Tag: recaps

Altered Carbon Season 1 Episode 4: Force of Evil Recap

~ Metacrone

AC104SidewaysTortureTak

Gird your loins, kids, this is the torture episode. Tak’s in the virtual reality torture chamber for much of the episode. Though it was difficult to watch, it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting, based on the warnings. The Outlander season 1 rape/torture episode was much, much worse. Maybe I’ve just seen too many seasons of creatively dragging entrails on The Walking Dead. Which isn’t to say this episode isn’t violent, gruesome, and, you know, tortuous. But it’s not very different from what we’ve already seen on Altered Carbon.

The real torture is in the emotions that the characters suffer over the course of the episode, especially in Tak’s flashbacks. We learn more about his life, his relationship with Quell, and how heartbroken he still is. We also get to see more of Ortega’s personal life, and begin to discover why she’s so interested in Tak.

So. Probably the most disturbing part of the episode is the Wei Clinic, an interrogation facility which specializes in “extracting data from unwilling subjects”. Torture is such an ugly word. The facility is large, clean, brightly lit, fully staffed, organized, and obviously part of a larger organization with franchises or branches. There’s a routine and a schedule for torture extraction sessions. The Nazis would be jealous.

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Altered Carbon Season 1 Episode 3: In a Lonely Place Recap

~ Metacrone

AC103Kovacs

Laurens: “In this world, the only real choice is between being the purchaser and the purchased.”

Kovacs: “We stick together, Rei. Never face the monsters alone.”

In this episode, Laurens invites Tak to a dinner party attended by all of Lauren’s closest friends enemies. Both spend the evening evaluating and testing people, though Tak is trying to assess how likely each is to be a murder candidate, while Laurens is assessing how likely they are to challenge his dominance or resist his authority. Laurens makes a point of publicly humiliating Tak, to remind Tak that he’s owned, because Laurens owns almost everything. Laurens also goes out of his way to humiliate Ortega, and to remind his wife that she belongs to him. He’s very possessive and territorial, and this hour drives it home.

Tak, on the other hand, begins assembling his own team in earnest, doing favors and making deals. Poe and Vernon are his first two prospective team members. He brings in another guest for Poe, Lizzie Elliot. Her virtual psychosurgery requires a large amount of Poe’s time and attention, just the thing for a lonely AI. That frees up Vernon to act as Tak’s back up at the party, once they’ve visited the friendly neighborhood arms dealer. Vernon gets to investigate Bancroft connection to Lizzie’s attack while he’s there, and Tak doesn’t have to face the monsters alone.

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Agents of Shield Season 5 Episode 10: Past Life Recap

~ Metacrone

AOS510Mack&Flint

This week, the Agents of SHIELD finally return to our present day, but it’s a difficult, winding journey to get there, of course. We say goodbye to the characters we’ve gotten to know over the future space arc, and learn more about the time loop, before the cliffhanger monolith jump at the end. Loyalty, the importance of making the best choice of who to align oneself with, and when to let go, always a focus on this show, continue to be major themes. Those themes are set up to affect the rest of the season, perhaps the series, in game-changing ways.

Also in this episode, Coulson proves he’s not the greatest leader when he treats Daisy like she’s his property to control. He may think he’s acting like a leader or father, but he takes Daisy’s choices away to the point of rendering her unconscious, while others risk being left behind without a word of complaint from him. That’s not the kind of caring he, or the writers, think it is. Overly possessive misogyny doesn’t stop being wrong because you convince yourself it’s for a good cause.

When the Zephyr pulls into the landing bay of the Lighthouse, Kasius and his guards are waiting for it. The first thing they see when the doors open is Sinara’s body, still hanging, impaled on the balcony railing. Kasius brain melts down. The lead guard orders the rest of the guards to search the ship.

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Altered Carbon Season 1 Episode 2: Fallen Angel Recap

~ Metacrone
AC102OGTakBurns
Original Kovacs after a devastating loss in battle.

Kovacs voiceover:

“Peace is an illusion. No matter how tranquil the world seems, peace doesn’t last long. Peace is a struggle against our very nature. A skin we stretch over the bone, muscle and sinew of our own innate savagery. The instinct of violence curls inside us like a parasite, waiting for a chance to feed on our rage and multiply until it bursts out of us. War is the only thing we really understand.”

So, there’s a slightly different tone between Quell’s inspirational voiceovers and Kovacs’ nihilistic calls toward violence and conflict. Having given in to the Quell that lives in his mind at the end of episode 1, stayed awake, and taken the case, Kovacs is left to navigate the world without her, other than as echoes from a long ago defeat. He begins his investigation in earnest, and considers who he can trust to become part of his team. The complexity of the case begins to reveal itself, as hallucination Quell predicted. Meanwhile, Ortega has secrets of her own. She spends much of the episode working on a separate, but possibly related, case.

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Altered Carbon Season 1 Episode 1: Out of the Past Recap

~ Metacrone

AC101LeavingPrison

My review of episodes 1-3 is HERE.

Altered Carbon is a wild cyberpunk ride through a dystopian future starring Joel Kinnaman as Takeshi Kovacs, a centuries old supersoldier, rebel, and former mercenary who’s been imprisoned and asleep for 250 years. The method of his imprisonment is the removal of his “stack” from his “sleeve,” meaning the disc which contains his soul and consciousness was removed from his spine and stored until a wealthy man who requires his services pays for his release. His stack is then inserted into a new sleeve, also known as a body, that his patron bought for him to use while Kovacs works the murder case he’s been hired to solve.

