over to tell her that the Henchy woman is here again. Ortega needs to handle it. Ortega objects, on the basis of this not being her case, but Tanaka says it’s what she gets for missing the morning briefing. After Tanaka leaves, Ortega tries to get her partner to do the thing, but he won’t either. Someone, he says, needs to tell Henchy that the BCPD lost her daughter’s body.
Body in water. It seems to be the same body in the same water we saw at the beginning of the episode, but this also calls back to how we saw Kovacs’ sleeve, 2.0, in episode one, before we were aware it would be Kovacs. I’m not sure what the tie is between the bay and the sleeves, but thought I’d mention it.
Back to BCPD where Mrs. Henchy is having a hard time understanding why her daughter’s body hasn’t been released. She sobs through the story of how she lost touch with her daughter in the last three years and never got to say goodbye. Then she finds out that her daughter converted before her death and, even though her stack is fine, won’t be resleeved. That’s why it’s so important to Mrs. Henchy to get the body. All Ortega can do is hug the woman and let her sob.
And back to the body in the water to really drive that home.
Kovacs is back at the Raven going through the death threats Prescot sent him. There are over three thousand from the last year alone. Kovacs asks Poe to get rid of off-world threats and break the remaining videos into three groups: those involving violence, people who committed actual crimes, and unknown senders. They cross reference and delete a bunch of stuff.
In a flash, Quell tells Kovacs 1.0 that violence is almost always personal.
Kovacs 2.0 tells Poe to isolate a particular video. It’s the image of a gun and a warped voice telling Bancroft that he’s going to kill him for his Lizzie. Kovacs rewinds, pauses and zooms in to see that the gun is marked.
Kovacs leaves his hotel, and Hawkeye informs Ortega. Kovacs arrives at an alley-looking part of town that is covered in posters with Quell’s face on them. He grabs one and pockets it. He locates and walks into a building for Elliot’s Data Brokerage. Inside, In-His-Head Quell whispers something about the machinery of justice and then Kovacs knocks on an inner door. After a second, he breaks it down. A man, Elliot presumably, is like WHAT THE FUCK. (J: Fair.) Kovacs says he didn’t answer his door. Elliot is like YEAH, ‘CAUSE I’M CLOSED. Kovacs pays him no mind and pulls up the threat video from earlier. Elliot looks at it with some recognition on his face, but then says he has nothing to do with that video. Kovacs explains that the military tracks their weapons so, like, no use lying. Elliot grabs the gun in question from the ground and points it at Kovacs. He says that he heard Bancroft shot out his own stack, and Elliot got drunk to celebrate. He threatens to shoot Kovacs, but Kovacs blindsides him and they fight. Kovacs wrestles the gun away from him and knocks him out.
When Elliot comes to, he’s tied to a chair. Kovacs is holding a picture of Elliot, a red-haired woman, and their child. This makes Elliot angry. Kovacs asks if his wife is dead or left him. Elliot angrily tells him that she was a hacker who got caught and is serving jail time. Kovacs seems to notice something about Elliot’s face? It’s not clear (to me) but I’m assuming that he’s actually noticing that Elliot is shiftily looking in a certain direction. Kovacs heads that way and lets himself into another room. Elliot continues to lose his shit and yells for Kovacs not to do it.
Jessica: He notices a pattern on Elliot’s skin, it looks like pinpricks in a square shape. Kovacs seems to know what this means, though we yet do not.
Mari: Yes, good, that makes sense.
Kovacs looks around the room and finds some kind of headset. Kovacs’ Voice Over [KVO] explains that technology advances, but people don’t. He puts on the headset, and he’s dropped into a VR, warped version of the city. He hears a girl sobbing and whimpering and follows the sound until he finds Lizzie crying in an alley. The actress is Hayley Law, whom I recognize from Riverdale. He introduces himself to Lizzie and asks what happened, but she just looks up at him and screams.
Kovacs pulls off the headset. He heads back to Elliot and asks what the fuck is wrong with him. Lizzie’s stuck in a trauma loop and Elliot’s dropped her into a VR. Elliot yells that it’s the only way he can see his daughter. (J: That is… messed up.) Her body was beaten to death, and though her stack was untouched, it damaged her mind. She hasn’t said a word since that night. Kovacs asks why he thinks Bancroft did this to Lizzie. Elliot yells, some more, that Lizzie told him she was seeing Bancroft, who said he needed her. Kovacs notices Elliot’s foot inching forward. Kovacs sees Elliot breaking free of his bonds and turning over the table, but then we’re back before it happens. But then it happens exactly as Kovacs saw it. It’s very Karnak-esque.
