Extant debuts on CBS tonight at 9p and you don’t want to miss one of the biggest television events in recent broadcast TV.
Extant takes place in the near future and Oscar winner, Halle Berry, plays Molly Wood, an astronaut who just spent 13 months in space all by herself. When her doctor (Camryn Manheim) does some tests, she finds out Molly is pregnant. How can someone who has been alone in space for over a year, with no human contact, be pregnant? That is the mystery. A hint of what might’ve happened is revealed in flashbacks throughout the episode, but does that really explain what happened up there?
Now, back on Earth, she gets to spend time with her husband, John (Goran Visnjic), and their “son”. I put son in quotes because the couple has been infertile up until now. Their child, Ethan (Pierce Gagnon), is an experiment that John has been working on. He is a life-size android that is being taught how to feel like you and me. He is being raised as a child, who will become an adult (his data will switch bodies throughout time), so he will learn right from wrong just like us humans.
Since Molly has been gone, he has changed. What does that mean? Can we really raise robots to be just like us?
These are two major plot points in the 13-episode event that’s produced by Steven Spielberg.
Personally, out of all of the things that Spielberg has done on television, I think this one feels the most like a movie. You don’t feel like you are watching TV between the acting, the cinematography and the story; you feel like you’re in a movie theater. Because of that, you will want to see what happens next.
CBS put a lot of money into this show, and it shows. Just because you throw a lot of money towards a production doesn’t mean it’s going to be good. Extant is not good, it is excellent. So tune in tonight and every Wednesday for the rest of the summer for a series unlike any other.
