Extant: S02E13: "The Greater Good"

Rating: 5
OK

In A Nutshell

So, we reach the finale, and it couldn't have come quick enough. True to form, all tension has been drained from the show over the course of the season, and we face a finale that we are wanting to see, but all for the wrong reasons. Does anyone really care who lives and dies here?

JD is still down and half dead, but thankfully Molly turns up and gives him some of her blood ... as you do. I couldn't watch this. Not because it was ridiculous, but the whole blood thing does me in. Naturally, as she has super alien blood, it helps heal him, and after fearing she was Moll-bot briefly and waving a gun about, the introduction of Molly's fan club into the room seems to persuade him that all is ok. Phew, that was a close one. He could have done us all a favour!

Molly goes with Hera to see Ares, who says her name is mud amongst the hybrids and they want nothing to do with her. Molly says the end is coming for everyone. Ares reminds her that she created the alien killer virus. This scene ends there ... remember that, because later in episode Ares and his gang turn up to help Molly. Seems she swung them around to her way of thinking without saying anything!

Lucy gets further orders from Taalor, the supercomputer AI with the Windows 95 screensaver, and finds out that Moll-bot is now her boss. She's not too happy about that.

Meanwhile, Charlie and Ethan track down Julie's legs (yes, her artificial legs with the tracker in them. Can't go losing your legs) back to the ruddy lab. You'd think Charlie would look there in the first place! Anyhow, they discover Julie down in the basement, and rescue her just in time as that oxygen timer ticks from 1% to 0. She's in remarkably good condition as she can even walk, which almost is alien like after suffering from oxygen depletion. They even evade the security drones who were behind them one moment but gone the next. Jeez, security these days.

Having put a new plan into place to take down Taalor, Moll-bot and Lucy turn up at Julie's apartment now they've left 15 minutes ago! Quite why Moll-bot didn't kill JD the first time around or keep him captive, I don't know. This show isn't supposed to make much sense.

JD isn't happy with Molly over the alien blood but it's hard to tell how pee'd he is really as he seems mostly ok, despite some soul searching complaints and the odd joke. Taking down Taalor will take down Ethan too, discover the amazingly recovered Julie, with Charlie. Ethan overhears and gives the most unconvincing and rubbish speech about how he's happy to sacrifice himself for the greater good. Right.

At Taalor HQ, Molly, JD and Charlie take out the humanich guards with explosives, and then infiltrate the building, meeting some very weak resistance. They end up in a maze, created by Taalor to fool people. Ares and his hybrids turn up outside and combine to take down the power grid, but are outwitted by Taalor somehow. Who knows how but they are. Ares calls his now-buddy Molly as gunshots rang out in the background and Ares sounding on death's door, presumably as Moll-bot and Lucy arrived outside, whom we see a little later. JD, Charlie and Molly illogically all decide to go off in different directions in the maze. JD takes out some humanich guards along the way quite easily with his gun, but he's starting to feel ill as the alien blood wears off. Charlie discovers some of the walls are projections but this revelation doesn't help anyone, as he bumps into Moll-bot and Lucy. Moll-bot stands in front of him and shoots him point blank ... in the shoulder. Jeez, Moll-bot has a rubbish shot! She got JD in the gut and now Charlie in the shoulder. Why? It makes little sense why she doesn't just kill them as she doesn't use them for any extra value. Lucy however wants the kill, and so Moll-bot allows her to do the deed. However, for no reason at all, Lucy searches Charlie's pocket and finds the pendant. Taalor tells her to use it on herself, for the greater good. Lucy hesitates. Charlie tells her not to do it and that Taalor is using her but she then just takes it anyway. But, ha!, it's a fake. Lucy goes to kill Charlie who tries hard to convince her not too.

Scene cuts to Molly, who has discovered the way to the server room via some rubbish Calderon code. This is a classic server room. Seems ten or so servers are the main hub of Taalor. He tries to talk Molly out of it, before Moll-bot shows up from behind one of the servers. Moll-bot and Molly have a brief fight, involving at least one server getting trashed for good measure. JD shows up and has the predictably anticipated JD versus Molly and Moll-bot who is who dilemma. How will he know who to shoot? Will one of them say something that only the real Molly could know, like something from the last 24 hours? Could the real Molly just use her hybrid powers and have JD shoot Moll-bot? Or maybe they could just keep saying and acting the same, leaving JD to just shoot one of them randomly? Yes, it was the latter of course. He claims he could tell from Molly's eyes which one to shoot. Bull-shit. Anyhow, as he gets locked out of the server room whilst taking down more humanichs, it seems Moll-bot isn't dead afterall. Rather than just snapping Molly's neck, Moll-bot uses the classic bearhug of death move, for some stupid reason, to which Molly responds by using hybrid super strength to pull that useful critical component out of Moll-bots back, killing her.

On cue, Lucy now comes out from behind one of the servers. Jeez, why is everyone hiding behind them? And how did they get in the room? How did Moll-bot in the first place? The door was locked? Oh, who cares! Lucy is now pro-Molly too and tells her how to use the necklace/amulet/pendant. Taalor starts to shut down, as does Ethan outside, and Lucy also behaves as if she's having a seizure. All the humanichs on the various flights to take the human virus around the world, also start to die, by way of vomiting disgustingly in front of scared passengers. Charlie and JD now arrive in the server room, leading to Lucy dieing in Charlie's arms. Jeez. Hard to tell how those two felt about each other! Lucy is glad to be free. We're glad it's the finale.

