Saw the first episode. Some quick thoughts:
It was a huge info dump, which I expected, so that didn't bother me. I followed it pretty well. It's a world where you an download your personality/mind/soul into a small, spinal disc-like implant, so you'd don't die unless that's destroyed. Your chip -- it's called a "stack" -- can be put in other bodies -- called "sleeves" -- and the poor get crappy ones while the rich can afford any kind of body, including ones cloned from themselves, making them virtually immortal. Oh, and the rich live in the clouds, while everyone else likes in Blade Runner poverty.
Where I didn't -- yet, anyway -- was the multiple past lives of Kovac, our protagonist, who is an "Envoy" (for a while I thought they were saying "Amboy"), which is a super-duper fighter guy with some sort of sixth sense. I counted three past lives that he saw in memory or hallucinations (he gets a lot of those), but I'll be hard-pressed to keep the info I get from one from overlapping into another. In all of them our lead guy (who was Rick Flagg in Suicide Squad) was Asian, but was played by three different Asian actors. (I think.) HIs inamorata was Asian, black and white. Maybe that will help. (She's dead in the present, where Kovac is white.)
The camerawork was pretty imaginative in the hallucination and combat scenes. Where it wasn't was where it homaged Blade Runner -- which is OK, also. Both are film noir-cum-cyberpunk properties, so I have no problem with the filmmakers tipping their hats.
Kovac's home base appears to be a hotel (that hasn't had a guest since he was last there 250 years ago) run by an AI. The hotel is The Raven, the AI is named Poe. Ha ha. Poe's actually the best bit, as he gets to be funny, while everyone else is grim and unhappy. Sometimes I can't understand what Kovac (which is pronounced ko-vatch for some reason) is muttering at all, but I assume it's something grim and unhappy.
But do I like it? I dunno. I don't dislike it. But I'm not sure I'm prepared for the work this is probably going to ask of me. I'll give it a few more eps and see.
Anyone else have a comment?
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