I thought this week’s Extant was going to be an Earth Day themed episode when I saw refrigerator magnets that spelled out EARTH IS AWESOME! in Molly’s kitchen. Nah, just a menacing message in childish, colorful letters. Ah, Extant. You know how to weird me out in the first few moments of each episode.
This week’s episode starts in a flashback. Molly wakes up in her bed, and she goes down to the kitchen to pour herself some juice. We know something isn’t right when the juice starts to move and bend in the glass, and then Molly feels a hand on her very pregnant stomach. She turns around and sees Marcus. After she pushes her confusion aside, she joins him on his car ride to work even though she is concerned of the rain. On the way, they get into an accident (the one that eventually killed Marcus), and Molly wakes up in bed. Ethan stands in the doorway, and we hear a baby crying. She pulls back the covers next to her, and Marcus’ body lays twisted and bloody next to her. It cuts to Molly and Ethan unconscious on a hillside. John find them with a search party. He changes Ethan’s batteries (much to the shock of the EMTs), but they can’t find a fetal heartbeat on Molly. BLACKOUT! EXTAAAANT OPENING CREDITS! Told you.
Grace Gummer’s Julie enjoys a romp with a sexy, bearded man in bed. She denies his request for breakfast, and she heads into the shower. Apparently, Julie doesn’t have real legs! We see her showering on a floating, EVE-ish pod, and then she attaches her legs while getting dressed. What a relaxed little reveal! Was Julie injured in the past? Why are we learning about this now? Is Grace Gummer going to get more screen time?! John allows Julie to take Ethan to the lab to fix him up and essentially reboot his systems while he looks after Molly in the hospital.
When Dr. Scott Beck (Scandal’s Joshua Malina) comes in to visit Molly, John asks if they lost the baby. Dr. Beck tells them that there hasn’t been any implantation, and Molly’s body “has not been pregnant in the recent past.” He compliments her on her healthy uterus, though! John follows Dr. Beck out of the room, and Beck suggests that Molly’s problem may be psychological and not physiological. One by one, people are trying to turn characters against Molly.
John and Molly talk outside of the hospital, and John admits that he doesn’t think the ISEA being involved with Molly’s pregnancy makes any sense. When she asked her father about the sample done at his house, he tells her there was an error with the machine. Molly feels assured in knowing that Sam knew that she was pregnant, and she seems determined to talk to her. You know, if Sam ever gets out of that interrogation room! We then see Sparks talking to a technician in a super sleek lab, and he asks if the baby is surviving outside the mother’s body. The technician replies, “it’s thriving.”
When they go to visit Sam, she denies ever knowing about Molly’s pregnancy. It’s quite sad watching Sam leave Molly out to dry. John begins to question Molly’s story, but he still wants to believe his wife. He tries to calmly rationalize with her, and Visjnic’s calmness clashes nicely with Berry’s hysteria. At the lab, John grows impatient with Ethan’s condition (Ethan lays in a sort of coma), and he reboots his program. Ethan sits straight up, and he repeats, “who are you?” over and over in a raspy voice with wide eyes. It’s a haunting image, and it upsets Julie so much she confronts John about how he took Ethan home without consulting her. They have made almost all the decisions together regarding Ethan’s development, and she’s particularly annoyed that he took Ethan home in the BETA stage as a band-aid for Molly and John’s conceiving issues. John sternly tells Julie that he’s the boss, and they are not partners.
When he returns home, Molly sweetly tells John that she needs him to take a leap of faith, and, being the good husband that he is, John stays by her side. But they need proof. She remembers that her dad’s dog bit her when they got to Vasper Island (you know, the one detail I omitted from last week’s recap), but Sparks doesn’t know about that. Molly quickly picks up the bloody hanky from her father, and it’s time for some home science kit time! Well, not so much at home, because John and Molly break into the hospital to do the testing. Like out of an episode of Saved by the Bell, John has to stall Dr. Beck while Molly finishes the testing. Thank God Screech didn’t burst in and break the Elvis bust again! Does this hospital have no security? Especially for the one woman wrapped up in a space baby conspiracy?
Molly and John confirm that she was pregnant. They wonder why they would admit to knocking her up and then deny it, but they also learn that the DNA attached to Molly didn’t belong to John. They agree that they can only trust each other, and Molly is going to go back to work, act like everything is normal, and chalk any “crazy” behavior to her re-entry. Halle Berry going nuts on purpose to throw off a powerful space agency? Me likey.
Molly runs into Sparks and plays the “I was terrified for my life, you save me Sparks!” card. She asks for her job back, and he’s reluctant at first. After some pushing, he relents, but he warns her that the ISEA will be watching her. And watch her he does! On her first day back, Molly stops in a lab and visits a scientist named Danny. We see Sparks watching from a security camera. At one point, a stack of books quietly falls over (I’m not crazy, right?), but no one notices. Molly turns on a portable speaker, and it blocks out the conversation from anyone listening via camera (suck it, Sparks). Danny is researching why some earthworms on the Seraphim died. He applies a filter (named algorithum Danny 5) and he shows Molly an “inter-energy field” that moves so quickly that no frequency can pick it up. It moves like energy, but it contaminates. Are you listening class? That’s what killed all the earthworms…and Molly thinks it has something to do with her fantastical pregnancy. Meanwhile, Ethan wakes up, and it seems all is well. A dejected Julie looks on as the happy Woods family is reunited.
At home, Molly takes care of a resting Ethan. She goes to get him some juice, and we briefly see the refrigerator magnets say ETHAN IS AWESOME. Is she going to have another flashback or hallucination? She contacts Danny and he sends her the algorithum. When she pulls up the footage of the time she saw Marcus on the Seraphim, Molly and John see the same blue energy racing towards her. Of course we can’t end on just that creepy note! Sparks marches through his sleek laboratory to a short chamber. A baby is growing inside, and one of his technicians tells him, “it’s a boy.” Cigar, anyone?
This episode started with a “woman on a verge” storyline, but then it veered off. Then it as all about Molly and John trusting each other? Why introduce this new algorithum so late in an episode already packed with details? I found this episode a bit too packed with plots, but I did appreciate the Julie revelation. Her character might get to go somewhere now. It’s still pretty solid, but it just felt overstuffed. Everything that happened this week could have been stretched over two different episodes
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