Outside, Molly is super happy and the audience groans as Ethan survives a finale yet again, this time thanks to an extra firewall protecting him from the virus. Sigh. Also, more good news, as it seems all the hybrids outside haven't been killed after all! Yes, they are picking themselves up and dusting down those cobwebs. What?

Things conclude with Molly giving a speech to congress on how she lied before to them and that there are aliens on earth. Seems to go down extremely well. She didn't say why she lied before though. She also gives no proof that Ares has freaky powers.

In the final scenes, we see that Taalor has downloaded himself into a humanich body. He's gone for a coffee and taken to walking about looking like Dick Tracy.

What I liked

JD had the best line after being not very pleased with Molly giving him alien blood. "When were you going to tell me?" He asked. "When my eyes glowed up as I shaved?"

It's the finale. What's not to like? Well, news that there's no third season would be good.

What I Didn't Like

Ethan survives. again. sigh. Seems it's impossible to have any real drama or tension in this show when everyone keeps amazingly surviving peril!

Ethan death speech ... did ... not ... sound ... right.

Hybrids take down power core, something they'd barely shown they can do before, and are taken out in gunfire, but seem ok afterwards?

Humanichs get shot easily and die, although last week they needed something else to melt them all down?

Molly's speech. She didn't say why she lied or that Ares had alien powers. No wonder everyone seemed ok about aliens. They think they are regular people to have coffee with and play house.

Huh?

Low on air, and obviously feeling quite warm, seems Julie took her shoes off in the container, but had a lovely mattress to lie upon.

There is something worse than Molly; two Mollys. Just shoot them both for goodness sake!

Aliens are here. People don't appear too concerned.

The hybrids all seem mostly ok, despite Ares saying they were down and gunshots were raining down on them when Moll-bot, Lucy and Co turned up.

Taalor goes all Dick Tracy on us and also seems to enjoy coffee. I assume his face is hidden because he's used John Wood's image? There seems little other reason to dress up otherwise.

And Finally

As expected, the finale was full of zero tension and no one of any significance truely placed in dire peril or suffered from any consequences. Much like season one, things had started off with promise, and then slowly descended into boring, farcical, run-of-the-mill stuff that you wish you never had to witness. JD and his ex-wife just about come out of the series with any honour, as perhaps does Fiona, who was quite stern and authoritative up until she also suffered from poor plot work last week. Lucy, as daft and obnoxious as she was, we did at least know what to expect from her. She turned out to be the only real tangible foe, as Taalor, the hybrids and other humanichs never really gained much traction after promising much but delivering little.

Ethan didn't save the world as I predicted, but he also somehow survived once again. Disappointed there was no final double twist, with John Wood, whom I'm still convinced we'll see again. I'm also sure Lucy will be back but will this show get a third season?

Extant: S02E12: "Double Vision"

Rating: 5
OK

In A Nutshell

After last week's rather doll episode that was quite busy, this week it's much more subdued and slightly better because of it.

Things start with the bizarre suicide of Charlie! Well, attempted. He should have been dead though. Seems he decides to committee suicide rather than get help or figure out how to rescue Julie. This guys come up with lots of clever stuff but he's all rather defeated easily here. Even his suicide was as rubbish as his zero rescue attempts as JD and Molly and co walk in whilst he's been hanging there but he's still alive. Amazing huh? 

Meanwhile, JD's wife is out shopping and bumps into Hera who has been shot by a humanich. She helps her evade capture before they get together with Molly and gang to patch her up. A plan is hatched to try and get Fiona's help ... For some reason ... Why they think she's likely to help I don't know. Ethan is the mole. He gets deliberately caught by the GSC and goes for nice walk with Fiona to the park. Ethan has her use VR to talk with Molly who tries to convince her to check the drone logs. John or Toby's drone logs then? Lucy tries but fails to trace the call thanks to that handy thirty seconds rule which is mentioned so many times that you knew all would be OK.

Madame secretary Fiona, fueled by other strange stuff going on at the GSC, not withstanding some stolen human deadly virus from their labs, finds the drone had no logs. That's not good. She's now pro-Molly and suspecting that damm dirty A.I supercomputer, Taalor. She's right to, because it was the A.I who got Lucy to get the virus capsules and she's now handing them out to humanichs who are about to go on some lovely tourist visits to well-known countries around the world, chalking up those air miles for the GSC.

Another plan is hatched to bring down Taalor before these humanichs can fasten their seatbelts and start watching the in-flight movie. But this plan goes wrong, leading to JD and his crime pal to have to bail out of Taalor's datacentre building and avoid getting shot by guards who seem as incompetent as stormtroopers. Not having a clue what when wrong, Molly hatches another great plan, she'll get the new evil hybrid leader and have him help them. Right ...

Meanwhile, Ethan does what hapless Charlie didn't even think of, and tracks Julie's artificial legs. Seems they have some sort of WI-Fi chip in them. Of course they do. You'd think Charlie would have thought of that???!? Anyhow, she was down 10% of air at the end of the last episode, which 90% left. In theory there shouldn't be any air left by now, surely? Guess, as she's not in a car and phoning Molly, she might well survive.

Finally, Lucy and humanich friends at the lab, create a Molly humanich. You'd think things couldn't get more ridiculous? How could one tell difference from real dull boring Molly and a humanich robot, which I'll call Moll-bot. Well, JD could be fooled. Somehow Moll-bot finds where JD is hanging out, has found the same clothes as Molly was wearing, tricks JD into revealing Molly has the pendant that'll take down Taalor. For good measure, and no real reason, Moll-bot shoots JD in the stomach, rather than the head or somewhere conclusive.

