S01.E03: In a Lonely Place

[formerlyfreedom]

Quote

Kovacs recruits an unlikely partner to watch his back during a banquet at the Bancroft home, where Ortega oversees the night's grisly entertainment.

[Scarlett45]

Wearing your Mother’s sleeve to gave sex has weirdly incestal overtones to it. Just odd. 

[CaptainTightpants]

Kovac's pink backpack is my favorite supporting character next to Poe. 

Well this show is definitely not going the route of subtle emotional ques that is for sure.

Kovacs looks positively heroic next to this graceless pack of tiger eating wankers! I was hoping for something a little more nuanced but we get unrelenting arrogance, evil and the obligatory "I am god" statement from Bancroft. Followed up by "rules don't apply to people like us" from the antiques dealer. So I'm pretty sure these are the bad guys. 

The teamup between Kovacs and Vernon is working out very well. The actors have a natural camaraderie that is enjoyable to watch. 

There are some weird and confusing dynamics happening in the Bancroft family. Kovacs says that the children are never allowed to grow up. Does that mean that they are stuck in teenage bodies, or that they are just stuck in a perpetual pecking order in the family structure? What a weird and creepy thought either way.

The daughter taking Miriam's body for a ride was more like a spoiled kid stealing her parents car I thought. But it did occur to me that maybe that was how Miriam passed the lie detector test that Ortega said she insisted the cops give her. So she is shaping up to maybe be her husband's murderer. 100 years with this dick and I can see why she would want to blow is head off. Although it did seem unlikely that none of the party wankers noticed two Miriam's wandering around. 

And there was definitely some heavy hostile vibes coming off both of them around the death match with the married fighters. (The actual fight was disappointing in the beginning. I think it would have been better if they hadn't gone for a zero gravity fight. You need an enormous budget to make that look good. The encounter was better when they did the actual fight on the ground.)

Which was odd because Bancroft followed it up with his whole "I love and worship my wife" speech to Kovacs.  

As an aside, the hidden door behind the bookcase was a classic Noir trope. But are we supposed to believe that the richest man on the planet didn't spring for a contractor that could properly square up the door and not leave incriminating scratch marks on the floor? I did roll my eyes a bit at that one. 

The world building has been excellent so far. And I absolutely love what they have done with the golden gate bridge!

Previously it seemed that the Envoys were some sort of warrior priest type good guys. But the flashback to training made Quell seem like a psycho. Encouraging followers to spread out and gather followers by inspiring trust and maybe getting them all killed doesn't seem like a good guy game-plan.

[Scarlett45]

10 minutes ago, CaptainTightpants said:

There are some weird and confusing dynamics happening in the Bancroft family. Kovacs says that the children are never allowed to grow up. Does that mean that they are stuck in teenage bodies, or that they are just stuck in a perpetual pecking order in the family structure? What a weird and creepy thought either way.

I haven’t read the book but I wondered about resleeving- are the children forced to clone their teen selves and just stay in that “18-20” range forever? It would make sense that the super rich would want the most physically optimum sleeve- no one wants to walk around with arthritis but why wouldn’t the kids let their sleeves age to 40 or so and start again?

Youd think with such long lives these Meths would live more like vampires- family units would separate for a while and do their own thing and reconnect every decade or so. When you’ve spent 100yrs with someone they are bound to get on your fucking nerves. 

[shapeshifter]

4 hours ago, CaptainTightpants said:

 pink backpack is my favorite supporting character next to Poe. 

Heh. 

 

4 hours ago, CaptainTightpants said:

Previously it seemed that the Envoys were some sort of warrior priest type good guys. But the flashback to training made Quell seem like a psycho. Encouraging followers to spread out and gather followers by inspiring trust and maybe getting them all killed doesn't seem like a good guy game-plan.

It seems like an exploration of the concept of "one person's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist."

[thuganomics85]

So, one of Banecroft's children is wearing Miriam's clone sleeves to go crazy at parties.  Including having sex in it.  Rich people, I swear!  I did like the differences in how Kristen Lehman played the character, especially since she's younger (she's only 67!)

