Extant 2.05, 2.06 & 2.07

Extant is as inconsistent in its second season as it was in its first. Figuring out what it wants to be seems to be as evolving a theme as is the in-story development of the aliens. They’re now a tribe of mostly children hiding away in a former military base, which should leave them well-defended. Especially when J.D., having bonded with Molly despite her alien-infection, helps her find them and agrees to help defend them. Their platonic relationship is threatening to become something more, if for no other reason that we know J.D.’s libido is uninhibited (it’s a defining character trait) and Molly’s is sometimes under alien impulse.

The colony of mixed-race siblings has a pretty twisted view of motherhood, and several would-be leaders as others have reached father Ahdu’s level of maturity already. They’ve learned by “Evolution” to stop killing their host mothers, and seem to want forgiveness for that stage of their development. But rather than stop at their current level of population, at least one hybrid wants to infiltrate the human population and expand the clandestine invasion in urban areas. Which is exactly what General Toby fears the most.

He has a new weapon in his arsenal, a sentient computer program called TAALR (Acronyms abound, it’s pronounced Taylor) that can make strategic deductions given the right info. Basically, it’s Cerebro for the Pentagon, and the most fun part is the elaborate secret coding sequence allowing Toby access. Taalr itself is rather bland, but this is another example of how well the show hints at its future timeline technology without making it just exposition. They do believe in show rather than tell, at least in this arena.

“The New Frontier” is stronger because it dealt mostly with Molly’s custody battle for Ethan, pitting her against a very paranoid Julie and resulting in a Security Chief ruling in Molly’s favor, and indirectly that Ethan is a person, not just a machine. Is this a first step towards Humanichs’ Rights? Ethan’s subplots (he’s bonding with the morality-free Lucy, and creating his own new mini-robots to observe and report the inexplicable actions of humans to him while he sleeps) remain the most interesting part of the show.

“Evolution” finds Molly torn in two directions by her cult/offspring at their compound, and J.D.’s presence can only be explained by his growing attraction to Molly. This also puts him at odds to Toby, who directly felt her alien desire for him at one point. Halle is pretty irresistible, it’s true, and her way of tying all these stories together is to emote as much as possible along the way. This makes her attractive but also unreliable, as does the alien ability to control minds. If J.D. were being sensible, he would have stayed far away, because what good is his loyalty if he can’t rely on his own senses or make his own decisions? These aliens have too much power and yet they’ve lost that “help me” vulnerability that made the first season more intriguing. Now that they’re active and multiplying, they’re pretty much immature jerks.

Both Molly and Aris (the angriest alien) tap into J.D.’s combat scars, Molly seeing him as a post-traumatic victim and Aris seeing him as a violent traitor to his own species. But what gets him to leave is Toby detaining his daughter in retaliation. The general was smarting over having been kidnapped briefly by Molly in order to plead her case for brokering peace with the aliens and calling off the germ warfare. Of course going after his daughter is stupid, as that’s exactly what Toby wants, but Molly errs (always) on the side of emotion and lets him go.

Julie, meanwhile, has finally realized her role in John’s death, but gets threats rather than confirmation from her bosses. Charlie realizes she always loved John, and almost sleeps with a willing Lucy, but pulls back. Ethan’s little spy-cambot is taking it all down, to use against the humans he no longer trusts. And when Lucy and newly activated Humanich soldier Lucas are deployed against the alien compound, they consider killing Molly but instead just take a prisoner. One gathers the Alien vs. Humanichs war may have consequences the humans haven’t projected at all.