Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
The most memorable part of Altered Carbon Season 1 on Netflix was all the damn nudity. There was nudity on display in the background, front and center in the show’s steamy sex scenes, and even in one memorable sword fight. Which is why the wildest part of Altered Carbon Season 2 is how prudish it feels. In Altered Carbon Season 2, all that hardcore nudity is gone.
Altered Carbon takes place in a future where humanity has achieved a type of immortality by downloading our consciousness into discs called “cortical stacks” that can be slipped in and out of various bodies called “sleeves.” The truly wealthy keep perfect clones of their preferred bodies on ice and mercenaries work for upgrades in their next sleeves. This basic concept meant that bodies lost their preciousness and instead became disposable. Not only did that manifest in characters fighting to the death for the delight of others, but it meant that all forms of sexual expression lost their taboo.
Altered Carbon Season 1 explored what this new value system would look like to the fullest. By the season’s end, Altered Carbon took pains to deconstruct how the rich and powerful could devalue the humanity of poorer people within this framework to harrowing degrees. But to get there, it had to tell a story that shamelessly celebrated the naked human body. To wit, stars Joel Kinnaman, Martha Higareda, and Dichan Lachman all wound up naked onscreen over the course of the story. Whether or not this upset viewers’ own moral values, this was the story Altered Carbon was telling in Season 1.
However, in Season 2, Altered Carbon is telling a way less risky story. Altered Carbon Season 2 is focused on the love story between Takeshi Kovacs (Anthony Mackie) and Quellcrest Falconer (Renee Elise Goldsberry), as well as the sins of colonialism. The ethical questions posed by Altered Carbon‘s basic concept have been collapsed into a hypocritical message. Our rebellious heroes understand that it’s imperative for humans to die, except our rebellious heroes are allowed to repeatedly come back from the dead. Why? Because they’re the heroes, damn it!
The upshot of this is that Altered Carbon has been defanged. There are sequences in Altered Carbon Season 2 where Takeshi Kovacs visits a pleasure club, and people are covered up like their prudes. Women going to contemporary nightclubs where skimpier outfits than the women on Harlan’s World. The few sex scenes of the season feel like they are edited for basic cable guidelines.
This isn’t to say that all the nudity is gone from Altered Carbon. Lela Loren’s Danica Harlan gets a vault of naked clones much like Dichan Lachman had in Season 1, and there is brief nudity during a love scene. In fact, the sensuality isn’t totally gone, either. Simone Missick’s Trepp has a passionate marriage to a beautiful archeologue and Chris Conner’s Poe gets a lovely new love interest in a fellow computer program named Miss Dig (Dina Shihabi). But something is off. Altered Carbon‘s edge is gone. Season 2 feels like a flatter, simpler, shorter, more prudish look at the wild dream world introduced in Season 1.
What made Altered Carbon Season 1 so cool was the way it let its world be messy and imperfect. The nudity was a huge part of this. It helped to explain how much humanity had changed thanks to the invention of cortical stacks. No longer would we fuss over our bodies but use them and lose them with abandon. Because Altered Carbon Season 2 doesn’t feature the same lavish amount of nudity, it somehow feels smaller, less exotic, and less courageous than the first season.
Altered Carbon Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.
