YMMV / Altered Carbon

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Laurens Bancroft putting up a Straw Nihilist Smug Snake facade? Is his reaction to actual permanent violence being suicide a sign it's all an act and he's just a poseur pretending to be evil?
  • Quell Falconer's position on Stack Immortality Immorality and her plan to sabotage every stack in existence, her use of sleeper agents to stir up trouble, and mind-manipulation tactics are all very different from the books. It's very easy to argue, despite Takeshi's love for her, that she really was the monstrous terrorist the U.N. painted her as. This also makes Reileen's position on betraying her more justifiable. However considering Quell only targeted military targets, avoided civilian casualties and genuinely wanted to prevent a future where the rich controlled the masses. As well as Reileen's betrayal more due to her jealously of Kovacs relationship with Quell as well as a whole lot of money. In show it becomes a case from a certain point of view.
  • Reileen claims that Evil Feels Good. But at the end, does she regret her life of betrayal and crime as reflected in Kovacs' opinion of her actions? Even with his Envoy training, Kovacs couldn't tell, and doesn't think he'll ever really know.
• Anvilicious: The state/the government sucks. And "one-percenters" are vile people.
• Awesome Music:
  • Sune Wagner's badass cover of R.L. Burnside's "Let My Baby Ride" in the first episode during Kovacs's drug binge in Bay City.
  • "This Wicked Tongue" by PJ Harvey, which plays when Kovacs goes on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge after escaping his VR torture session at the Wei Clinic.
  • "Future Starts Slow", by The Kills is a somber, but cool tune that plays as Lizzie goes in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and Rescue to save her parents and the sex workers from "Head in the Clouds".
• Broken Base: Season 2's Lighter and Softer and Tamer and Chaster direction was... controversial, to say the least. It is among the reasons for the colder reception to Season 2 among viewers (see Critic-Proof below).
• Complete Monster: Danica Harlan, the Big Bad of season 2 and the ruthless governor of Harlan's World, murders her own father to take over Harlan's World and reigns with an iron fist. Favoring brutal execution methods, Danica is also responsible for initiating the Quellist Uprising, killing many individuals to drive up the price of Cortical Stack alloys to profit. In the modern day, Danica shows no hesitation in subjecting people to executions where they believe their loved ones are killing them, and upon encountering the last of the alien race, the Elders, Danica tries to kill him to seize control of the superweapon Angelfire and purge Harlan's World of any in her path.
• Critic-Proof: The critical response to Season 1 was overall deeming it So Okay, It's Average, with only 64% positive reviews on both Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes; viewer response is amazing, with 80% of Metacritic reviews and 90% of Rotten Tomatoes praising the series. This was turned on its head with Season 2, which got a somewhat better critical reception than Season 1, being described as a Surprisingly Improved Sequel, but a far colder response from the public — Season 1 got a 7.4 audience score while Season 2 only pulled in a 3.6.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Will Yun Lee does an amazing job as "the original Takeshi" and brings a lot of depth to the scenes he's in. It is probably the main reason why he was brought back as Kovacs Prime for the second half of Season 2.
  • Poe the sentient A.I. hotel is controversial because he's a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for Jimmy the Jimi Hendrix themed hotel but he's developed a fanbase of his own due to how snarky, deranged, and debauched he is.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • In the season 1 finale Lizzie is resleeved and reunited with her parents.
  • In season 2, Kovacs reveals not only were Ortega's nephews able to be re-sleeved, he gave Ortega all of Bancroft's payment to him to her.
• Moral Event Horizon: Danica's first really, really evil deed on-screen was tying prisoners to firework rockets and launching them (painfully incinerating the feet and lower legs of the prisoners in the process) so the rockets (and the prisoners with them) are shot down by automated alien orbital defense lasers (they're called "Angelfire" by the human inhabitants of Harlan's World).
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Much hay was made over the fact that Takeshi Kovacs would be played by Joel Kinnaman, due to people jumping to the conclusion that the character was being whitewashed. Those more familiar with the books tried explaining that the character being sleeved into a white body is a plot point but they fought a losing battle.
  • Which makes Season 2 a step completely in the other direction. The only white members of the cast are definitive bastards, and there are only 4.
• Strangled by the Red String: Takeshi and Quell's romance across the ages never quite landed for a lot of critics, who marked down season 1's flashback subplot as a consequence. Season 2 fared even worse as the romance came to dominate the main plot and led to the season becoming a glorified In Name Only adaptation of the second book.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The opinion of Season 2 by some fans was that the Lighter and Softer and Tamer and Chaster approach to the show made it vastly less interesting. The first season being a hardcore visceral cyberpunk series with an Eat the Rich message and its sequel being more generic sci-fi with a Romantic Plot Tumor.
  • Or the legion of changes from the books, which can wildly, ludicrously change the themes, messages, and meaning of all kinds of aspects of the series. For a quick, easy example - if the Envoys are UN-created super-soldiers turned into psychopaths by the government (as in the books) and who end up as criminals because that's about all you can really do afterward, that's a very different thing than if they're Quellist-created super-soldiers who are fanatically dedicated to the cause (especially given Quellism's goals in the series vs in the books).
• Viewers Are Geniuses: The first season moves at a break-neck pace, with large amounts of exposition and world building being constantly thrown at the audience. Consequently, the finer details of the plot become easy the miss, and the show definitely benefits from the Rewatch Bonus.

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