What I liked

To see all GSC staff murdered by humanichs was the kind of gritty scene we need much more off. It had more powerful weight than anything else in episode ... or most of the season.

Taalor isn't an easy A.I. to outwit ... At least not in a penultimate episode. Next week he'll probably be caught in an DLL hell hack.

What I Didn't Like

Charlie decides this week to not engage his brain and commit suicide as he believes Julie is dead. It's just bizarre he'd have no clue in to how to find her or ask for help.

Most people die within seconds by hanging, but Charlie is still alive by the time rescue comes.

Julie only had 90% of oxygen left at end of last episode when she'd only been in box for an hour or so. Realistically she should be dead by now but stupid things happen in this show.

Fiona comes to her senses rather suddenly after not believing anything before but believes Molly for some reason.

Huh?

Every so often this show introduces some rather unexpected character turns. Charlie hanging himself takes the biscuit. The fact he survives is even harder to believe.

Let's see, open yard, two guards with guns, they couldn't surely miss JD and pal, could they?

GSC Staff take a nap

We all thought Molly was already rather like a robot, but this week we get a real Molly robot, or as I like to say, a Moll-bot.

And Finally

Better than last week, thanks to a slightly slower pace, which makes a change. Still, it all takes some believing to a large degree, especially with Charlie's attempted suicide.

Extant: S02E11: "Zugzwang"

Rating: 4
Aweful

In A Nutshell

Extant is adrift at sea at this point. Clinging to what remains of a decent opening episode to the season, it's only just keeping itself above water, mostly thanks to singlehanded greatness by JD but even he can't save the show anymore now that he's been fully integrated into Molly Madness Mania and started to become just about as dull as she is.

Things start off all reasonably strongly thanks to the stiff upper lip authority of the new head of GSC (although she was more senior than Toby anyway) Fiona, as she waltzes through the building stiring up the staff and making sure they roll up their socks after more breaches in security than quite frankly any of them should still be employed for.

"What do we want?" She asks.
"Hybrids Dead" the staff reply.
"When do we want them dead?" she shouts.
"At least two episodes ago!" they reply.

Ok, none of that speech went on but it should have. She might look in control and serious but she's also stupid as she's entrusting Lucy to be her personal security and spends her time talking to supercomputer A.I. Taalor for advice who is so pro-humanichs that you'd think she'd suspect his advice by now. His final recommendation of the episode for her is to get humanichs on the street to protect humanity. Seems like an OTT idea. We know hybrids are all over the world, but you'd think from this show that there's only a handful of them lurking within this one part of the USA.

Julie and Molly are all loved up together still, as she hands over Ethan to her. This makes little sense, as it's not exactly Julie's decision is it, and there's no mention of if it's for weekend or not. Seems no one is checking what Julie does with Ethan anymore. Charlie and Julie, despite now having humanichs everywhere in their lab, and so obviously being very fake spies as they slyly and amusingly watch everything the two remaining humans do, Charlie and Julie decide to lure Lucy to a date in order to hack her to find out who is sending her instructions. The rather quick and simple date with Charlie goes to plan, and the fake chip implanted into her, but things quickly go south rather predictably, when their hack is discovered. Lucy then turns on her evil chip, and kidnaps Julie, leaving her in an airtight and oxygen depleting storage box for Charlie to try and find. I'd wish him good luck, but I get the feeling he'll not need it.

Meanwhile, the only interesting part of last week's episode concerning if Calderon was good, bad, or maybe somewhere in the middle, is rapidly extinguished. After Molly pulls out a box (from somewhere??) that contains the only leftovers from her previous house, Ethan finds himself playing chess with Calderon using the chessboard from the box. Quite how they jumped at it being Calderon I don't know. He sends them his coordinates, and off they go to the middle of nowhere, where thanks to some dead birds, Molly figures out there's an invisible security fence hiding his establishment. Sure enough, there is, and in they go and end up briefly being held up by Calderon and his robot partner, before things are turned on their head and JD, Molly and Ethan have control of the situation. It's never made clear for ages that Calderon's partner is a humanich, so I don't know why he didn't have her do some special combat moves instead of just simply stick her hands up. Anyhow, Calderon turns out to be mostly all talk and rather dull when it comes to being much use. He blames Taalor for John and Toby's deaths, claiming the A.I. has gone nuts and will do anything to protect humanity, including killing billions of people in the process. After watching Calderon perve on JD and Molly having sex overnight at his place, we then hear him attacking Ethan, who could easily have broken Calderon into two but didn't. JD and Molly dress in super quick time to rescue Ethan, with Calderon claiming he only wanted Ethan's speech chip for his partner who is mute. Ethan fixes the mute and Calderon is then predictably and rather boringly super nice and helpful. He breaks cover to retrieve the pendant from a security box in town, giving it to Molly before he's arrested.

What I liked

Charlie and Julie's plotting was at least a decent subplot, but you just knew that Lucy would be one step ahead of them. I bet Lucy is finally silenced (again) by something rather pointless, like a short circuit, because she's far too intelligent for any complicated hacks.

Lucy is an obnoxious bitch but at least we all know what she's about by now.

There was a nice mystery as to who or what Calderon was about but ...