Definitely enjoying the Kovacs/Vernon pairing and how the actors play against each other.  Throw in Poe as their annoying, but loyal A.I. buddy, and you've got one hell of a team!  I am curious to see what really happened to Lizzie and if they can saved her.  Realized that she's played by Hayley Law a.k.a. Valerie from Riverdale.

Ortega's a little better, but I'm still kind of cold to her.  I know I was suppose to be on her side, but I got of got a kick out of her boss' "I don't give a shit, just go to the party!" reaction after all her griping.

I don't think I'll ever tire of James Purefoy dining on the scenery.

Oh, shit!  Kovacs has gone got himself kidnapped!

[sjohnson]

Do not think it was Bancroft who was spying on his wife. Did she deliberately put on a show for the minidrone? But the escapade is I think why Bancroft was throwing Kovacs into the fight and giving a weapon to the opposition. But why would anyone keep that thing in a hardwood case? Was it an antique? 

Kovacs, by the way, is Magyar aka Hungarian, which is not Slavic, even if it is in "Eastern" Europe. (Neither is Romanian, Albanian, Macedonian, Turkish, Roma and Greek.) The writers messing up the research is one thing, but Kovacs would likely know. 

The mob baying at people fighting in a cage match is so lame that making the mob the rich, instead of the usual proles, doesn't help. Nor does the null gravity. 

One has to wonder what ordinary people are supposed to do for a living in this world. I'm afraid that the world building is very superficial and slipshod. I think it was the late Ursula LeGuin who commented it was somehow easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism (or maybe it was the late Mark Fisher?) 

As to the nature of the Envoys, on one level Morgan wanted the reader to be indignant about the bloodsucking ruling class. But on another level, he finds all rebels to be sexy like Nazis in porn. My opinion of course, not an established fact. So the last Envoy isn't truly believable. I'm fanwanking it as the guy remembers seeing his adored Quell killed before his eyes, and he's in a funk. (Technically there's the defeat of his cause, whatever that was, but as I say although formally Takeshi Kovacs is a political revolutionary, functionally there's really only the Manly Man taming the savagery of unmanly men and unmanly simulacra of real men.) 

But I'll keep watching, because I can be misled by this show. In the episode Fallen Angel, I took the title to refer not just to Kovacs/Lucifer, but to the fallen woman, prostitute, Lizzie Elliott, and further identified her with the woman who fell from the sky. This seemed so inevitable I didn't even see the color coding that marked Lizzie as Vernon's daughter! Of course that was Henchy!  Although in my defense, the whole sleeve concept means superficial appearance tells you nothing, not even who Vernon's daughter is.  

[Cheezwiz]

On 2/3/2018 at 5:24 PM, Scarlett45 said:

Youd think with such long lives these Meths would live more like vampires- family units would separate for a while and do their own thing and reconnect every decade or so. When you’ve spent 100yrs with someone they are bound to get on your fucking nerves. 

No kidding. One lifetime is plenty in most cases.

19 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

Definitely enjoying the Kovacs/Vernon pairing and how the actors play against each other.  Throw in Poe as their annoying, but loyal A.I. buddy, and you've got one hell of a team!  I am curious to see what really happened to Lizzie and if they can saved her.  Realized that she's played by Hayley Law a.k.a. Valerie from Riverdale.

The three actors together are the only thing holding my attention at this point. And THAT's where I've seen the actress playing Lizzie before! It was driving me crazy!

[KaleyFirefly]

I didn't really understand how people kept saying "A.I. hotels? No one stays in those anymore!" If that's true then why is the hotel still around? It's just been an empty building that no one has wanted for years? Seems unlikely in a crowded city where space would be at a premium.

[Netfoot]

On 2/4/2018 at 6:44 AM, sjohnson said:

But why would anyone keep that thing in a hardwood case? Was it an antique? 

