Altered Carbon Season 2 Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs

Downs...

5. The Insanely Convoluted Storytelling

Season one received plenty of criticism for its hyper-convoluted plot, which tied itself in an almost hilarious amount of knots throughout its 10-episode run.

And though the second season is two episodes shorter, it still feels almost as overbearingly "complex" as its predecessor.

That is to say, showrunner Laeta Kalogridis has made the classic mistake of assuming that more plot guarantees a better plot.

While the conflict at the core of this season is actually fairly simple when you boil it down, it's padded out with so much flabby backstory, so much expository dialogue, and so many absurd plot twists that, by season's end, it's tough to care much about the outcome.

Though the season fleshes out the extent to which both sleeves and stacks can be used and abused, ultimately the lack of clarity regarding the show's rules makes the show almost paradoxically predictable in its unpredictability: nothing is surprising, because everything is.

There's no clear logical framework for the audience to latch onto, and so it's tough to become fully invested in what's going on.