Comedy
Dead Boy Detectives
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
After years of trying, Molly Woods finally got pregnant. Cause for celebration, right?
Well, not so much. See, she’d been away from her husband, John, for 13 months.
On a solo mission.
In the vacuum of space.
If just one of those factors had been in play during Molly’s conception, the whole situation would’ve been, at the very least, awkward. But all three? Houston, we have a problem.
Extant, a CBS summer sci-fi series from executive producer Steven Spielberg, is a surprisingly daring show for a network that has thrived for years on a regimen of crime procedurals and salacious comedies. Starring Oscar-winner Halle Berry, it has the flavor of Lost in space—a freaky, futuristic vision that contemplates nothing less than the meaning of life, both human and otherwise.
Really, the fate of humankind all seems to be connected to Molly’s progeny. Her space baby was born and grew incredibly fast. Now it appears to be wandering around the world getting other human women pregnant. And because the resulting babies grow so disturbingly fast even while still womb-bound, the mothers all die—turning the miracle of birth into a very disturbing alien invasion.
Meanwhile, Molly’s other unnatural child—a boy-android named Ethan who “suffers” from a memory-wipe—has been transferred to the care of Julie Gelineau, head of a program that’s designing ever better and more lethal human-robot hybrids.
All this makes Molly and her kin some of the most interesting folks on the TV block. Nearly every new episode seems to tinker with another ethical conundrum, and Halle Berry’s Molly gives the show quite a lot of emotional resonance.
But given Extant‘s love for dabbling in alien-human hookups, sex is a big and bad theme. The show has aired sexually charged scenes, and sometimes the pairings we see, given all the humans and aliens and androids running around, can be rather discomforting. Violence and peril are part of the mix, too.
Molly learns that her alien son survived and is all grown up … when he picks her up at a bar. Not recognizing him, she allows him to flirt with her and eventually leaves the bar with him, only realizing that he’s her boy when the two nearly kiss. Their “reunion” is broken off by a drone strike (the government’s attempt to eliminate the now-grown alien, Adhu, that actually ends up killing lots of folks at the bar). That attack failing, Molly is asked to turn assassin, targeting her own offspring.
“It’s the right thing to do,” she’s told. “It’s the only thing to do.”
“But he’s my son,” she says.
Ruby, a beautiful new android, dresses in sleek, skin-baring dresses and seems to show affection to Charlie, one of her programmers. Julie, Charlie’s boss, gets jealous and passionately kisses Charlie. There’s a crass reference to sex.
Adhu sheds his skin in a fairly grotesque manner. We hear that 29 woman have died so far from “accelerated pregnancies,” with deaths expected to increase exponentially. Molly shoots someone and shoots at someone else. We hear several people talk about needing a drink. Characters say “b–ch” once, “d–n” and “h—” twice. God’s name is abused four or five times.
“Re-Entry”
Molly returns from a 13-month solo space mission and is told by her doctor that she’s pregnant. It’s a mystery that’s colored by a flashback to her being visited in space by someone (something) looking a whole lot like an old (dead) flame of hers.
There’s talk about humans having souls—and AIs not having them. But John’s not buying the distinction, recoiling from the idea of installing a kill switch in Ethan. “What you call a soul I call the cumulative effect of a lifetime of experience,” he says before labeling his intellectual opponent an idiot.
Marcus runs his finger down the front of Molly’s spacesuit, and we see images of her looking like she’s experiencing sexual arousal … by herself. Back on Earth, John and Molly are shown showering together and kissing. (Steam shields most of the nudity.) Ethan wrestles down a kid who won’t give him a ball. And when the young AI drops his ice cream cone, he throws a fit and runs away; Molly finds him beside a dead bird.
We see Molly throw up. Characters drink wine and talk about doing shots. Molly’s doctor jokes that she’ll write Molly a prescription for margaritas. We see someone in a loincloth (lying still on a table). We hear one “d–n.”
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
An elf mage contemplates on connection and regret as she watches her human friends grow old and pass away.
