Round Two: Extant

Extant: Season 1, Episode 2 “Extinct” (C+)

I didn’t comment last week on the fact that this show’s very brief opening credits display the word “extinct” before morphing it into “extant,” which to the best of my understanding means the opposite. Featuring a visit to a natural history museum is a bit of a direct and explicit way of analyzing the human race and where it’s headed, with Ethan as the artificial intelligence being who is self-aware enough to tell another computer that he’s not human and Molly pregnant with what may very well be an alien baby. It’s not entirely clear what’s going on and who’s responsible, though Hideki and Alan obviously know much more than they’re letting on and have some sort of sinister plan brewing. It’s going to be a long road until Molly finally confesses that she is with child to her husband, and I think that’s some relationship drama that could be lowered considerably by her coming clean instead of putting it off to drive him away even more in the interim. Brad Beyer’s deceased astronaut appears to be very much alive, showing up right in front of where Molly works to pick her up and rush her off to some secret place to converse and let her know what happened to him while he was away. I’m not so on board with his creepy mom following him around the ship with a longing look on her face since that’s pretty frightening, but his swift decision to airlock her is considerably more interesting and shows that he’s trying to be on top of his sanity, which isn’t an easy task on this show.