What I Didn't Like

... Calderon turned up to be very boring and ordinary. A sophisticated elaborate security system, and hidden clues to finding him and we get someone who didn't know much more than about the pendant and couldn't even fix his humanich's speech chip.

Molly and all her "I'm worried I'll kill you JD" rubbish. She's really willing to suddenly forget all the hybrid and humanich crap, just to save JD?

Huh?

Lucy loves secretes. We love intriguing storylines and mystery but there's fat chance of that in this show.

No one wanted to see this; except Calderon who pervs on Molly and JD.

Julie is trapped, but at least she's got a handy countdown to death.

Calderon, a name only spoken  a few episodes ago, gives himself up, and becomes just another underused rubbish cog in a rather lagging plot.

Puck up those lips, GSC Chief Fiona is not to be messed with as she gives a rousing team speech this week. Well, she tried.

And Finally

Barely keeping itself above dullness, the show continues to suffer from the same issues of last season, when there were at least 5 episodes more to the season than anyone really wanted or needed. This all feels very much like filler and stretching out ways to make something vaguely interesting more dull by having too many concepts outstay their welcome.

Extant: S02E10: "Don't shoot the messenger"

Rating: 5
OK

In A Nutshell

Replicating season one, Extant has taken a real nose dive in quality and even though it's Sci-Fi and thus takes a little bit of acceptance that it's not based on anything to do with current reality, lots of the plot developments take quite some believing at any level.

Things start off unfortunately back at that boring dragged out circus from last week that we all suffered. No wonder Molly died. Probably through boredom at the place. Anyhow, naturally she isn't dead. This show wouldn't exist without her involvement both as a character and actress, so she ain't going anywhere folks. Yes, she gasps for air once more, after having vision in the circus of having shot JD and carrying some sort of pendent. Quite why they had to turn the circus from past experiences to potential future experiences, I don't know, but as both of these "vision" elements revealed themselves later in the episode, it wasn't much of a vision really. 

So, Molly wakes up from the dead and shreds all her skin like the other hybrids have done. Still looks more like dodgy makeup than actual skin but hey ho ... JD and Toby as now having a bromance it seems as they get trapped in the elevator during all the crazy stuff kicking off with the hybrids in the GSC. The smoke alarm trick though gets them out, and they go their separate way, only to moments later be reunited, giving you the impression that there's about only two rooms in the GSC. Ethan has evaded Julie and all security, which you'd think would be very tight in a GSC, and finds Molly trapped in her hospital room. There's a password error on the keypad, but don't worry, Ethan is a human robot, so he can do some sort of Star Trek Data stuff and figure it out right? No, he just presses a button and everything is overridden. Oh ... ok ... 

In another bizarre continuity oddity, the lead scientist at the GSC is found also wondering the corridors whilst everyone else has long ago been evacuated. Absolutely makes no sense why he's there or what he adds to the plot, which seems to be only so he can be killed by ... Lucy! Yes, mad robot is back and so are all the humanichs as they are released into the GSC to kill the hybrids ... which ultimately, after much marching about, they fail to do anything as the hybrids are gone ... except for Hera of course, who is planting multiple bombs in this virus room and ready to press the trigger to detonate ... when Molly turns up outside and asks to be let in. You can get why Hera would let her in, but then it turns out that Toby is also inside the room! Huh? Why? What could he have done to convince her to let him in? Did he just override the lock? Why hadn't she just killed him? She then uses her hybrids powers to have Toby say he loves Molly, which I don't understand at all. Pointless waste of time. Molly naturally convinces her not to blow them all up, saying that peace is the way forward. Toby is also suddenly on her side 100%. What? Where did he suddenly see the light? Then JD turns up, having already noticed Molly was out and alive, they then decide to escape via the evacuation tunnels but Toby stays behind to pretend he had no part in their escape. They leave via the door and a second later the whole level explodes ... yet ... it quickly materialises that the explosion which evil hybrid left behind only killed 6 staff and not Molly and friends who would have been around that location at the time, or certainly the humanichs?? This all doesn't add up.

Even more bizarre follows as Molly and gang end up in another of JD's secret places that is shielded from all detection. Molly though gets a call from Toby who gave her his phone. Seems phonecalls can get through. He wants to meet her. JD gives her a cloak to protect her from facial recognition which given the dark dingy backstreets where she goes to meet him, I'm not sure what's going to be watching her there. Suddenly, the other humanich's creator, Mr Calderwood comes from character obscurity to be the main villain as Toby has looked up his file and suddenly found a 101 ways Calderwood has been manipulating them all and trying to get an army of humanichs to control the world. Quite how he read this and no one else picked up on what was in his file is beyond me. Anyhow, Toby is later arrested for treason after back from the dead Lucy (don't worry, they also wonder how she got fixed too) uses some camera trick to see a reflection in security footage showing Toby giving JD a gun. That's enough to see him charged, but he later evades being put in the prison cell by the one guard escorting him there by gently holding his handcuffed hands, by beating him up and then somehow just walking out of the GSC building despite it being shown that all his security access has been revoked!

