Should You Make Space In Your Life For Extant?

What Is This Thing?

Astronaut Molly Woods has just returned from a solo mission on a space station. While she works on readjusting to life on Earth with her husband and son, she gets some pretty surprising news: she's pregnant. This is kind of a curveball because (a) she's infertile and (b) her solo mission was more than a year long, and while I'm not a scientist, I understand that the gestational math doesn't check out.

When Is It On?

Wednesdays at 9 PM on CBS.

Why Was It Made Now?

If the success of Gravity taught us anything, it's this: America. Loves. A broad. Alone in space. PERIOD. Also I guess it was made now because Halle Berry, like fancy movie actors Laura Linney and Jessica Lange before her, has entered her twilight TV years.

What's Its Pedigree?

This Mickey Fisher character, who's credited as Creator, apparently hasn't done anything on TV before (just two credits on movies I have never heard of and neither have you). But I guess he's great at pitching, because not only did he get an Oscar-winning actress on board; he also lined up Steven Spielberg as an Executive Producer.

...And?

I watched the pilot of CBS's new lawyer/corrupt-cop show Reckless (or rather, most of it, before getting bored and forgetting to watch the last fifteen minutes or so), and part of the reason I couldn't be bothered to get into it is that it's SO CBS-y. The look and direction and pacing of the pilot cold open could have been CSI Miami or Unforgettable or The Mentalist or literally any of those shows. At least Extant is trying to do something different. Also: Tami Roman of The Real World Los Angeles appears in the pilot as a friend of Molly's and has more than one line and in terms of people from that franchise that I'd like to see succeeding in the field of acting, Tami ranks WAY higher than Jacinda Barrett, that drip.

...But?

While I can understand that everyone involved in this production was probably very excited to cast an actor of Halle Berry's name recognition, she is badly miscast in this role. To start with, Berry's Molly is very beautiful -- obviously -- but she's playing an astronaut and nothing in her performance convinces me at all that Molly is...like, smart? Which I think astronauts generally are. She's smooth and ethereal, but nothing in her manner suggests that she's all that interested in finding out how plants work in space. And it would be one thing if she seemed not-that-bright but interesting, at least, and I think anyone who's watched her in the X-Men movie franchise would agree that "interesting" is not one of her chief attributes.

Then there's the premise. In addition to the space pregnancy, for which the pilot episode suggests a somewhat science fictionally plausible explanation, Molly and her husband John (Goran Visnjic!) have a son named Ethan. Or do they? Because it turns out that John is an engineer and Ethan is a robot -- or, as John's company styles it, a "Humanich." John's idea is to erase the uncanny valley effect of humanoid androids by bringing humanichs along in the way human children are, so that they can learn to navigate life in stages and through direct lessons and experience; Ethan is his proof of concept. Unfortunately for John's professional ambitions, Ethan is a creep. When John trots him out for a presentation to a group of investors, someone (naturally) asks about the Battlestar Galactica scenario and whether humanichs will have a kill switch; John goes crazy demanding to know whether one of his questioners would murder her daughter if she did something bad, but by that point in the episode I was pretty ready to kill-switch Ethan myself. Of course the episode ends with him dead-eyed and fighting with Molly before running off to (apparently) kill a bird with his bare hands. And depending what happens with Molly's pregnancy, this has the potential to turn into another "diabolical adopted/non-biological child vs. saintly biological child victim" like Orphan all over again. Boring, and I'm not rooting for either of Molly's children, or Molly. Mostly I'm rooting for John to leave all of them and start a new life.

I guess this setup is kind of a reverse A.I., so at least that's new for Spielberg? But...let's talk about Spielberg for a second. I know that his name will always have marquee value for all the obvious reasons but HOLY SHIT has this man slapped his name on some TERRIBLE TV. Here's a partial list:

• The River
• Terra Nova
• Falling Skies
• UNDER THE DOME

Yes, there's also Amazing Stories and all the WWII stuff and obviously my beloved Smash. But not only should Under The Dome lose him ANY confidence you might have in his bringing another sci-fi concept to TV; it should get his hands broken. I'm not saying I want to do it. But I'm not saying I don't.

...So?

Look, CBS made this press shot available. I just added the words he is obviously trying, nonverbally, to convey.

You wouldn't, so don't.