'Extant': 5 Ways the Show Plans to Be Better

Halle Berry’s more fun! Jeffrey Dean Morgan joins the cast! There’s more sex, more drama, more humor, less science! These are but a few of the reasons why, even if Season 1 of CBS’s sci-fi drama Extant elicited a giant “meh” from you last summer, you may want to give it another shot for the July 1 Season 2 premiere. New showrunners Liz Kruger and Craig Shapiro have moved the action from outer space to planet Earth, where the aliens pose an even bigger threat, as astronaut Molly Woods and her new cohorts engage in a new fight for survival on their home turf.

“It’s a show about survival,” Kruger tells Yahoo TV. “They introduced the idea of aliens and artificial intelligence in Season 1, and in the middle of all of this, sick human beings. This season all of these [elements] are in a desperate fight for survival. At any given time, the rise of one may mean the extinction of the other.

"The show is electric this year. That is the word I would use to describe it. It is mysterious. It is sexy, and it is electric. I think if people give this [season] a chance, they will be really surprised at how much fun it is.” And here’s why…

It’s Soapier!

It’s a network series about alien invasion, mysterious pregnancies, and humanoids, populated with gorgeous stars like Halle Berry and Goran Visnjic, yet somehow, Extant was still painfully dull at times during Season 1.

But the new showrunners, husband and wife producing team Kruger and Shapiro, have embraced the story’s more dramatic, personal (and sometimes deliciously over-the-top) elements to create a Season 2 premiere that includes a mental institution, a surprising affair (revealed in a surprising way), and additional shocking personal and professional betrayals.

Oh, and look forward to a drama involving a self-driving car — and trust us, it’s far more sinister than the adventure Other Jared found himself in with a self-driving auto on Silicon Valley.

Halle Berry’s More Dynamic!

No spoiling the specifics, but when we catch up with Molly Woods in the Season 2 premiere, we learn she’s become fed up with the deceptions of those closest to her, which has led her to set fire to her house, slug a rival, and go on many a drunk and disorderly escapade. And though there’s still much sadness in her life — especially surrounding the status of her two sons — Berry gets to play Molly with a feistiness that’s a lot more fun to watch in Season 2.

Like when she narrowly escapes an attack at the hospital where she’s being held, but quickly pulls herself together and takes a shovel to the windshield of her would-be rapist before fleeing the institution. And suffice it to say you don’t put Halle Berry and Jeffrey Dean Morgan together in a summer drama without the ever-present possibility that a romance will spark.

“They’re super fun to watch,” Kruger says. “They play very different people in this story… had it not been for the events, the time and place we’re in right now, their paths would never have crossed, and if they had crossed, they would not have given each other the time of day. His chemistry with Halle is… it’s explosive.”

The Governor!

There are no heads in fish tanks — at least, not in the first episode — but The Walking Dead alum David Morrissey is almost certainly up to a certain amount of no good as Tobias Shepherd, a friend of Molly’s who’s the head of the Global Security Commission. “He’s very powerful. Kind of like a [David] Petraeus character,” Kruger says.

Adds Shapiro, “They move between military and the private sector where they take over Executive Branch operations like the CIA, and that’s what we have here in the future. We have the Global Security Commission, which is a little bit like the CIA plus the NSA plus any other governmental organization that does global threat assessment, anything from pandemics to terrorist attacks to asteroids. And now they’re going to be presented with this new problem, this new threat to the survival of the human species. As we’re moving to that, as Molly becomes a part of that world… We’ll be in this new fight for our survival here on Earth.”

After helping Molly concoct a cover story for the public about the alien-related activities of Season 1, Shepherd tells Molly what happened to her alien son, but his version of events is most likely not the truth. We learn that he has such a crush on Molly that he gave a drunken toast at her wedding to John, a toast that included a marriage proposal… to the just-wed bride. So romantic complications could ensue. “There are triangles upon triangles,” Kruger suggests of the entanglements that could develop throughout the season. “There are parallelograms, too. No, but there are a lot of interesting relationships that are explored this season, some that are very surprising.”

It’s Less Science-y!

Sure, Steven Spielberg’s a producer, but let’s be honest: the thing that really dragged the series down in Season 1 was an overly convoluted plotline about the machinations involving advanced technologies, one that buried the lead: infertile astronaut Molly returned home from a 13-month solo space mission pregnant with an alien baby.

It’s clear from the Season 2 premiere, “Change Scenario,” that Kruger and Shapiro are not exaggerating when they say they want the show to be “edgier, sexier, darker,” for its sophomore season, as there’s a focus shift to the characters and how the fallout of Season 1’s events continue to impact them in new ways. The pace is also quickened — again, to a much more appropriate speed for a network summer drama — and while edgier (read: both Berry and JDM have some randy scenes in the opener) and darker, there’s also a lightness in both Molly and JD’s irreverent attitudes and snappy dialogue (“This is a rubber stamp to keep me in a rubber room,” Molly tells one of the doctors when she feels she’s not being fairly evaluated for release from a mental hospital).

There’s 100 Percent More Jeffrey Dean Morgan!

And who doesn’t love them some JDM? The Supernatural and Grey’s Anatomy alum steps in as rogue cop J.D. Richter, who helps Molly try to get answers about what’s really going on with the aliens and the government conspiracy surrounding them… but with a very skeptical eye.

“He’s not buying all of this space crap out of old Molly Woods, so it’s going to take him a little while to kind of catch up to the reality of the situation,” says Morgan. “He is the audience’s point of view, the guy who’s going to say, ‘What the hell is happening here?’

"It was a very smart show [in Season 1], but you run the risk of, if an audience isn’t tuned in every five seconds… they’re not going to know what’s going on. Now you have a guy in J.D. who’s going to walk the audience through some of the muddiness of that world that could be a bit confusing or, dare I say, boring, and add his own little spark of life to it.” And yes, if you note the initials of his character, it might seem like the role of J.D. was tailor made for Jeffrey Dean, and that’s because it was.

“We wrote this character for Jeffrey Dean Morgan. I mean, that is the God’s honest truth,” Kruger laughs. “In the writer’s room we kept saying, 'the Jeffrey Dean Morgan type.’ We were like, 'He’s wry, he’s funny, he’s sexy, he’s roguish, he’s a guy’s guy and he’s a woman’s guy.’ We were like, 'He’s the only one.’ Then we hunted him down like a dog hunts a bone. He brings the levity, the gallows humor, the cynicism… He’s everything and more that we ever hoped he would be.”

Extant Season 2 premieres July 1 at 10 p.m. on CBS.