Ethan starts going loopy,, after having an entertaining card game with JD in their hideout. Molly and JD take him to Julie to fix, because they all love each other now or something like that. Hera is left behind, having slept through JD making a racket with a cupboard, Molly leaving and returning, and JD having a card game with Ethan. That's a hell of a deep sleep she has. Anyhow, once they've all gone, evil hybrid leader turns up, naturally and we're led to believe she's now back with the hybrid gang. Meanwhile, Ethan goes R2-D2 on us and reads out a message from John! Yup, seems he hid a message in Ethan so that when a humanich kills a human (like Lucy did to that scientist earlier) Ethan will tell them that they have to see Calderwood and he'll save the world from humanichs. So, despite John and Calderwood having a big argument and not being on good terms, John left that safeguard message in Ethan. Odd? It's a nice twist though in this illogical show, to wonder if Calderwood is good or a bad guy.

Meanwhile, Toby, having got out of the GSC without any clearance, is driving his car when he sees a drone, phones Molly, but then gets blown up. Think the moral of the story here is not to phone Molly when in danger.

What I liked

JD and Ethan's card game was the most amusing and genuine scene in the entire episode.

Toby's dead. Ok we don''t know for sure but it was a missile that detonated! He was better than some characters, but sadly, failed to really shine overall.

Calderwood, good or bad? At least something interesting to ponder.

What I Didn't Like

That ruddy circus scene. Thankfully only a few minutes this week.

Hybrid attack on GSC was quite frankly rubbish and pointless. Why not just have them all kill each other, if they wanted revenge? Use the mind tricks on them all? Not set bombs that only kill 6 people anyway.

Humanichs didn't actually arrive and find any hybrids to kill. Sigh.

So, Ethan overrides a security keypad by press a button? Wow. That's tight security.

Toby suddenly pro aliens and also strangely in same room as Hera who hasn't killed him for some reason.

Hera sleeps through a lot of noise, making little sense.

Toby escapes the GSC with no security clearance.

GSC level explodes but no humanichs killed despite being nearby but six staff were killed despite the place being evacuated?

Similar to series one, a supposed villain is introduced at the last minute, Nicolas Calderon. How are we supposed to even care about someone we've not heard of?

Huh?

Molly tries to end the show early by throttling herself ...

 

Ethan proves that humanichs aren't all that clever as he presses one button to override the security lock

The cloak that JD gave Molly to protect her from facial recognition thankfully doesn't need to be worn over the face

Check your mirror Toby, you're toast.

Hera sleeps unbelievably deeply

And Finally

This should have been tense and frantic, but the hybrid attack on the GSC was dull and devoid of any logical sense. How things developed was full of continuity issues just like last season.

Extant: S02E09 "The Other Side"

Rating: 5
OK

In A Nutshell

Now this episode felt like filler, and no more so than Molly spending the whole episode on death's door, forcing us to watch her dream as she was at a circus with her dad. Naturally, this was supposed to be her mind recreating the scenery, and we had to witness lots of the main cast in various circus related roles. I'm not a big fan of circuses and I'm less so now after witnessing this heller of Extant's idea of one. I'll ignore the specifics as it's not worth the typing, but suffice to say she's getting over how her Dad cheated on her mom, and not wanting to return to the real world because it's a rubbish place. Hard to disagree. This whole show might be much better without Molly.

Meanwhile, the rest of the episode deals with JD being released and drinking scotch with Toby who claims that John's death must have come from a higher authority than him, leaving that scary government lady as the only person we've seen this season who could have done it? Still, we're all pretty sure he's alive, so maybe that'll get revealed next week because he'll probably be needed now that the humanichs are being unleashed once again thanks to those pesky hybrids. Julie has developed a backbone this week, sobs a lot, wants to do good and gives Ethan his Molly memories back, and then takes him to visiting the dying Molly, whose last request before entering her coma was to see Ethan. However, that goes awry when we're led to believe Molly has died near the end, as all hell breaks loose around the GSC. We've got hybrids on the loose. Seems that little girl of a hybrid, Hera, was in the morgue, but pretending to be dead. She then does a snake trick, shreds her skin and becomes a teen Hera who releases the other hybrids from a cell in the GSC. Well, that's all news to me too, as we had no indication that they were even in the GSC being held captive after the attack on their camp. Bit of a plot jump, but that's this show for you. They are now intent on doing bad things in the GSC and it all ends up with Hera about release another virus on humanity, and Charlie having to send in the humanichs, whom he and Julie wanted to shut down just moments before everything went to pot, in to save the day. What are the chances of Ethan actually saving the day instead? Let me think ...

What I liked

JD and Toby's drinking session was at least good at developing the mystery of John's death.

We all expected Julie to come "good" at the end, and she's back to her sobbing ways and trying to do the right thing, but unfortunately, the hybrids get in the way.

What I Didn't Like

The hybrids were in the GSC. I don't remember anyone saying they'd been round up and put in any cell.

The whole circus thing was certainly a circus and quite frankly something we all could have done without. Seeing other cast members as circus characters just about summed up the ludicrous nature of this show. Rather they used people we didn't know from elsewhere.

Molly's death bed. Not only did we have to witness a rather badly acted dying scene, but that whole circus crap. On the plus side, JD and Julie's last words were not too bad, for this show.

Huh?

This show could have wiped out humanity itself if we'd been forced to watch it 24/7. Molly is feeling the strain of trying to act interesting. 

There's no charm at all in the circus which is such an obvious and typical way to tell a backstory and have us believe that Molly is giving up solely because of her Dad cheating on her mum.

Makeup budget this season is at an all time low as bits are literally falling off the hybrids.

Toby spent the entire time whilst drinking with JD with the monitor in view of him. Wonder if that'll come up in the story as being relevant? Duh!

With one episode left of the series, we're counting on Hera to blow the GSC to the ends of the solar system and spare us a third season.