Kovacs tries not to hurt Elliot, who won’t stop fighting. So then Kovacs hurts him.
This time when Elliot comes to, he’s duct taped to the couch, and Kovacs is eating his cereal. All that, despite the fact that Kovac has come to the conclusion that Elliot did not in fact kill Bancroft, even though he had motive and the skill. Kovacs asks what Jack is, but Elliot won’t tell him anything. So, Kovacs leaves him some money to make up for the cereal and the broken door. (J: Thanks, I guess?)
Later, on some public transport, Kovacs pulls out the Quell poster and looks at it.
Kovacs walks into a building and we see some Lethal-Praetorians come toward him, guns drawn. They walk right past him, though, and start interacting with some happy children. It’s then that I realize that this is a museum of sorts for the Battle of Stronghold, told from the perspective of the Protectorate. KVO tells us that he knows he shouldn’t be here because when the victors rewrite history, it’s just another kind of war. A video in the museum shows repeated clips of people being killed by the Protectorate and then Quell shooting someone over and over again. (J: That is definitely messed up.) KVO admits that he came here to see her again, thinking it would give him peace. He was wrong.
Ortega gets to her place and her mom is there. They greet each other in Spanish, and soon her mom is fussing about everything: Ortega has no food in the house, she hasn’t unpacked, she won’t move, and most importantly, she’s abandoned their religious code.
Ortega and her mom sit down to dinner. Mom more calmly tells her daughter that without her religious coding she could die and be spun back up. She can’t take communion. She can’t got to confession. Ortega says that after her dad died and they couldn’t ask him why or how, things changed. She asks her mom would she would do if it were her who died. Mom sadly says that her heart would break into a thousand pieces. She would cry enough to fill all the oceans in the world. And yet she still wouldn’t want to risk Ortega’s soul by bringing her back.
Hawkeye beeps. Ortega jumps up to grab it. Hawkeye tells her that the target has entered Licktown. Oretega quickly says goodbye to and kisses her mom, who is still lightly arguing with her all the way out the door.
Licktown, it turns out, is a red light district. (J: A little on the nose, no?) Kovacs walks around a bit, all moody and flashback-y and stuff, and then enters an establishment called Jack it Off. A guard confiscates his gun and directs him to a specific room. The walk there strains the Booby Budget.
In a private room, Kovacs feeds credits into a machine, allowing him access to a blonde sex worker. She’s dancing for him, but then he kills the mood by asking after Lizzie Elliot. Blonde Worker (Anemone) shuts it down and threatens to scream, but Kovacs lies and says that he’s Lizzie’s mother. He’s cross-sleeved and was brought out of jail for a job, which if they complete, will get them a new sleeve and one for Lizzie, too. Anemone seems to buy it. Kovacs adds that someone is blocking Lizzie’s resleeve, so he has to find out who murdered her. He wants to know if Lizzie had any regulars, any freaks. Anemone says everyone here is a freak. Lizzie did have a regular, though. A Meth who treated her real nice. She makes a nervous movement towards her neck. Kovacs stands and removes her necklace, revealing bruising. They asks if this is what that Meth does. Anemone says no, but then says that it’s okay. He takes care of his girls. If he breaks it, he buys it, meaning that if he kills a girl, he buys them an upgraded sleeve. (J: What.) Kovacs asks if maybe Lizzie had a jealous boyfriend who didn’t like her spending time with a regular. Anemone says she liked Lizzie, but they weren’t that close. Kovacs looks sadly away. Anemone offers to ask around for them, if they come back tomorrow. Anemone starts to leave, but Kovacs yells after her that it doesn’t matter how much someone pays her. She’s worth more than letting someone hurt her. Anemone comes back and hugs Kovacs. She says her real name is Alice and leaves.
Jessica: This whole time she calls Kovacs “Mrs. Elliot” and it just gave me a lot of feels.
