History Recap / AlteredCarbonS01E03InaLonelyPlace

* FantasticDrug: Continuing the trend, Kovacs buys a knife coated in "Reaper", a drug originally developed to study Near Death Experiences. The knife is designed to deliver more of the drug the deeper it goes into the human body. Vernon gives a security guard a barely noticeable prick and it works and damn near InstantSedation.

** Kovacs performs a MercyKill on the husband of the Gladiator duo so that their can be an official victor of the match, as the pair both had [[CareerEndingInjury Career Ending Injuries]] unless they were both resleeved and without a victor, their are no winnings. Kovacs then offers them his winnings, so they can both get upgraded sleeves.

->'''Title from:''' Film/InALonelyPlace (1950)

* BlasphemousBoast:
-->'''Bancroft''': Haven't you heard? God is dead. We've taken his place.* BloodFromTheMouth: It takes very little time for the gladiators to start drawing this from each other.

* ApologeticAttacker: Two: Vernon doesn't like drugging the security camera observer with Reaper, and is sure to inform him exactly what he drugged him with. Then advises him (as he's passing out) to stay hydrated and takes some analgesics when he wakes up to counteract the effects.

* MixedRace: Kovacs reveals he is originally of Slavic and Japanese descent, hence his disparate names and being bilingual in at least English and Japanese.

* ApologeticAttacker: Two:
** Vernon doesn't like drugging the security camera observer with Reaper, and is sure to inform him exactly what he drugged him with. Then advises him (as he's passing out) to stay hydrated and takes some analgesics when he wakes up to counteract the effects.
** Alice sincerely apologizes to Kovacs as she betrays and drugs him.

* BloodFromTheMouth: It takes very little time for the gladiators to start drawing this from each other.

* EvilIsPetty: Two examples:
** Laurens continually shows this off. He hires a married gladiator couple to fight to the death at least partially just to mess with Kovacs. Then when Kovacs tries to stop the husband from beating the wife to death, Laurens immediately tells the husband to kill Kovacs with the promise to upgrade them both.
** Dmitri Kadmin kills Alice's sleeve after she helps him by betraying and drugs Takeshi.

* FreezeFrameBonus: The Bancrofts are serving a whole tiger as an appetizer.

* AGodAmI: Bancroft makes this overt.
-->''"Haven't you heard? God is dead. We've taken his place. "''

* HemoErotic: Not from the gladiators themselves, but several of the audience members seem quite aroused by being spattered with their blood. One woman even licks it off herself with glee.

* TechnicianVsPerformer: The climax sees Kovacs face off against two gladiators in Zero-G. He is the technician to their performers. They are trained to draw out the fights as long as possible, with showy moves for the audience. He's a SuperSoldier CombatPragmatist trained to end the fight as soon as possible. The only reason they last as long as they do is because he's not used to fighting in zero-g, and Laurens arms the husband with a knife to spice things up.
* WhiteShirtOfDeath: The Zero-G Gladiators wear crisp white uniforms to show off the blood they draw from eachother.

* AbusiveParents: The opening flashback shows the Kovacs patriarch as being both verbally and physically abusive to his wife, while their children hide in the closet.
* AGodAmI: Bancroft makes this overt.
-->''"Haven't you heard? God is dead. We've taken his place. "''

* GrandTheftMe: Played with. Miriam Bancroft's daughter Naomi has a habit of stealing an unused sleeve every once in a while to have sex with her boyfriend.

* KickTheDog: Laurens makes a show of boasting to the entire party that he is the only person in the entire Protectorate who owns an Envoy: Takeshi.

* WhiteShirtOfDeath: The Zero-G Gladiators wear crisp white uniforms to show off the blood they draw from eachother.

-->-- '''Takeshi Kovacs'', OpeningNarration

* CollectorOfTheStrange: The theme for Bancroft's party is each guest must bring something unique. Isaac Bancroft presents the mummified had of Conrad Harlan, the Founding Father of Harlan's World. Laurens brings Takeshi, as the last-living Envoy.

* CoolGuns: Takeshi ends up buying an Ingram 40 flechette gun, a prototype C-TAK pistol that is armor piercing and can magnetically recall bullets so that it effectively has BottomlessMagazines.

-->''"I would have left it in the car, but I really don't trust this neighborhood. "''

** Kovacs performs a MercyKill on the husband of the Gladiator duo so that their can be an official victor of the match, as the pair both had CareerEndingInjuries unless they were both resleeved and without a victor, their are no winnings. Kovacs then offers them his winnings, so they can both get upgraded sleeves.

* [[Foreshadowing]]: Clarissa and Oumou reveal that it was Clarissa who convinced Laurens to spin Takeshi back up, and even tracked down his stack to do so.

* [[Cliffhanger]]: Takeshi is captured by a clone of Dmitri Kadmin.

