Extant S1 Ep 12 – Before The Blood

Enver Gjokaj is perfect and makes everything better.

After all my complaints last week, this might just have been the best episode of the show. No small part of that was due to Enver Gjokaj being awesome. His line deliveries were hilarious and perfect. Too bad he isn’t the main star of the show – maybe they can do a spinoff if this show gets canned (please note: I would actually prefer him to be on a show I can love).

Anyway, there was actual tension for the other story lines, too. We got to see that Odin’s evil plan was to make it appear that Ethan had gone crazy and blown up his creators because they wanted to shut him down. Thankfully, Julie figures this out before it happens, and Ethan still trusts her. It seems like she may be able to prevent any tragedy there, although it will take some work to convince Ethan he can trust his mom and dad again.

Molly is much less useless this week. In fact, she’s able to discover that Sparks and the baby tricked her into causing the Seraphim‘s orbit to decay. What it will be bringing to Earth, besides Enver Gjokaj’s character’s dead body, probably, is ‘Katy Sparks’. Of course, Katy Sparks is actually really dead, so despite the fact that this person did actually show up on video, she must be some kind of alien embodiment.

Courtesy Molly’s baby, Ethan gets to watch his father talk to no one.

Molly also finally meets her alien hybrid son, who looks about ten or so and also has freaky yellow eyes. He finally admits that the other aliens, the ones without blood, are almost to Earth – and they’re hungry. He cares about Molly, but he can’t stop them. So let me get this straight: these life force-looking, body-less aliens that humans can’t see could only come to Earth if they first impregnated a human so that the resulting offspring could make astronauts move some spaceships around for them? Why? I don’t get it, and I fear any further explanation wouldn’t help. Oh, well.

Also, John finally confronts his wife about her lack of interest in the family that’s actually there, which has been a thing since the show started. That was a good character moment, especially when he tells her that the one person he would do anything to see again is her. Maybe those two crazy kids will work it out, but since I think there’s only one more episode of the season (and possibly of the show, depending on ratings), it may not be high enough priority to get into the finale. Either way, despite his not figuring out Ethan’s issues, John has turned out pretty likable.

So next week Molly has to save the day by going into space again. Hopefully she’ll also save Enver Gjokaj, and hopefully Ethan will still have his family at the end. I might actually care about these things, because this episode was so decent.

What about you? Did you find this episode an improvement? Let us know in the comments.