TV REVIEW: Extant Embraces its Conspiracies with “What on Earth is Wrong?”

By Chelsea Hensley

Extant has its issues, but this week’s “What On Earth Is Wrong?” really buckled down on the conspiracy angle.

And who doesn’t love a good conspiracy? Conspiracies are at their best when they make everyone distrust everyone else, question their friends’ loyalty (even sanity) and make heroes doubt themselves. And after the ordeal on the ship, Molly awakens to a world where everything and everyone’s telling her she’s out of her mind.

A doctor tells Molly and John that not only is she not pregnant but she never was. With no proof to go on besides Molly’s word, an empty uterus and the absence of pregnancy hormones, not even John believes her when she says that ISEA must be behind the sudden change. When even Sam recites the company line of Molly never being pregnant and suffering from a mental defect caused in space, the conspiracy really starts kicking. Molly’s almost completely isolated by this turn of events. She can’t trust anyone at work, John’s doubting her and the only friend who had her back has allied with ISEA to protect herself. But it’s unfortunate that we spend no time watching Molly really cope with this new reality. It limits the resonance of her situation, and then it’s quickly resolved as she and John get back on track.

On one hand it undermines the angle the episode started off on: with John seriously doubting Molly’s sanity. But like the suggestion that John would be less than happy about his wife returning from space pregnant, it doesn’t really happen that way. Using the bloody rag used to clean up her dog bite, Molly proves that she was pregnant with a child made up of half of her DNA and half of something else’s. It seems to be a waste of time to even suggest that John wouldn’t believe her for so little a time, but having him in her corner keeps Extant on its family-centered track instead of isolating Molly in her conflict with ISEA. (It wouldn’t really be in keeping with the theme if John was running around trying to force Molly into a mental institution.)

Now onto the big answer: how Molly got pregnant. It was courtesy of a spore-like space energy. It seems ridiculous when I type it, but in the heat of an episode it makes complete sense. If Molly was contaminated by the energy then it explains the strange things happening in her brain, though it’s still unclear how the energy and Yasumoto’s stasis goo and the impending arrival of something all fit together. Not to mention what they plan to do with Molly’s baby boy who’s “thriving” somewhere in ISEA.

None of that matters for now because I finally understand Julie.

Until now it was hard to say what her deal was. Her love for Ethan is undeniable but it was unclear if that love extended to John in some creepy, futuristic The Hand That Rocks the Cradle scenario.

Though the jury’s still out on whether or not her feelings for John are romantic, Julie definitely thinks of herself as Ethan’s mother, and she’s not really wrong. For all intents and purposes, why wouldn’t Julie be considered Ethan’s parent? She says so herself that she and John made him together, and John admits that she was instrumental to Ethan’s creation. Yet she doesn’t get any say in how he’s cared for. John took him to raise with Molly without consulting her, ditching their plan of putting him into a different home, and that begs the question of what the protocol would have been if Ethan was taken in by another family.

Would Julie and John have left the family to make whatever decisions they felt were right for him? How much control would they have had? Would John have been advocating for the same hands-off, no permission policy he’s forcing on Julie if it meant he didn’t get a say in Ethan’s life?

Image © CBS

Julie’s relationship with Ethan makes even more sense considering her origin. It’s unclear if John is aware of her prosthetic legs, but it explains why Julie was so protective of Ethan when he began school, probably having faced some form of ridicule herself.

With Ethan being in distress this episode, Julie’s attachment to him was even sharper as John first ignored her reservations about putting him in school then put him at unnecessary risk by taking him to the island (Molly did say something about perhaps leaving Ethan with Julie which seems like an especially good idea in hindsight).

He goes even further by doing some kind of procedure (a very bad one according to Julie) on Ethan’s body that has him sitting up and rasping questions about John’s identity.

We’re surely on our way to the conflict between John and Julie coming to a head, and it’s a relief to see that there’s actually something substantial to be drawn from it.

Extant is all about family, but Julie’s denied a part in this one because John simply decided she had no place in it. His dressing down is actually painful to watch since Julie has strong points that she stops short of making out of apparent respect for him. What makes a family? Ethan’s not the biological product of any of them, and if John and Julie collaborated on his creation then what makes John more of a parent to him than Julie?

Is he only Ethan’s father because he says so? And if John and Molly ever reunite with Molly’s baby what’s that going to mean for their family?

Stray Observations

1. I was so surprised to see Joshua Malina I didn’t even know what to do.
2. Molly’s dream was very weird and very satisfying in that weirdness. I have no idea what it means that it shared some events that happened later in her waking life, but it was cool to watch.

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