In Which Halle Berry Has Involved Herself With Some Questionable Individuals

End This

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Extant
creator Mickey Fischer

There is a scene in CBS' miscarriage of a television series Extant where Halle Berry starts to make out with her alien son. She is interrupted by bounty hunter J.D. Richter (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) before things get too exciting. Halle Berry is looking kind of run down. I'm worried about her.

Every Extant begins with a recap of the series so far, which takes about twenty-five minutes. It is then followed by a moment of Halle Berry screaming about one of her sons. The first is named Ethan, and he is an android. The second was the alien son she conceived in space, and for whom she harbors a quasi-sexual attraction. Her reaction to this situation, as with every other stressful moment, is to break down in womanly tears.

There was only one movie, Mathieu Kassovitz' masterpiece Gothika, where Halle Berry was locked up into a mental institution and acted completely unhinged through the film's running time. Every single person involved in Extant took this to heart as the most magical thing. Berry's Molly Woods has the same initial reaction to every situation she is put in — she starts screaming and fecklessly battering the person with which she is upset.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan was brought onto this horrific tragedy of a television show to explain "I have a problem with authority." He is a veteran of the war in Iraq. His acting has regressed to a primordial state in which every single line he delivers is smirked out. Unlike previous roles, Morgan has grown in his grey beard and he looks every bit of his forty-nine years. "Listening to bullies isn't my strong suit," he explains. Mmk.

The most charismatic young actress in Hollywood was brought onto Extant to class things up a bit. Kiersey Clemons was cast as an unfeeling android named Lucy. (They were unfamiliar with the movie of the same name.) This strikes me as a misuse of Clemons' considerable talents, but that is the least of Extant's problems. Switching the casting of Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Clemons would have made for a show that is about 100x more interesting.

The first thing Lucy asks when she wakes up is to look in a mirror. The scientists behind this program have equipped Clemons' character with an ethical implant, which is an incredibly made-up sounding thing. It seems that something subtle has gone wrong with Lucy, and we are meant to know this by the fact that she takes a woman's dress from a closet without her permission.

Molly's android son Ethan (Pierce Gagnon) is tucked into bed with a children's book every night. His most recent tome was The Velveteen Rabbit, which is about a stuffed rabbit coming to life. Do you get it, or do you maybe need to watch another recap of Extant? Molly Woods went into space... BUT SHE DIDN'T COME BACK ALOOOOOOOOOOOONE!

The government tries to kill Molly and her alien son in a drone strike while they are making out. When she survives, they incorporate her as part of their team to track down the alien. Team leader Toby Shepherd (David Morrissey) has no other options. "We're putting our faith in a woman of questionable emotional stability!" someone screams in objection. They give Molly a superpowered gun and some remedial instruction. "When I set my sight on a target, I nail it!" she cries out happily.

But don't forget about the nerd! He wears a sweater to work! Someone thinks this is a real thing:

We can fix this, one of the scientists tells the nerd. We can change the algorithms. Oh, good. Fixing Extant is completely out of the question, it is like watching kids get dressed up to perform their part in a school play. Actually, the acting and writing is substantially worse than that. About 90 percent of the scenes begin with someone saying, "Let me get this straight," so we know the story is being recapped.

It turns out that Halle Berry's alien son is impregnating a bunch of women. They die as a result of conception, which is incidentally not really his fault. Although she has agreed to murder her son, she finds she is too weak to actually go through with it. Instead she begins to cry.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording.

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In Which We Were Most Certainly Raised As A Child

Boyhoods

by HELEN SCHUMACHER

Extant
creator Mickey Fisher

In the new Extant, Molly Woods is an astronaut who has returned from a year-long solo space mission pregnant. The show boasts the star power of Halle Berry in the lead and Steven Spielberg as an executive producer, but not much else. While it is too early to tell whether Extant’s space mysteries and conspiracies will offer viewers intrigue, the show's beginnings mostly amount to cyber fluff. 

Extant opens with Molly’s welcome home party. Molly (Berry doing what she can with the role) is in the bathroom puking, her son Ethan is beating up another child, and her husband John, played by Goran Visnjic, is barbecuing in a cardigan. Besides being an avid fan of cable knits, John Woods is an engineer working in the field of artificial intelligence who built Ethan after the couple was unable to conceive. Ethan is a prototype Humanich, an android who learns how to be human by being raised as a child.

The next day John brings Ethan as show-and-tell for a funding presentation. Self-righteous declarations about morals and souls abound, and his request is denied when the company’s board learns there is no kill switch for the androids. Or because Humanichs is a horrible name. 

Meanwhile Molly is back at ISEA headquarters, a private-sector version of NASA, learning of her pregnancy. In a flashback at the doctor’s office, we see her aboard the space station as a solar flare triggers a mechanical failure and Molly is visited by the apparition of a former lover. He’s unable to string together words to form a sentence, but possesses the ability to impregnate Molly with the touch of his finger. It’s an interstellar homage to Michelangelo's classic Sistine Chapel fresco Creation of Adam.

Molly awakens after the encounter in a panic and deletes the videotaped evidence of her hallucination, which arouses the suspicion of her employers back on Earth. After a few cryptic references to a deceased astronaut who also was affected by a “solar flare” while on a mission, the ISEA decides to keep a close eye on Molly. Lucky for them the Yasumoto corporation that funds the agency is the same corporation John was hoping to get money from. Yasumoto circumvents the board’s decision and offers him the money personally. They also tap Molly’s conversations with her company-appointed psychologist.

Back on the domestic front, Molly attempts to reconnect with her family are faltering. She interrupts Ethan practicing his emotional intelligence in front of a mirror with a trip for ice cream in the park. Precocious and doe-eyed, the child really delivers the uncanny valley. (Ethan is played by Pierce Gagnon, the boy who nailed creepy in the movie Looper.) After a mysterious note spooks Molly, she tries to leave. Ethan runs away and, it’s insinuated, snaps a bird’s neck in retaliation.

The episode ends with Molly back at home. She is taking out the trash when a shadowy figure appears in the driveway. It’s Harmon Kryger, the astronaut who supposedly committed suicide after finishing a mission like Molly’s. “Trust no one,” he whispers before disappearing back into the hedges. 

In effect, both Molly and her husband have been impregnated by their imaginations: John through his robotic work (his workshop looks like it could have belonged to Jim Henson) and Molly through her space hallucination. It’d be fitting for a show attached to the Spielberg name to make precious the imagination. The show as a metaphor for what human creativity could birth in the future would give it the gravitas network dramas often lack. Alas, this is doubtful. Extant has no imagination of its own. Its pastiche sci-fi terrain is already well mapped.

Helen Schumacher is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Brooklyn. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here. She tumbls here and here. She last wrote in these pages about Device 6.

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