Force of Evil

Kovacs is virtually tortured by his captor Dimi 2 and recalls his Envoy training with Quellcrist Falconer to support the pain and survive. Meanwhile Lt. Kristin Ortega resurrects a criminal implanting her grandmother´s consciousness to celebrate the Día de los Muertos with her family.

"Force of Evil" is an engaging episode of "Altered Carbon" with more information about the Envoy training of Kovacs. The segment with Ortega is silly, maybe to break the tension of the violent lead storyline. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Force of Evil"

"...or gas and a blowtorch." You'll have to watch Force Of Evil to appreciate that quote. This episode could have been named: Torture, Die, Repeat. There's really a lot of killing and burning and torture of rich variety. Oh, and cooking also. And a bit too much talking.

Tahmoh Penikett's Dimitri throws a Tim Burtonesqe glee into his torture. The techs controlling the VR Torture program are impatient with how long it's taking for Kovacs to break because they have dinner plans. It's a bit over the top for the tone of Altered Carbon so far. But, it provides an opportunity for Envoy training flashbacks that illustrate how deeply prepared Envoys are for all scenarios, and to reveal something unexpected about Quell.

For a change, there's not a lot new visually in this chapter, which seems like a bottle episode, shorter on sets and effects than the prior three. The script seems unnecessarily dialogue-heavy and drawn out, much of it unrelated to the central story. The thread involving Ortega's mother coming over to cook and a guest who was also a thug completely lost me. And, it was unclear to me what the torture was about. Dimitri seems convinced that Kovacs was trying to kill him. Yet, Dimitri appeared to be hired to hit Kovacs at the Raven. And, who is Ryker?

The least strong episode so far, Force of Evil may be a budget-balancer. It's too bad the writers couldn't find a way to take the characters deeper with the dialogue. I was going to take 4 stars off for the slowness of this one, but I give one star back for an explosive finish, and the first human moment for Ortega.

"Hello Unicorn." (alright I'll stop)

Interesting to actually finally see the protagonists backstory come to light.

Hopefully they'll be able to wrap it all up nicely in the 6 remaining episodes as the good questions are there but now we need to the good answers.

Kovacs had one of his first breaks in the previous episode, but took a downturn because he was not careful. He is now strapped to a Virtual table.

This singular episode answers a question we had been having: Where do the "Skins" regular, poor people use, come from? Apparently incarceration is virtual incarceration, Skins are passed back and forth, and maybe will never come back to the original owner.

The concept of "Double Sleeving" is examined here too. As is the origin of the Sleeve Kovacs is wearing, if he can figure it out.

Kovacs had been trained to be who he is regardless of what sleeve he is in. The source of that strength is shown here, in great detail.

And we start to see glimpses of who The Envoys really were.

Meanwhile, Ortega finds a "ghost", which she saw in the previous episode, there is no trace of him as she tries to find out who he is. Not to worry, this is not the last we will see of This Mystery Man. Nothing Is as it Seems.

I don't think we really understand who and how Kovacs is, until we see this.