* ApologeticAttacker: Vernon doesn't like drugging the security camera observer with Reaper, and is sure to inform him exactly what he drugged him with. Then advises him (as he's passing out) to stay hydrated and takes some analgesics when he wakes up to counteract the effects.

* CruelToBeKind: As a newly made expert in the field of Psychosurgery, Poe makes it abundantly clear to Vernon that the only way to help Lizzie in her current state is to remove her from human contact, including Vernon. He's desperate enough to consent to the procedure.

* EvilIsPetty: Laurens continually shows this off. He hires a married gladiator couple to fight to the death at least partially just to mess with Kovacs. Then when Kovacs tries to stop the husband from beating the wife to death, Laurens immediately tells the husband to kill Kovacs with the promise to upgrade them both.

* TechnicianVsPerformer: The climax sees Kovacs face off against two gladiators in Zero-G. He is the technician to their performers. They are trained to draw out the fights as long as possible, with showy moves for the audience. He's a SuperSoldier CombatPragmatist trained to end the fight as soon as possible. The only reason they last as long as they do is because he's not used to fighting in zero-g.

-->''"I would have left it in the car, but I really don't trust this neighborhood. "''

* AndIMustScream: As part of Bancroft's themed party, each guest must bring something completely unique. One of brings up a large Boa Constrictor and reveals she payed to have a SerialKiller resleeved inside it, just to see what would happen. Turns out he went completely insane, which she discovered when she put him back in a human body, prompting her to put him in the snake permanently.

* CollectorOfTheStrange: The theme for Bancroft's party is each guest must bring something unique. He brings Takeshi, as the last-living Envoy.

* FantasticDrug: Continuing the trend, Kovacs buys a knife coated in "Reaper", a drug originally developed to study Near Death Experiences.

* MixedRace: Kovacs reveals he is originally of Slavic and Japanese descent, hence his disparate names.

* GladiatorGames: Bancroft throughs a thoroughly Sci-Fi version. The performers fight in zero-gravity. To add insult to injury, the performers have been so ConditionedToAcceptHorror that they are actually a married couple trying to kill eachother, with the promise of the winner getting an upgraded sleeve and the loser getting a downgraded one. They claim their children are used to their parents coming home in different sleeves after every game, but Kovacs and Ortega disagree.

* GrandTheftMe: Played with. Miriam Bancroft's daughter has a habit of stealing an unused sleeve every once in a while to have sex with her boyfriend.

* GravityScrew: Bancroft has an entire circular arena set up in SunTouch House that operates in zero gravity, with spectators watching from various levels.

* FantasticDrug: Continuing the trend, Kovacs buys a knife coated in "Reaper", a drug originally developed to study Near Death Experiences.

* MixedRace: Kovacs reveals he is originally of Slavic and Japanese descent.

* GrantTheftMe: Played with. Miriam Bancroft's daughter has a habit of stealing an unused sleeve every once in a while to have sex with her boyfriend.
* ImADoctorNotA: Samir will have you know that he is a Muslim not a Monk, and doesn't begrudge non-Muslim infidels from a little mood modification.

->''"I would have left it in the car, but I really don't trust this neighborhood. "''

** Vernon's ArmsDealer friend ends up taking a shot at him to demonstrate the power of the Ingram 40. Kovacs nearly blows his head off in retaliation before realizing what he was doing.

* EnemyMine: Kovacs recruits Vernon Elliot as backup, with the promise of giving Lizzie the psychiatric treatment she desperately needs, and helping him out financially. To sweeten the pot, Kovacs even offers to keep investigating Lizzie's assault and assist Vernon in murdering Bancroft if he discovers Bancroft is responsible.

** Bancroft made a list of every possible person who could want to kill him and invited them to dinner.

* EnemyMine: Kovacs recruits Vernon Elliot as backup, with the promise of giving Lizzie the psychiatric treatment she desperately needs, and helping him out financially.

->''"Peace is an illusion. No matter how tranquil the world seems...peace doesn't last long. Peace is a struggle against our very nature. A skin we stretch over the bone, muscle, and sinew of our own innate savagery. The instinct to violence curls inside us like a parasite, waiting for its to feed on our rage and multiply until it bursts out of us. War is the only thing we really understand. Technology advances, but humans don't. We're smart monkeys, and what we want is always the same. Food, shelter, sex, and in all its forms...escape. I knew a shouldn't go, 'cause when the victors rewrite history, it's just another kind of war. Waged after the battlefield killing is done...to murder the memory of the defeated. But it was a chance to see her again, not as a dream or a hallucination. I thought it would give me a moment of peace. I should have known better. The moments of peace that we find sometimes...they aren't anything but warfare, thinly disguised. And sometimes surrender can be as savage as any attack. "''

!!Tropes in this episode: