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As I vaguely understand it, the lore is

Action 1000 includes a story where

I bought it. She had a crushing moment at that last audition for a bit role on a show starring her former peon co-star, then a second crushing moment when her half-agent became not-an-agent after she rebuffed him; it's not a good time to deal with all of Barry's weirdness. As for Barry's affect, he's certainly capable enough, like when he shot the Chechens in the car or strangled Paco. I think he's dealt with his own traumas -- and a theme of this show is that his day job is not good for him; he's not only dealing with old war traumas but also new ones from killing people -- by severely compartmentalizing. So Barry is an emotionally stunted, repressed people-pleaser who's also very good at killing people. There must be some anger in him but it's deeply buried. All the acting stuff, from the classes to Sally's auditions, have been pretty bleak stuff so far. But still a lot less bleak than the emotional manipulation Fuches puts Barry through. I really wanted some Noho Hank or Goran in this episode. They're amazingly funny. The new ex-Marine characters are another sort of Barry's past life mixing with and interfering with his new one but they're a lot less funny so far.

Sally's facial expressions on learning that Liz is the star of the show were fantastic: angry disbelief and jealousy quickly turning into a mask of cheer. I wonder how many times she's woken up at night with a pitch for a new name for the "Bonnie and the Boston Bombers" show. "A few reshoots, a little ADR, CGI out the name, we can still make this show happen!"

The Delos site has been updated for s2. Next to nothing interesting. I forget how I learned about the semi-secret Delos video on Youtube, but that gives you the username to login, which leads you to a panoramic view of a blank round white room with one clickable dot and a mess of other dots that will presumably become clickable later.

Oh yeah, it's definitely adapted from alien tech, at least as far as I understood it. But I suspect the economics don't quite work out. As in, why are stacks so affordable that everyone gets one, and needlecasting is about the only way star system travel works*, but backups are only for the super rich? The actual stacks do not seem particularly valuable. I think back in the first episode Takeshi had a bunch of stacks, and then later he somehow obtained the broken stacks of the dead Envoys** to patch together the stack-virus. * I get the vague impression that even for colonizing new systems, humans send "colony ships" full of mindless clones that colonists needlecast into once the ships have arrived. Because needlecasting can go faster-than-light but not actual ships? ** Actually, I guess this may show there's non-needlecast FTL travel, since those Envoys died on a completely different planet.

I don't think it's an alien metal, because they do seem to be able to make as many as society needs. Everyone gets a stack implant at 1, even the desperately poor, and the rich can buy multiple stacks for use for backup purposes. Bancroft destroyed his stack, so his backup was loaded into another stack. More importantly, in ep 1 the hologram exposition lady said that a sharp blow to the nape of the neck might damage one's stack. But this didn't really pay off over the rest of the series, I guess.

I looked on IMDb and he’s had five or six different roles with the last name “Tanaka”.

Vernon having his ONI meant that the typical functioning of the snuff brothel did not confiscate ONIs as a standard procedure for guests. They even gave him a security scan on entry to check for contraband and he passed, so presumably they were only scanning for weapons. (Rei does enforce that no guns are allowed on the ship besides hers.) Conversely, any worst-case scenario where Kovacs gets a gloating Rei to confess to everything from a position of weakness is almost as likely to lose the microwire camera to a heightened anti-surveillance protocol (for intruders vs guests) as the ONI. All that said, when Rei had the team on the ropes she didn’t remove anyone’s ONI or the camera, but on the other hand when Takeshi had the upper hand on Rei he did take her ONI bracelet if not the contact lens.

The ONI is literally a contact lens (and a bracelet for manual controls). It sees what the user sees. In an earlier episode, Ortega shared her ONI’s view to ask about the guy who turned out to be Leung. So it sees exactly as well as the microwire camera. And there’s no reason to worry about confiscation. Kovacs’ entire presence on the airship is a violation of the rules. Any scenario where he acquires the leverage to get a confession bypasses any point where ONIs would be confiscated. Hell, Vernon as a fake client had his on and in an active conversation while he was led to his room.

On rewatch, I think the whole business with the "microwire camera" was a little silly. As I understand it, Rei's quarters are shielded, so regular phone calls can't work, so her confession couldn't be streamed out from there. But (1) why wasn't the whole Head in the Clouds compound shielded? I guess the plot wanted Team Kovacs back at the Raven rather than on board in a van, but still. Then anyways, the plan is to work around the shielding by making a local recording and then getting the recording off the airship. (2) Why does he need a "microwire camera" for this when he already has the 25th century smartphone (the ONI) on him? So what if it's offline in a shielded room? My phone can make video recordings even when there's no signal. Separately, there's no reason to put all the important gear in the backpack. Kovacs got very lucky that the antenna didn't go overboard with the rest of his equipment. And even so, he shoulda packed one gun in a holster for quick access as well as to have something if/when he gets separated from the backpack.