Those three-bladed, "fantasy" or "cyclone" knives are cheap rubbish.  The steel is mediocre at best.  But I suppose it might have been hundreds of years old by the show's chronology.  Except I doubt one of those pieces of junk would last 100 years...  One point -- it's a folding knife.  Why on earth would you keep it in a velvet-lined box open?

[Bec]

Often it's objects that gets used until they're worn out that don't survive the test of time to become an antique. It's kind of like how, for people who collect antique dresses, it's much easier to find the most impractical dresses that were only worn for one special occasion, or dead stock that was never sold to anyone and so was never used. It's much harder to find everyday dresses - because people would have worn those until they became rags and then they would have put the rags to other good uses.

Kovacs is very conspicuous carrying that pink backpack around. It doesn't exactly blend in. But it's hilarious the way he doesn't care how it looks at all.

He looked pissed as hell that Bancroft called him a "unique object" and used him for his little rich asshole show and tell session.

[Netfoot]

1 hour ago, Bec said:

Kovacs is very conspicuous carrying that pink backpack around. It doesn't exactly blend in. But it's hilarious the way he doesn't care how it looks at all.

I think it's more that he doesn't realize how silly it looks.  The guy has been asleep for 250 years.  He doesn't know that pink backpacks are not de rigueur for the modern day tough-guy!

One of the points that I'm not happy about with this show is how sang-froid he is, after being asleep so long.  Imagine you went to sleep 2 years after the US Declaration of Independence was signed by a bunch of men in powdered wigs... and woke up today.  I doubt you would be all "Yeah, no problem, just gimme an iPhone, and stand back!"  In 250 years the societal (not to mention technological) landscape would have changed beyond recognition.

[mledawn]

The mumbling in this show is killing me. Everyone is just Muttery Mutterpants

[CaptainTightpants]

22 hours ago, mledawn said:

The mumbling in this show is killing me. Everyone is just Muttery Mutterpants

That comment made me laugh! I ended up turning on the subtitles and found it really helpful since I was having the same problem. Thankfully Netflix has that as a standard feature on their own content.

[CaptainTightpants]

On 05/02/2018 at 3:09 PM, KaleyFirefly said:

I didn't really understand how people kept saying "A.I. hotels? No one stays in those anymore!" If that's true then why is the hotel still around? It's just been an empty building that no one has wanted for years? Seems unlikely in a crowded city where space would be at a premium.

Something I noticed throughout the entire show was that everybody, regardless of their financial circumstances seems to have huge apartments or lofts. Even when the building they are living in seems run down, the apartment will be funky and spacious with awesome shower facilities (which may be because there were so many shower scenes).

When we get a flashback to Ryker beating somebody in a warehouse in a future episode, the place looks deserted and unused and about a million square feet. So apparently this town just has large empty spaces availabe for illicit police interrogation.

You really would expect a more densely packed and claustrophobic environment in a major metropolis. Although the show never specified if over population continued to be a problem in the future. But Ortega's brother had multiple children and the Bancroft's had nearly 2 dozen. So presumably there is still significant population growth.

[Danny Franks]

"God is dead. We've taken his place." Yeah, anyone saying that is really down to earth and not at all scary, huh?

I don't know if it is that everyone mumbles, or that the sound mixing is off, but it is a struggle to follow conversations on this show. This isn't an issue I usually have, but it's the first time I've genuinely considered figuring out how to put close captions on. The direction of this episode didn't help. Some angles and cuts that seemed deliberately jarring. As the episode went on, those jarring cuts and angles became really distracting.

The idea of 'broken' psyches needing to be rehabbed in virtual constructs before they can be re-sleeved is really interesting. Because when someone dies violently, or experiences other damaging events, it follows that you can't just stick their mind into a new body and expect them to carry on.

But at every turn, they're showing us just how little bodies (and lives) matter. Borrowing your mother's clone for sex, countless children you've had over centuries, who just don't mean anything to you, putting human minds into animals just for shits and giggles, casually slitting that prostitute's throat. But the part that was really disturbing was a loving, married couple fighting to the death for money. Sure, they'll be re-sleeved, but to inflict that much pain on someone you love, to kill them, is seriously messed up.

