TV REVIEW: Extant Raises Important Questions in its Two-Hour Event “More In Heaven and Earth”/”Incursion”

By Chelsea Hensley

No one could call Extant’s family-centered theme original.

Most people have families or at least people they consider to be family, and Extant is making the most of this simple truth by giving everyone a family.

While some shows are forced to avoid the F word due to the constraints that come with storytelling and budget (it takes time and money to bring on new characters, and when they don’t have a place in the narrative they can go unexplored for a long time) this isn’t the case with Extant, which threatens to go overboard in giving everybody someone. In the two hour event, even Gordon joins the club, with his mother popping up at a rather inconvenient time to scold him for his lack of communication.

Yes, Extant has made it clear that it’s all about family.

The Woods are at the center, with their unorthodox unit growing even more unusual with Molly’s “offspring” in the mix. Is she its mother or is she its host? Everyone has a different opinion on the subject. John wants Molly to satisfy herself with exposing the truth, Sparks just wants her dead, and Gordon thinks there’s something to be had in the offspring choosing Molly as its host/mother while Harmon doesn’t want the offspring to live at all.

But Molly’s the one who wants to see her baby, who feels a connection to it as its mother, and the offspring has demonstrated the ability to protect and communicate with her. He warns her about the team coming to apprehend her, and when it looks like Molly and Harmon are going to be caught, the offspring forces surrounding security to kill each other. Whether its feelings for Molly are practical or sentimental, they do exist.

Image © CBS

While everyone else is dealing with their own feelings on the subject, very few (save Gordon and Yasumoto) are considering what the offspring may want. Sparks doesn’t want to lose the alien because it’s his only line to Katie, who appears in recurring visions, and he’s willing to kill Molly to hold onto them even if it means defying Yasumoto’s orders.

While Molly is trying to reach another piece of the puzzle that is her family, another one of her children may be slipping away. It’s not because of Ethan’s rapid development (becoming fluent in Japanese and riding a bike with no trouble), but because of what that development looks like from an outside perspective. Whether the robot apocalypse the show has been dancing around is actually going to take place is still up in the air, but the mere possibility of it is what’s driving various characters forward. There’s John who, for the first time, associates Ethan with something terrifying because he’s learning too quickly for a robot that’s supposed to be human-esque. What John forgets is that Ethan isn’t human. Therefore there’s no reason he should act like one, aside from the fact that John, and other concerned citizens, want him to.

But what is it about Ethan that isn’t human? His brain and body certainly. But as Julie points out, Ethan’s behaving just as any of them do. Now he’s thinking about things, questioning his purpose when he encounters a ruined service robot that no one thinks is worth repairing, and he gets angry when he sees said robot being vandalized by two kids. Ethan has done creepier things than be irritated at bullies treating fellow robots like trash and refusing to take off his muddy shoes in the house, but because he is a robot even the appearance of unpredictability marks him as a threat.

Image © CBS

But humans are unpredictable, and if John and Julie’s intention was to create a human-like robot, they undoubtedly succeeded. Now Ethan’s forming his own opinions and defying his parents which is something human children do all the time. But in an episode in which he blocks John’s attempts at stalling his progress, he also embraces him when he fears John won’t return home from rescuing Molly proving that he’s not losing his humanity as he becomes more intelligent. Ethan’s a robot, but he’s not dangerous because he’s a robot. He’s more dangerous because he’s programmed to be human, having all the thoughts, motivations and feelings that go along with it, and all those things could combine to make for a complicated response to people who fear him, like Odin.

There’s really nothing good that can come with a sudden love interest named Odin so it’s not surprising to see him turning out to be anti-technology, preaching about it overriding humanity and promising a reckoning that will start with Ethan. It’s all very ominous, and Julie’s certainly going to be devastated when she accidentally facilitates Odin’s reckoning.

Aside from Yasumoto (who has Dodd), Julie is the only character with no family. She doesn’t even talk about them. The only family she seems to have are John, Charlie and Ethan (perhaps Molly when she’s not giving her the stink-eye), but those relationships haven’t been particularly smooth lately. She’s thrown herself into her budding romance with Odin, unaware that it’s going to come to a disturbing head soon.

Image © CBS

Extant, despite its sometimes wobbly execution, has a lot of interesting concepts. It obviously knows what it’s trying to say and what questions it wants to ask. For a two-hour event, “More In Heaven and Earth”/”Incursion” wasn’t half bad. It didn’t always have the epic feeling I like in my supersized programming, but it answered some questions, asked some new ones and managed to do some solid character work while progressing its plot.

Stray Observations

• Yasumoto came back! And confirmed that he’s dying, and that the substance that’s been sustaining him (and that he’s been failing at reproducing) will soon run out.
• I wish Molly would realize that contacting people through unsecured emails about sensitive subjects such as the Aruna, alien transmissions and strange symbols is not that way to go when dealing with a conspiracy.
• I’d like an explanation on why Sam was suddenly so willing to help Molly and risk her brother’s safety now.
• Katie tells Sparks, “He needs our help”, referring to the offspring. It’s the same phrase Ethan used when trying to get John to repair the robot. Significant? I’d like to believe so, but this is the same show that had Molly be confused at people referring to her offspring as an offspring.

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