And Finally

Far too long spent in the circus, when all this episode is really about is the hybrids escaping the GSC cell. Sadly, we have to deal with Molly's deathbed visits and dream for far too long when the action is happening under everyone's noses.

Extant: S02E08: "Arms and the Humanich"

Rating: 5
OK

In A Nutshell

Just about keeping itself out of total boredom this week, thanks to some moments of action and a quicker pace to the storytelling.

This started off very well, as the scriptwriters tried to kill off the aliens and the show as quickly as possible by sending in the humanich army to absolutely cause merry hell. There's bodies flying everywhere under a hail mary of bullets, yet despite having the upper hand, they stop shooting and unleash the virus. Absolutely makes little sense really and just prolongs our agony of the season not being concluded early.

Lunatic Lucy spots Molly with Herra (the little girl) and accidently shoots Molly who tries to protect the girl. Not to worry, because that gunshot didn't really seem to hurt her much as seconds later, thanks to JD returning to blast Lucy, they are off back to JD's ranch with Ahdu (Molly's alien son) who has succumbed to the virus barely seconds after everyone wondered why the army left. He's in bad shape just as JD's ex-wife turns up at what seems to be the only other place besides the alien camp to previously be not on Google Maps. She freaks out when Ahdu's eyes glow, but not because of the bad CGI, but because she's scared of being bored by him. Not really, she's just scared.

Anyhow, JD gives her a talk similar to the birds and the bees and she takes it quite well, with a swig of whiskey. Minor freak-out aside, the premise of an alien invasion on earth seems to be quite realistic to her and she returns to just being slightly apprehensive about Ahdu. Wow, she's taking all talk of alien stuff much better than JD originally did! Speaking of which, he turns himself in so his daughter gets released.

Molly, who has recovered from a gunshot womb in record time, comes up with the most ridiculous plan to save Ahdu, which involves going back to the GSC to get help from the only other scientist character who actually spoke in the show previously. Sneakily she meets him in a diner, as you do, and forces him to get what turns out to be a blood transfusion kit. I'm not sure she couldn't have gone elsewhere for one of those, but hey ho. She uses it on the very ill Ahdu, who has aged to about 65 now, but it doesn't help. She allows him to pass away peacefully under the stars outside. Awww, bless. His dying words of course were the most useful he's ever spoken, when he tells her not to trust some of the other hybrids, particularly the scary little girl, Herra. Think we all could have figured that out. Upset, Molly heads inside the house, sniffles, and then sees she's also bleeding blood from areas you really shouldn't. The transfusion kit that failed to work on her son, she decides to try on herself(doesn't it need to be sterilised?) and of course that doesn't work so she turns herself in to GSC boss, Toby.

Meanwhile, crazy Lucy, is very much damaged goods both mentally and physically. Charlie and Julie want to "reboot" her like we all do with our mobiles and PCs, but Ethan informs her and she goes ape on Julie, throttling her, until a now better-informed Ethan (via Charlie) saves the day by literally pulling Lucy apart.

What I liked

Poor JD. Even in this episode he got some of the lousiest lines and scenes, but at least he and his ex add more presence to a scene than anyone else, even if they still say daft things.

Ethan, Charlie and Julie combine this week to create a half-decent sub-plot with the now-deemed-crazy, Lucy.

The super humanich army attacking was pretty great for an opener, but then they defied all drama by withdrawing and using the virus. Why?

What I Didn't Like

Molly; every scene was pretty dull. The "oh look, I've a bloody nose" led in to the virus discovery for her and Ahdu, and was just so cheese infested and lame.

The GSC scientist getting "forced" by Molly to get what's essentially a blood transfusion kit was pretty odd. She could almost have gone anywhere for that device. Plus, does it not need cleaning between transfusions?

Huh?

In perhaps the most atmospheric scene since season 1, episode 1, the approaching human-robot army is quite an impressive one. Sadly, it's all major damp squid a minute later.

Take a deep breathe and some whiskey and listen, says JD. He's an alien.

Oh right, says his Ex very relaxed about the whole concept.

Just missing some hair and stormtroopers, chewbecca, I mean JD, is taken prisoner by the GSC.

Blood transfusion was worth the shot, but rather basic idea one would think against a deadly virus.

Lucy tries to do us all a big favour by taking out Julie, but Ethan saves the day. Damm boy!

And Finally

It's not good on any level, but even a crazy Lucy and human-robot army attack can't save this episode from being nothing more than passable stuff to watch.

Extant: S02E07: "The Other"

Rating: 4
Not OK

In A Nutshell

This week's episode can be brought to you by the words "Moody faces" and "Ho Hum"; this is a dire episode of boredom proportions.

Things start off ludicrous, as JD kidnaps Toby in the parking lot of the security building. To think he'd even get in there and pull off such a feat is hard to fathom, in what is most likely the most secure facility on the planet. Toby, JD and Molly have a rather predictable stalemate, as Toby has no intention of any peace with the hybrids. Instead, he goes all Super A.I. on us, using some rather bizarre levels of security "passwords" to gain access to what can only be described as "one very intelligent supercomputer". Why they haven't bothered with it before, I don't know, but now Toby asks it's help to find the hybrid's location, which it promptly does. See, that was easy. Why didn't they use this thing several episodes ago and we could have got to the finale a lot quicker!

