TV REVIEW: John and Molly Are on a Whole Other Show in Extant’s “Shelter”

By Chelsea Hensley

After last week’s near-quarantine, Molly, John and Ethan are on the run in Extant’s “Shelter” episode. But they’re not very good at it. Isn’t the principle of “Running Away 101” that you don’t flee to the home of an immediate family member? Is it not widely understood that these are the first places bad guys will look for the people they’re pursuing? Maybe I’ve been watching too much TV (there’s no so such thing), but it’s more likely that John and Molly are living in a fantasy land where even once their world’s been blown apart they just don’t get it.

John and Molly have a weirdly casual response to going on the run, suddenly very relaxed about their situation and planning on returning home as soon as they have the DNA results. This doesn’t gel with Molly’s daring escape from Sparks’ car or John frantically running to her rescue last week. How does having the DNA results mean that they’ll be safe from whatever ISEA and Sparks are up to? It’s as if they switched over to a different show in the week that’s passed and have forgotten all about what made them run in the first place. Even when Gordon takes action and kidnaps Ethan, neither John nor Molly is quick to assume that the very people they’re running from have caught up to them (despite not running very far or trying very hard). Though Molly floats the idea of Ethan’s disappearance being Sparks’ fault, they quickly abandon that in favor of the other possibility that Ethan simply ran off after Quinn got snippy with him. Last week I thought Molly’s problem was that she’s just not able to tap into the paranoia that’s kept Harmon safe for so long, but I’m beginning to wonder if she (and John) aren’t just lacking basic instincts. How did they not anticipate, or at least plan for ISEA catching up to them?

Though it’s not surprising that ISEA turns up and drags Ethan into the middle of the conflict, it is surprising to see Molly interacting with her father, perhaps because her parents haven’t been brought up before. That’s actually pretty strange when one considers Extant‘s reliance on family, but Quinn (Louis Gossett Jr) is far too unreliable, and Molly only goes to him now because she’s desperate to lay low. A recovering alcoholic and former doctor, Quinn now spends his time throwing rings onto hooks at bars, and his only claim to fame is that he’s a pretty decent grandparent when he’s not drunk and/or gambling. But when he is, he’s not the best as Ethan learns when his winning streak comes to an abrupt end and costs his grandfather a lot of money.

Naturally Quinn is blamed for Ethan’s disappearance, and the resulting search for him is as close as the episode comes to drama. The sheriff calls off the search after learning that Ethan’s a robot, cuing John to punch him for his insensitivity. And Molly, the only one actually looking for Ethan, gets picked up by the ISEA. Her escape attempt (where it actually seems she’ll get away) only gets her as far as another operating room where she’s quickly put on the table so the baby can be removed in keeping with Yasumoto’s plans of removing Molly from the equation entirely.

When Yasumoto and Sparks first have this conversation, comparing notes on the respective issues being caused by Molly and Sam, it sounds very much like Yasumoto’s suggesting they both be killed. In a show as conspiracy-heavy as this one, that’s not unbelievable, but apparently Yasumoto isn’t that eager to get blood on his hands as both Molly and Sam are still alive when the episode ends (though there is a scientist who doesn’t make it). But Sam’s not going to be talking to anyone about Molly’s pregnancy or ISEA’s experiments, not after Sparks threatens her mentally ill brother. And Molly’s apparently not going to be pregnant for much longer, a reality she and John are surely going to take hard since they planned on having and keeping the baby.

Image © CBS

“Shelter” doesn’t have the cohesion or the pace of previous episodes. All the tension of John and Molly fleeing gets sucked out of the episode by their minimal reactions to their crisis, and even when it picks up it doesn’t feel urgent. Yasumoto’s “life-sustaining substance” is more intriguing though being plopped in the middle of the Woods’ island interlude saps it of some of its fun, too.

More interesting is the continuing issue of Ethan’s condition. The aborted search and rescue operation is a prime example of the kind of things Ethan has to face in the world, not being worth looking for because he’s not actually human. That’s also probably why Gordon’s men don’t hesitate at shorting him out with that electric rod and having Molly stumble upon his body which I don’t think they’d have been so eager to do if Ethan was a flesh-and-bone boy. Ethan’s not an actual child to anyone but his parents, and after all the episodes nodding to how inhumane Ethan is, “Shelter” goes a long way to establish him as more than a potential danger for everyone. With Quinn, Ethan is just looking to have fun with his grandfather, determined to skip rocks across the ocean’s surface and even wanting to adhere to Quinn’s declaration that not everyone’s perfect. It’s the first episode where Ethan doesn’t do anything that could be construed as creepy, though I fear Extant‘s only going to pile on Ethan’s maybe creepiness now.

Stray Observations

• Apparently throwing rings onto wall hooks is something people do.
• I don’t know why Molly thought reaching out to pet a clearly agitated, barking dog was a good idea. But I suppose the dog’s state was due to Molly’s pregnancy, yes?
• Yasumoto is “re-creating” the substance so where did he get it from the first time?

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