But now we know why Bancroft wanted Kovacs to investigate his case. He's interested in Quellcrist Falconer and knew Kovacs was one of her followers. He's rich, he wants to have it all, including human beings.

The actress playing Ortega is hot, but I'm still not sold on her. She just seems so flat, even in a show where every performance is restrained and quiet. I did laugh at her comically large gun. What's she compensating for?

I do quite like Kovacs' new buddy, Vernon, though. He's more likeable than most other people in the show, and with clear motives.

I'm guessing Kovacs was drugged at the end by the same guys he killed in the hotel, in the previous episode. Guys who know who killed Bancroft, or who are working for Bancroft.

[Netfoot]

1 hour ago, Danny Franks said:

I don't know if it is that everyone mumbles, or that the sound mixing is off, but it is a struggle to follow conversations on this show.

I noticed this as well.  It seems that from time to time the conversation lapses into a creole or pidgin of other language, slang, and I was unable to grasp the thread for several seconds. Fortunately, not for any length of time.

[Clanstarling]

On 2/3/2018 at 5:09 PM, CaptainTightpants said:

Kovac's pink backpack is my favorite supporting character next to Poe. .

There are some weird and confusing dynamics happening in the Bancroft family. Kovacs says that the children are never allowed to grow up. Does that mean that they are stuck in teenage bodies, or that they are just stuck in a perpetual pecking order in the family structure? What a weird and creepy thought either way.

As an aside, the hidden door behind the bookcase was a classic Noir trope. But are we supposed to believe that the richest man on the planet didn't spring for a contractor that could properly square up the door and not leave incriminating scratch marks on the floor? I did roll my eyes a bit at that one. 

The world building has been excellent so far. And I absolutely love what they have done with the golden gate bridge!

Love the backpack too. Especially in that shot toward the end.

I took that comment to be more metaphorical - in "normal" life, as we grow into adults, we have the knowledge that eventually, we will eventually be the ones in charge (generationally, anyway). The Meth children do not have that - unless they're killed, their parents will always and forever be the ones in charge. 

I rolled my eyes at the scratch marks too.

The Golden Gate Bridge was awesome. 

On 2/5/2018 at 3:24 PM, Netfoot said:

I think it's more that he doesn't realize how silly it looks.  The guy has been asleep for 250 years.  He doesn't know that pink backpacks are not de rigueur for the modern day tough-guy!

I dunno, pink AND with a cartoon character doesn't seem like anything a freedom fighter/terrorist would be caught dead with, whatever the fashion of the day - doesn't blend in. I think he just doesn't give a damn. 

On 2/11/2018 at 11:09 AM, CaptainTightpants said:

You really would expect a more densely packed and claustrophobic environment in a major metropolis. Although the show never specified if over population continued to be a problem in the future. But Ortega's brother had multiple children and the Bancroft's had nearly 2 dozen. So presumably there is still significant population growth.

The containers stacked on top of each other to form housing on the Golden Gate bridge seemed to indicate a pretty densely packed environment to me.

[tennisgurl]

On 2/5/2018 at 1:09 PM, KaleyFirefly said:

I didn't really understand how people kept saying "A.I. hotels? No one stays in those anymore!" If that's true then why is the hotel still around? It's just been an empty building that no one has wanted for years? Seems unlikely in a crowded city where space would be at a premium.

And why wouldn't you want to stay in once? I would totally hang out with a snarky Poe AI in my spare time! 

Banecroft's family is crazy and creepy in the way that only ridiculously rich, powerful, and immortal families can be. The daughter taking moms body for a spin was wild, and I could watch James Purefoy chew scenery all day long. The guy plays ridiculously cocky bastards who are also rather charming so freaking well. 

I am really liking Kovacs/Vernon dynamic, especially with the addition of Poe as Mission Control. I like seeing Kovacs interact with more people in this time in a less confrontational way, and the acting have good chemistry between them. I hope that Lizzie can be saved, and that we learn what happened. I guess when someones death is super scaring, they cant just be tossed into another skin, or if they do, it damages them even more? 

