What I’m Watching: Extant

Extant: Season 1, Episode 5 “What on Earth Is Wrong?” (C-)

This was one of four shows I decided I would give up on if I didn’t like the next episode, and my min dis made up after this hour. This was a real mess, and the fact that it’s all shifted to trying to trick Molly into believing that she was never pregnant means that it’s ignoring the entire original premise: she got pregnant in space. For a show about an astronaut, this show has remained remarkably grounded on Earth, which is severely disappointing. Especially as Sam changes her story and everyone pretends that no one knew that Molly was pregnant, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to discern reality from what’s all in Molly’s head, and while that’s theoretically appealing, it does a practical disservice to the show since we’re being presented with everything frontally. That she had multiple nightmares before it was revealed that she and Ethan were both just unconscious in the woods doesn’t bring up positive memories of “Inception” but instead just makes everything more confusing, and not in a way that feels like it will be productive. We learned a lot about Grace Gummer’s Julie in this hour, particularly that she has prosthetic limbs, but ultimately she doesn’t serve much of a purpose other than to point out to John that he’s blinded by his emotional attachment to Ethan and his inability to separate what Ethan needs from what he needs. Those limbs are a perfect example of the cool technology, like the self-driving car, embedded in a show far less interesting than some of its parts.