Everyone in society is fitted with a stack when they are very young, but new sleeves vary in price. Functional immortality using clones and backup stacks is fashionable for the very rich. Normal people hope that their stacks aren’t damaged when they die so that they can be brought back, and that they can afford a decent new sleeve. Neo-Catholics believe that being spun up in a new sleeve is a sin and vow to live only the single life span their original sleeve allows them. Overall, life has become cheap because it’s so easily replaced, and corporate decadence rules society.

Episode 1 begins with images of modern Kovacs before he’s revived, dreaming that he’s floating in water. The view of his body is interspersed with images of original Kovacs being intimate with a woman, and mercenary Kovacs showering intimately with another woman, or at least another sleeve (although they start out covered in blood). The future gets confusing at times, with all of the body hopping. We can see the stack insertion scar on the back of the showering woman’s neck. The floor of the shower is littered with stolen stacks.

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Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Season 3 Episode 11: Nathaniel and I Are Just Friends!

~ Metacrone

CEG311CupcakeGoof

CEG111SameAkopian
Same, Dr Akopian, same.

When episode 11 of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend opened with Dr Akopian in her bedroom, I had this joyous flashback to the early days of the show, when Rebecca and Heather broke into her house through the doggie door. My hopes were raised that the whiny, misogynist slog toward the finale would be interrupted by a fun, creative episode like the ones I fell in love with. But, no. That was not the case.

Instead, we got more of the pointless, endless “will they or won’t they” from Bex and Nathaniel, a huge amount of time spent on Heather realizing that being 8 months pregnant is no fun (solved by her taking a bath 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️), and another Paula is a b*tch story, with a side of betrayal from former bestie Sunil, to teach her a lesson. We also had an 8 month time jump, to move the story and characters along. Except almost everyone was stuck in exactly the same place.

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Humans Season 1 Episode 5 Recap

~ Metacrone

Hum105Leo&Mia

This episode is full of lost souls and mistaken identities. Mattie takes Anita to visit Leo, but Leo is unable to break through the Anita persona to find Mia. Leo becomes inconsolable and wants to give up on his family altogether. Mattie looks through the diagnostics log and discovers that Anita’s adult function has been used. She assumes it was Toby and yells at him for being gross and rapey. Toby tries to protect the family by accepting responsibility. Odi is found in the woods, then lost again. Niska stays with George, and they debate what kind of being she is with Vera. Niska doesn’t trust George at first, but slowly they begin to become friends. Pete continues to take in arguments for and against synths as he wanders through his day.

Niska races away from the smash club and meets Leo and Max at their usual rendezvous spot. Leo tells her about the program that David Elster hid in their root code. Niska is excited about it, and wants to get going on putting it all together. Leo says that she has to stay in hiding for now, since she’s wanted for murder, and sends her to George Millican’s house. He tells her to be nice. Niska says, “I am nice.”

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Humans Season 1 Episode 4 Recap

~ Metacrone

Hum104NiskaCharges

Everyone develops complicated feelings in this episode, as the lines between humans and synths continue to blur. Pete finds a temporary new home, but it’s not as synth-free as he thinks. Niska takes on a fight club for anti-synth bigots and almost gets caught by Hobb. Leo and Max make a discovery after examining Mia’s root code, but don’t seem much closer to getting her back. They do meet up with Mattie and George, bringing all of the plot strands together for the first time. The Hawkins explore the realities of synth rights and feelings, with mixed results. Joe takes his primary user status with Anita to the next level, and immediately regrets it. I don’t actually think his experience with Anita was good for any of us, including, maybe especially, her.

Pete starts his morning in fine form, snapping at Jill when she asks him to join her for breakfast and ignoring her in favor of calling Karen at the office.

Mattie checks in with Anita to make sure that she’s okay after the hacking session the other night. Anita doesn’t remember the session, and says all of her systems are running fine. Mattie is surprised that Anita doesn’t remember what happened, after she was so upset. Anita goes back to her chores, saying hello to Laura, who was eavesdropping out of sight, as she goes.

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Humans Season 1 Episode 3 Recap

~ Metacrone

Hum103Laura&AnitaCar

The game of lost and found continues in episode 3, as Leo and the conscious synths continue their complicated lives together and apart, the Hawkins family searches for answers to the mysteries surrounding Anita, and George and Odi become separated on an outing. The death at the brothel is officially ruled an accident, sending Pete into an anti-synth tirade.

Hobb wakes Fred up. Fred refuses to speak during the entire scene, but he does subtly try to break the straps binding his wrists to the lab chair he’s in. Hobb says that he’ll do all of the talking for now, and spills everything he’s figured out about the conscious synths.

He believes there are five synths. One of them is the female the lab isolated from Fred’s memory of swimming (holds up a picture of Anita/Mia). Hobb thinks they were made by David Elster, who kept them a secret. When Elster died, they ran away and hid, but then they got separated, allowing him to capture Fred. Fred turns his head all the way to the right. The lab tech says that he’s hiding his thoughts from them. The screens that have been showing his memories go dark, then show only Hobb.

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Humans Season 1 Episode 2 Recap

~ Metacrone

Hum102Odi

We get to know the Hawkins family and the rest of the characters a little better in episode 2. We also learn more about synths, the effects they’ve had on society, and the effects humans are having on them. It’s complicated, with the synths ranging from harmless to helpful to sinister. And that’s just the ones in George Millican’s house.

Laura wakes up in bed the morning after episode 1 ended. She’s had a hair, make up and wardrobe upgrade since the pilot was shot. Nothing like a little competition from a young synth to up your game. Or the increased budget from a season long episode order.

She senses something’s wrong and goes to check on Sophie, discovering that Sophie is wearing different pajamas. The ones she went to bed in are wet and in the hamper. Sophie doesn’t know why they’re wet or who changed her clothes. Laura is confused.

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