First of all…Happy Valentine’s Day to the love of my life. You might think I’m going to say Cooper next, or Coco, or maybe even Ice Cream (mmmm…ice cream…), but no. It’s Elizabeth Ho. My wife. The most amazing person I’ve ever known. This is our…13th Valentine’s Day together?…and I swear to freaking god, I love her more and more with each holiday. Love you, Bear! I’m so lucky to have you in my life 😘😍
The Ho and I finished watching Altered Carbon tonight, which was…fun. We both enjoyed it more or less. There was much to be desired in terms of either of us truly CARING what happened in the end, but it did at least hold our interest.
The fight scenes were dope. The concepts were super fun. Even the production value was surprisingly good, which is really saying something since this visual style has *definitely* been done before, both on the big screen and on television, and usually not done well. They made it work. They made a series of grungy street scenes and darkly-lit interiors actually work. So, bravo to them.
The maaaiinnn issue with the show is that they really struggled to make the characters loveable. Exceptions: Poe, the AI Hotel, and that guest star who was both Abuela and Dimi the Second. Pretty much everyone else was fine, but never more than just fine. The second big issue is that the MAIN mystery, who killed Bancroft…was never very interesting. In fact, the actual amount of time we spent solving his murder compared to everything else in the show was incredibly minimal. That mystery, the entire reason our main character is spun up in the first place, and its connection to all the other rabbit holes we go down is to weak.
So…I say those criticisms in the spirit of why I think I didn’t *love* this show. But, I did still enjoy it. I still binge-watched it and wanted to see what happened next.
I told the Ho I’d give it a “C+” — a passing grade. They did enough, and that pulling-off of the production design gets it the “+”. I do wish, though, that it had been better. I wish that it had been excellent.
It still gets a recommendation from me. It’s entertaining. And you’ll love Poe 🙂
That’s all for today, really. I spent the holiday with my wife as much as I could. She had a couple auditions. Oh! And I guess they announced it today officially so I can share: Disjointed is not being picked up for more episodes by Netflix. Sigh. I had that deflated feeling in my gut when they didn’t pick the show up right after the first 10 episodes dropped, but there definitely was part of my that held a hope candle burning. So, yeah…that sucks. But I’m incredibly proud of the work my wife, and everyone else, did on that show. Those 20 episodes, at least, are up there now for as long as Netflix is around…which should be a long time. So, that’s a big win 🙂
Night!