Extant: Secrets and Lies

You smell that?  The paranoia is starting to kick in.  Right when the characters start telling each other the truth, it appears something bigger is looming over all of these characters.  Other questions also arise.  Will Ethan fit in at his first day of school?  Will Molly ever tell John that’s expecting?  Will Camryn Manheim get more screen time?  Don’t worry.  All of these questions get answered in the latest episode.

It might not have been wise for Molly to divulge to Sparks that she was pregnant.  Sure, we always say that characters should just tell the truth in order to avoid complications, but Sparks is obviously so creepy.  At the beginning of the episode, we see him chatting with Kern, and they find out that Sam knows that Molly is pregnant.  When Kern asks Sparks what he is going to tell Molly he says, “something more believable than the truth.”

In a flashback, we see how Ethan became part of the family.  Molly has been unsuccessful in getting pregnant.  When she was ready to throw in the towel, John convinces her that they should just keep Ethan as their son.  He was going to go home with one of the family candidates for the beta phase anyway, so why not join their family?  Even though Molly wanted something concrete, it’s obvious that she isn’t sure—especially since she just signed up for a rotation on the Seraphim.  Uh oh.

While John is getting Ethan ready for his first day of school, he tells Ethan that he needs to pick some things up for Molly’s birthday party.  He tells Ethan he is going to leave him alone for a few minutes, but Molly is on her way back.  The only rules that Ethan has to follow are don’t go outside and don’t answer the door.  As soon as John leaves, Ethan sees a bird in the yard, and, you guessed it, he goes outside.  He grabs a fishing pole, a plant pot, some duct tape and a broom and creates a device to trap the bird inside.  This kid is seriously a little MacGyver.  I can barely put an IKEA bookshelf together, and this kid whips up a cage for a bird in five minutes.

Sparks shows up at Molly’s house, and he tells her that the baby she is carrying actually belongs to her and John.  I’m sorry…what?  He claims that there is a covert operation happening in the medical center, and experiments have been conducted on astronauts under the ISEA’s nose.  Since Molly’s data from her infertility courses were still on record, they successfully planted a bun in the oven using a time-released procedure.  He makes it seem like he is so appalled by the medical center’s actions that he’s about to resign, and he stresses that his main concern is her.  He also tells her that he is worried about the similarities in the brain scans between her and Harmon.  Well played, Sparks, well played.

At Ethan’s first day of school, some parents are already being major league d-bags.  Some of the parents are worried about Ethan’s presence at the school.  Even though the principal stresses that she’s worked with John for 6 months, one father goes the extra mile and calls Ethan a “toaster with hair.”  I personally don’t know how John and Molly kept their cool, because I would have smothered the man with his generic baseball cap.  Molly is much more rational than me, however, and she tells him, “He’s just different.  You don’t have to be afraid of different.”  The more you know…shooting star!

When Molly goes to ask Harmon if he thinks they did any testing on him, she doesn’t find him in his trailer.  She does find a mysterious circular drawing on his wall (the one that appeared on her stomach when she felt pains in her kitchen!).  Molly takes a picture, and she doesn’t Instagram it.  She’s a better woman than most people nowadays.  On her way back, a black SUV stops her, but, don’t worry, it’s just Kerns.  He wanted to give Molly her tether back in the creepiest way possible.  He tells her that the directors of ISEA are just looking out for her health.

When it’s time for Molly’s birthday party, a few things go down.  First of all, Molly comes down in a STUNNING dress.  If you needed a reminder that Berry is one of the most beautiful women on the planet, look no further than this episode.  Sam shows up to take some blood from Molly, but she quickly leaves to run some further tests.  As soon as Sam leaves, Molly experiences more pain in her stomach, and she has another vision of Marcus touching her stomach on the Seraphim.  Determined to make everything seem normal at her party, she goes back downstairs, and she runs into Tim, Marcus’s brother.  She gives him a tour of the house, and they have a conversation about how Tim feels he sees Marcus everywhere.  Tim apologizes for not being there for her after Marcus died.  When the partygoers gather around to take a group picture, Molly has Tim stand next to her.  As soon as the picture is taken, however, the power goes out.

John goes to investigate, and he finds Ethan’s bird trapped under a box.  Ethan tells his father that he just wanted to play with him—he had no intentions of hurting the bird.  John quite plainly tells Ethan that Ethan needs to behave even more than other kids, because he doesn’t have the same chances with people.  Then Ethan tells John that Molly told him that secrets are ok if you don’t want someone to worry.  John immediately goes back to the party and asks Molly if she’s hiding something.  She FINALLY tells him that she’s pregnant.  To be honest, this is the best scene between Berry and Goran Visnjic since the series began.  I’ve harped on their lack of chemistry before (sorry, they just aren’t a good match), but this is the first time I actually bought their marriage.  Maybe they just need to take it all down for it to be believable?  It’s a nice scene.

As the party winds down, everyone is getting ready to say their goodbyes.  Molly looks for Tim, but she can’t seem to find him.  The more she searches, the more anxious she becomes, and the party looks on as Molly becomes rather frantic.  John tells her Tim wasn’t there, and when she pulls up the picture that was taken, he isn’t standing next to her.  Is she a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown?  When Sam goes to her office to run the tests on Molly’s blood, a security guard stops her, telling her there is a chemical leak.  Sam doesn’t buy it.  When she tries to find another way to her office, she sees other ISEA officials taking boxes of files and her computer out of her office.  She tries to call Molly’s home, but she has already left with Sparks to conduct more test (don’t trust him, Molly!).  Molly receives a text from Sam telling her to get out of the car, and Molly frantically demands Sparks to stop.  She runs down a darkened road and is rescued by John.  The episode ends with Sparks breaking into Molly and John’s home with a heavily armed SWAT team.  They search the entire house, and even Ethan is gone from his bed.

At the end of each episode, I am left with more questions.  Are Molly, John and Ethan going into hiding?  How long will it take for the ISEA to track them down?  Will Ethan act out more in school?  Something bad better not have happened to Camryn Manheim!  The stakes are getting raised even more now, so I hope that it doesn’t get derailed by the Woods going into hiding.