A new human/robot is born, and called Lucas by Lucy. I was going to guess she'd go for "John" but alas no. It's a rather simplistic hello between everyone, that almost goes south when Lucy notices that Charlie's computer mentions an deactivation date. She's obviously upset about that, which Charlie reminds her makes her human. Given the way she goes around causing mischief, it's just as well there is a shutdown date. A tad later, after Charlie has a stiff drink because he found photos of Julie and John (seems he was stupid enough to never notice anything in the past between them; is he really this dumb?), Lucy gets frisky with him, but he pulls a stop on it before it's not only the tops that are getting naked on us. Shame, this scene was the highlight of the episode!

Molly and JD return to alien camp and basically spend a lot of time pulling long faces, moaning and having little tiffs with the other aliens. It's really quite dull stuff, and about as alien for emotional stuff as one could get. JD and Molly's tender goodbyes (he's off to get his daughter who's been arrested - not sure what he thinks he can do about that) was at least believable, compared to JD shaking hands with Molly's alien son. There's little conviction with anything the aliens have done thus far for us to believe anything that they say and do. Seems every episode they have a different mood swing. Heck, every scene in fact they seem to swing any way they like!

Things close (thankfully) with Lucy and Lucas in army costumes (not really sure that's necessary to convince us they are warriors) and doing reconnaissance on the alien camp. They come across one of the obnoxious aliens, take him down, and inform Toby that they are bringing the alien back as a prisoner.

What I liked

Charlie and Lucy get frisky. It was brief, but then so is anything good in this show.

JD continues to have the best lines and the best realism compared to everyone else on the entire show.

What I Didn't Like

Aliens are very dull. They just walk about with eyes glowing occasionally, bickering, changing their minds and looking about as emotional as the rear end of a donkey.

Toby's security department is a joke, especially as it's now revealed there's a super A.I. computer that can locate the aliens in five minutes. Why didn't they save us from all this long drawn out crap all series by just asking the flipping computer?!?!

Huh?

Toby goes all "CHUCK" on us with a super computer room full of enough lights to floodlit a city.

She may be a robot human, but she's got the goods!

JD has enough of the aliens, much like we did in episode two.

A handshake between JD and an alien was as probable as the two jeeps making sweet love.

Lucy and Lucas take a hybrid hostage! Wow! Sigh. Admittedly, this was one of the better scenes of the show.

And Finally

Dull, pointless, and some darn right ridiculous logic and plot developments. When the pace slows, this show goes downhill quicker than Ethan on his skateboard.

Extant: S02E06: "You Say You Want an Evolution"

Rating: 5
OK

In A Nutshell

This week was a lot easier to get through than last week's drag, but only marginally. The stupidity and simpleness of some of the dialogue and plot is like a piece of bread missing it's margarine; it's blander.

This week's episode can be brought to you by the words "DNA" and "DULL".

Things kick off with Molly talking a lot of DNA-WTF babble and asking JD to extract her bone marrow using a long pointy thing. JD highlights the stupidity of doing such a procedure, as we all agree, but nevertheless she needs it so that a minute later we can watch the most cheese infested graphic of various coloured dots of DNA on a screen. The blue ones are alien DNA. Oh right, that's useful to know ... but Molly needs more. Don't ask me why and what sort of logic she had for this, but she wanted those alien spores as a way of finding out if her mutation can be reverse. So, she heads back to the government company and literally nicks a chunk of data off the science lab computers before it stops her, due to her not having authorisation. Why it allowed her to take any should be a concern for whoever looks after data security at that place. She absconded quickly, thanks to her alien mindtrick, and off she goes with JD to hide out in the wilderness. There she invents the idea of transmitting the alien communication in the DNA across the city, as she now wants to speak to her son, and get a copy of his DNA to help her get better. Great. So, JD and Molly have a nice chat around a campfire, before she gets alien signals in her head, and we cut to them walking through the woods to where the aliens have been holding up in what passes as a nice holiday camp setting. Here, Adhu (that's Molly's alien son) talks all cryptically and blandly about how she should understand and that they aren't trying to hurt anyone. He shows Molly a great CGI graphic that will "explain everything" but just mostly shows us a planet blowing up. That's enough for Molly to get the big picture and start joining the alien camp, who never wanted to kill the pregnant women, and have now evolved so that doesn't happen. They see Molly as their new leader and Molly seems ready to do everything she can now to protect them from the soon to be released virus, much to JD's realistic despair.

Meanwhile, this week Julie develops a spine; she's had a nightmare about John's death. She begins to warm to Molly it seems also, whilst she helps transfer Lucy's "brain" to a room full of tens of robots ready to be unleashed on the hybrid aliens. Why they need them, when they say they have a virus, I don't know. Does anyone understand all this?

Lucy's also done more evil robot stuff on Ethan it seems, getting him to believe all humans lie. As if! Of course we don't. Do we? Ahh, who cares. But it leads to Ethan creating some rather basic spider robots with webcams to spy on people, of which he captures at the end Julie sobbing. Nice detective work. She's bawling her eyes out after confronting her boss over John's death and having a rather scary (to her) ride up and down in a lift. Quite how she stayed grounded when it went up and down so fast, is beyond me.

What I liked

JD adds realism and conviction to a show that seems to be full of robot acting. His ex-wife makes an appearance and actually seems to also be quite dramatic with genuine emotions, unlike all the puppet stuff everyone else performs like.

Grasping at straws here, but Lucy's bad ass evil robot ways might pay off for some tension eventually, especially as there's likely to be tens more of her going around soon. The robot manufacturing room reminded me of cylon robots, but rather less threatening.