Mari: Kovacs leaves, but pauses when he hears something. He opens an exit door to find Elliot waiting for him in the alley, gun drawn. Elliot demands his weapon, angry that Kovacs is here investigating his daughter. Before they can get into much more, two more men enter the alley. One of them has come kind of weapon pack on? It reminds me a little of Bane. Elliot doesn’t listen to Kovacs’ heads up and gets knocked to the ground for it. Bargain Bin Bane says he shouldn’t have come back here and starts attacking. It isn’t clear (to me) if he’s addressing Kovacs or Elliot, but he starts attacking Kovacs. The second man attacks Elliot. Bargain Bin Bane is very strong, but Kovacs gets the jump on him by short circuiting his weapons pack with a hit. Elliot beats the other man up, too. And then a police vehicle flies up and from inside, the very obsessed Ortega tells Kovacs he’s under arrest for organic damage.
BCPD. Ortega locks Kovacs up, but isn’t actually going to charge him. He takes this all in incredible stride, considering it’s kind of messed up. Ortega asks why he’s willing to work for a piece of shit like Bancroft. Kovacs admits that before he was an Envoy, he worked for the Protectorate, doing the kind of work that isn’t exactly logged into systems. He was good at it too, because, he says with a creepy gaze through the cell door, he’s capable of almost anything. Ortega asks if doesn’t think it’s possible to go so far that you can’t come back. He says maybe. When he gets there, he’ll let her know. Ortega says that when he gets there, she’ll be right there to stop him. Kovacs smirks and says that it seems to him that she can’t even stop herself. (J: Oooooh.) Another cop comes over and says they have to release him. Ortega does so grudgingly.
Prescott is there, telling Ortega that she’s gone too far this time.
Body falling in the water again.
Ortega goes down to the morgue, though she doesn’t seem to want anyone to see her. She opens up a chamber that registers as empty. Inside is the body from the water, Mrs. Henchy’s daughter. The body is blue, stiff, positioned in just slightly unnatural angles, her makeup still smeared. I hate looking at it. (J: It is incredibly off-putting.) Ortega tells the body that she should know that her mother loves her.
Kovacs gets back to the hotel. Poe is watching old TV. He turns it off to tell Kovacs that he’s been studying old gumshoes, and is prepared to offer his services as Kovacs’ assistant. (J: Awww!) Kovacs tells him no and gets in the elevator. Poe appears in the elevator and tells him that’s hardly witty detective banter, so Kovacs amends to “fuck no.” Poe dryly says that someone is waiting for him in his room.
Kovacs notes that Miriam twirls her fingers when she’s nervous. He wonders if it’s fear. Miriam sets their drinks down and starts undressing Kovacs, ignoring him saying that’s enough, and telling him that her pimped out sleeve secrets a biochemical pheromone when she’s aroused. Things start to go kind of hazy for Kovacs when she starts kissing him, so I’m thinking what she actually is is infused with roofies. IDK. Part of my job as a Snark Lady is to alert you to the presence of roofies, and I’d like to do that here, just to cover my bases.
We cut between Ortega at confession and Kovacs and Miriam having sex. She explains to him that her skin roofies makes it so that everything he feels, she feels and vice versa. As Ortega confesses to having done unforgivable things, we cut to the morgue where Daughter Henchy’s body is now out on the table. The morgue attendant asks where the fuck she’s been. He turns her head slightly to see that her stack has been sliced out. (J: Oh wait so he is surprised by this! I thought maybe it was a police coverup but now it seems a bit more Ortega-specific. Intriguing.) In confession, Ortega is holding a bloody stack as she confesses to having abused her authority for selfish reasons. She’s caused pain and heartbreak when she had no right. We cut to Bancroft looking at the blood on his wall. Ortega cries and asks for forgiveness. We pan out and see that no one is listening to her confession. By the time she walks out of the confessional, her eyes are dry.
Kovacs and Miriam are post-coital. KVO tells us that some moments of peace are nothing more than thinly disguised warfare, and sometimes surrender can be as savage as any attack. There is a bug on the light fixture in the room. A screen somewhere buzzes on and we see surveillance footage of Kovacs and Mrs. Bancroft in bed. The person watching is….
IDK WHO but um, does that look like Kovacs 1.0 at all…?
Next time on Altered Carbon: Kovacs needs back-up in S01 E03 – In a Lonely Place.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
I'm a chronic book nerd and love storytelling in all forms. I'm particularly excited by the rise of the television show as an art form with long, cinematically beautiful plots and complex character arcs (I also watch cartoons). My travels in the past handful of years have led me through three continents and most recently landed me among the majestic mountains of Colorado. Some day I will compile all my travel journals/blogs into one place. Some day. Until then, you can find me with craft beer in hand, ready at any moment to deeply and passionately discuss survival tactics for the zombie apocalypse.
