Extant Episode 1 Recap: Robot Boy Really Wants THAT Ice Cream Cone (Season Premiere)

The first episode of "Extant" aired last night on CBS. It is produced by Steven Spielberg and stares the always wonderful Ms Halle Berry. The show is scheduled to run for 13 episodes. Molly Woods is an astronaut in the not too distant future. There are driver-less cars, news feeds on bathroom mirrors and strange trash compactors.

Molly just returned from a 13 month solo space mission aboard the Seraphim. Dr Sam Barton (played by Camryn Manheim) works for the space agency as well. Barton tells Molly she's pregnant. Say what? It was a SOLO mission after all. And Molly is infertile to boot! Flashback to Molly on the space station. She has a vision of her long dead boyfriend Marcus. He writes "help me" in the moisture on the window. She next awakes on the floor. What happened?

When Molly is back on Earth, she tells her ISEA supervisors that the hours of missing video footage was due to her error. Her story is the power went out. She worked on it a while and then fell asleep. When she woke back up, everything was online. We later see what the video really captured. It shows her reacting to someone on the ship but no one is there. Has she lost her mind?

Molly's supervisor then heads over to a mysterious lab where a man is emerging from... something. He says "Welcome back Mr Yasumoto". Why are you calling him that? His name is really Dr Hatake and he works at Arctic Biosystems ("Helix"). That man really gets around. Maybe it's because he's immortal.

Molly's husband is John (Goran Visnjic). Molly's son is Ethan (hey that's the kid from "Looper") Ethan is a robot designed by John. Pardon me, he's not a robot. He's a humanich. I'm kinda hoping Ethan goes crazy at some point and kills off a few people.

John tries to get funding to make more robot children. This slogan should be "A humanich in every house and a chicken in every pot." But no one asked me. The questioning gets the best of John. He goes ballistic when they suggest that his "children" need kill switches. It could happen. Didnt anyone else see "I, Robot"?

Molly is getting mysterious messages such as "I know what happened to you". There also a crepper hanging out around her futuristic trash can. And he turns out to her colleague (Harmon) who supposedly killed himself after his space mission. He says tells to trust no one. Indeed that is good advice to live by every day.

Favorite Quotes:

"Do you have a child? Do you have a plan to kill her?"- John to woman who asks during his presentation if his robots have kill switches.
"Dont trust them..anybody, anybody- Hamon. Thanks, cause I dont.
(About dead bird) "It was like this when I found it. Your hair is looking really pretty"- Ethan to his mom. Haaa. I love that freaky robot kid.

Grade: 4 Monsters (out of 5). A good solid start. It's intriguing enough to keep me coming back for more. Plus I REALLY like Halle Berry.