What I Didn't Like

So, the alien's come in peace? They've been misunderstood? It's hard to care really. For the sake of this show, they should be the bad guys. Making them even remotely misunderstood is going to lead to a rather awful frantic Molly strutting about and some rather bland resolution I reckon.

Lucy, although looking untrustworthy and evil, is dull. She looked expressionless and really could bore a lawnmower.

Huh?

JD is about the only person to question some of the absurdity on this show.

Does Ethan care or not? Sounds like he doesn't, but then he gives Molly a hug at end. Their relationship is rubbish, but not because of the plot.

Julie finally feels upset and inmorale over what's gone down with John and challenges her boss ... which I suppose leads to the lift thing later.

... yet Molly steals most of the data before it stops her. Probably the worst security ever.

I guess they are all lying on beds joined up on columns, but why is this the typical view of mass production of robots these days?

Yes, she was. Sadly for us, she came back JD.

Indeed. And it's likely to lead to some hybrids getting killed. Seems this whole season could have been one big alien misunderstanding, much like the decision to give this show a second season.

The lift going crazy scene. Despite going up very fast, and then down very fast, Julie maintained impeccable balance.

And Finally

Dull and dry stuff throughout, only made better by JD's wit and realism to question everything that's ridiculous about Molly and the show.

Extant S02E05 - "The New Frontier"

Rating: 6
DECENT

In A Nutshell

Although far from anywhere near good, this was a much better episode than the last few, thanks to a faster moving pace in story, a high dosage of JD, and a couple of shock moments that always help any dire situation.

Things kick off with us being tricked into thinking Lucy was out in a club taking down a hybrid, but it was in fact a VR field test. She did an outstanding job in the test, especially as Lucy's much happier not having that inhibiting code that Charlie didn't add to her, which Julie still doesn't know about. We can be sure she will find out, as this episode there was plenty of mention of this fact, as if we didn't know Lucy was a sort of loose cannon. This is further highlighted with conversations she has with Ethan, and even later when she goes out for lunch with Charlie, and breaks off mid conversation to follow a suspected hybrid and stabbing him fatally in the back of the neck with a knife. At the end of the episode, all the government people are almost having a party over her successful first hybrid kill, which all of a sudden they seem to be able to detect hybrids based on the fact soly that they have a lower body temperature than normal humans. Don't recall that being mentioned before? Ahh Well. It was a genuine disturbing few seconds to see emotionless Lucy take the hybrid out. I was sure she'd got the wrong person, but I guess that's likely to happen in a future episode ...

Meanwhile, Molly is on the "Ethan!" emotional trip of last series, now that she, with JD, figure out that Julie/Charlie have Ethan. A tense confrontation at Julie's flat leads to a very senior government lady getting involved back at security HQ, where she interviews Ethan before getting Molly and Julie together. It's undoubtedly clear these two hate each other right now, and quite how Molly managed to get through the interview without going fully crazed out, I'll never know. She was quite heated in the scenes we saw, but she somehow managed to hold it together, as it was agreed that Ethan should spend some time with Molly on occasions.

Skimming around those two storylines was JD, who is investigating Molly's husband's death for her. He finally is convinced something bizarre is happening, and he's not pinning it on some outrageous plot writing. One of his mates gets him the "black box" from John's trashed car, and then another mate hacks it, to find that indeed it was an odd accident, but also that Julie made an encrypted call just after seeing John that fateful day. What exactly that tells us that we don't know, I'm not sure, but JD wanted to meet Molly to discuss it. However, on route, Molly bumps into the guy she had one of the crazy sex trips with a few weeks ago. He wants more, but a sane Molly doesn't. Then things go really weird as the guy starts seeing his mum (it's laughably played), and those alien signs appear on his skin. An alien glowing eyes on Molly later, and he's running in front of a car, just at the same time JD turns up. "WTF?!" JD asks, which given he couldn't see her eyes or the alien markings, I'm not sure what he thinks Molly has done, but anyhow, she confesses she might have done it. Sent that man to his death, that is.

What I liked

JD; once again, thanks to him being much more heavily involved in the episode. Aside from a rather clunky couple sentences with Molly during one scene, everything else this guy said and did was dynamite.

Safe to say the Lucy hybrid kill was quite abrupt and a surprise just a few seconds after she was munching on a meal.

Some actually pleasant moments with Ethan this week, as he's interviewed by the government lady. The subject of which is about a humanoid being deserving of human rights, was worked quite nicely.

What I Didn't Like

The crazy Molly moments. The ones where she looks like she's got an intense headache and acts all tripped out. I get what's going on, but they really do comes across as like it's a child acting them.

Molly and the glowing eyes moment. It was a surprise I guess, but it was so badly acted.

Huh?

If you like your JD with a generous amount of clothes missing, you'll like this scene.

Lucy's emotionless hybrid kill was a different way to have your lunch.

All that technology and he can't draw? Jeez Ethan.

Molly scares us, and that's long before her eyes started to glow.

AND FINALLY ...

No JD daughter at all this week at all! Strange, but it was all good, as things went along quite fast paced, given us little time to concentrate on the weakness of this show which most of the time feels like it's acted by dummies. Lucy's shock hybrid kill just barely seconds after drinking some juice, worked very nicely. Molly's cliffhanger with the glowing lights was intriguing, if horribly performed like some sort of village pantomime.