So Banecroft wants Kovacs around because he wants to show him off to his rich friends, like a pet cougar or something? Yeah, not surprising Kovacs isn't thrilled. Word on everyone loving his little pink backpack. I am sure he knows it isn't really a "tough guy" piece, I just dont think he cares. Its awesome. 

[LeGrandElephant]

Why would you use bio-security and have your bank account connected to your DNA in a world where people are constantly switching bodies? 

[ae2]

On 2/5/2018 at 6:24 PM, Netfoot said:

I think it's more that he doesn't realize how silly it looks.  The guy has been asleep for 250 years.  He doesn't know that pink backpacks are not de rigueur for the modern day tough-guy!

One of the points that I'm not happy about with this show is how sang-froid he is, after being asleep so long.  Imagine you went to sleep 2 years after the US Declaration of Independence was signed by a bunch of men in powdered wigs... and woke up today.  I doubt you would be all "Yeah, no problem, just gimme an iPhone, and stand back!"  In 250 years the societal (not to mention technological) landscape would have changed beyond recognition.

My running assumption is that the stagnation of both technology and culture is going to be a theme throughout the show. If people don't die, but live for hundreds of years, how does society ever make progress?

Even if that doesn't happen, we have the line about Envoys and how they can be dropped into a new society and integrate themselves instantly. Bit of a cop out, but maybe it will make more sense when we finally learn more about them.

On 2/15/2018 at 8:01 PM, tennisgurl said:

And why wouldn't you want to stay in once? I would totally hang out with a snarky Poe AI in my spare time! 

Apparently they're possessive and clingy, which I have no doubt will come into play at some point.

[tljgator]

On 2/12/2018 at 12:33 PM, Netfoot said:

I noticed this as well.  It seems that from time to time the conversation lapses into a creole or pidgin of other language, slang, and I was unable to grasp the thread for several seconds. Fortunately, not for any length of time.

Per the captions, they're actually speaking a variety of languages (I'm unclear on how everyone seems to understand/speak all these languages, but anyhoo...) -- so, the captions are twice as useful here since they not only help with the mumbles, but also translate the dialogue. It'll say something like "[In Russian] blahblahEnglishtranslation. [In English] blahblahregularcaptions."

[jhlipton]

I like noir -- I'm a big Chandler, Hammett and Cain fan, as well as lover of the Bogey movies et al.  This just isn't living up to my standards for noir, which is disappointing.  The idle rich shouldn't be so cartoonishly eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil (eating tiger!!!!  but wouldn't it have been cloned and possibly raised as meat?  That's not our tiger.)

On 2/3/2018 at 2:45 PM, Scarlett45 said:

Wearing your Mother’s sleeve to gave sex has weirdly incestal overtones to it. Just odd. 

Ya think????

On 2/12/2018 at 7:52 AM, Danny Franks said:

I don't know if it is that everyone mumbles, or that the sound mixing is off, but it is a struggle to follow conversations on this show. This isn't an issue I usually have, but it's the first time I've genuinely considered figuring out how to put close captions on.

On 2/12/2018 at 9:33 AM, Netfoot said:

I noticed this as well.  It seems that from time to time the conversation lapses into a creole or pidgin of other language, slang, and I was unable to grasp the thread for several seconds. Fortunately, not for any length of time.

On 3/9/2018 at 6:58 PM, tljgator said:

Per the captions, they're actually speaking a variety of languages (I'm unclear on how everyone seems to understand/speak all these languages, but anyhoo...) -- so, the captions are twice as useful here since they not only help with the mumbles, but also translate the dialogue. It'll say something like "[In Russian] blahblahEnglishtranslation. [In English] blahblahregularcaptions."

Ortega speaks Spanish, and her partner speaks Arabic of one form or another. With all the other tech going on, them understanding each other's language doesn't seem that far out.