He's still a former government agent in the show before joining up with Quell. But I never really thought I saw that much idealism in the show's Kovacs. The guy in the show cares about family; I don't think he has political opinions.

(not that I've read the book) Laeta Kalogridis explained about a bunch of the major changes: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/altered-carbon-creator-explains-the-shows-biggest-/1100-6456691 I get her reasoning, but I wish Envoys had stayed the name of the government forces. It doesn't make as much sense to me for terrorists/freedom fighters to call themselves Envoys.

Reileen shooting and slicing all those flunkies in the cage/arena tunnel made me think of John Wick gun-fu scenes. I hope Wick gets to dual-wield a sword and gun next movie.

I vaguely understand in the books the stack technology is derived from Elder tech rather than invented whole cloth by humans (might be the case in the show as well, not sure), though it’s still a tremendous work of science and invention even so. As for (4), she told Takeshi that she used the tech to extend her own lifetime and so she would have lived long enough to see the first immortal billionaires stay young and rapacious into their hundreds.

It's wild that in a world with real death vs sleeve death that only CTAC in combat gear bothers to wear neck armor. (Yes, of course you could still shoot at a tricky angle to get by it, but still. Wear your seatbelts, people.) I assumed Kovacs shot Rei through the stack. His grief seemed a lot more like he for-real killed his sister, not just her sleeve. Speaking of proper precautions, the ideal backup strategy is to have multiple backups, in multiple locations, with some kept offline so they can't be so easily wiped or corrupted by an attacker. On the other hand, it's actually quite realistic that people would be lax with their backup systems and maybe Rei felt too invincible with her wealth, clone bodies, super-assassin henchman, and her own fighting prowess to bother making sure her backup system was built out with sufficient redundancies. All that said, I really liked the show overall and if it wrapped up too many plotlines too neatly in the season finale, I'm happier with that than not.

Hooray, because that was clearly my goal from the start!!! edit: in all seriousness though, I think considering the economics of a world in a story about the haves and haves-not should hardly be out of bounds.

Yes, ultimately my quibble is with the income part. The right to earn an income isn't the same as a guaranteed income. These hotels have been unused for decades. These AI hotels have the right to earn an income but they literally haven't, for decades. Any business either leases its property and thus has to pay rent, or owns it, and thus has to pay property tax.

They might own the hotels but in real businesses, esp in downtown cores, the underlying property isn’t necessarily owned by the business. Even for some actual hotels, I think they lease from some owner. Certainly several hostels I’ve been to operate with that kind of structure.

Okay, they may have a right to exist as sapient entities, but how do they pay their rent and/or property taxes?

I don't understand how the AI hotels exist given the economics of this world. There's hyper-capitalism with immortal multi-billionaires but also these immensely complex hotels are (1) single occupant and (2) have not been used in decades? Who pays the rent? Who pays the electricity? Why haven't they been shut down and razed in favor of hotels that people actually want to stay at?

Tahani-on-Earth is going to be exciting to see (1) how many celeb guests the show can line up and (2) how they write around the ones they want but can't get.

Well, her introspective mood immediately following her near-death experience is plausible, right? And what immediately followed her near-death experience was talking about it with her super awful roommates. So she was suddenly in the right frame of mind to realize her roommates—and she herself—were awful people.

Oh, I see. But we still exist in the afterlife, so why shouldn't we still owe each other and thus be good?

The whole premise of the system is that people get an eternal good or bad afterlife based on their life score. But Michael is claiming that dead people can improve in the afterlife if given a chance rather than being punished/tortured forever. Now that I put it like that, it seems to me like the obvious parallel is in prison, whether it’s for punishment or rehabilitation or both. Different societies give different weights to the two priorities. The show’s universe has so far weighted prison (the Bad Place) as only for punishment. I just realized this: season one ended with a huge twist and the next step for a rebooted Eleanor as the season finale ended was to find Chidi. Well, season two doesn’t upend the viewers the same way but it does vastly flip the status quo, and… the next step for a rebooted Eleanor as the season finale ended is that she’s found Chidi!