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It’s a Wedding, Y’all Jessica Simpson wed her beau Eric Johnson this weekend 23
It’s Down to a Science
TV THIS WEEK TONIGHT, 9 P.M.
‘Beauty and the Beast’ (CW)
‘Extant’ melds pieces of its sci-fi precursors into a fairly intricate, compelling package
Cat’s (Kristin Kreuk, right) bid to circumvent Gabe leads her to a conclusion she doesn’t want in the season finale. She thinks the solution can be found in an old journal, but, much to her heartbreak, also discovers she would have to kill Vincent.
TUESDAY, 10 P.M.
‘Finding Carter’ (MTV) In this new drama series, a teenage girl’s seemingly perfect life is upended when she discovers the woman she thought was her mother actually abducted her as a baby. WEDNESDAY, 10 P.M.
NBC
‘The Bridge’ (FX) The critically acclaimed but ratings-challenged crime drama returns for its second season. Sonya encounters a man from her past and Marco discovers that he isn’t safe any longer in his own department. Frye and Adriana delve more deeply into the origins of the “money house” and a mystery woman crosses the bridge into El Paso, Texas.
THURSDAY, 9:01 P.M.
‘Welcome to Sweden’ (NBC) It’s appropriate that this new sitcom had its premiere in — where else? — Sweden ahead of its U.S. debut. Greg Poehler, above, brother of Amy (an executive producer here), plays a man who moves overseas to be with his true love. TRIBUNE MEDIA /E XPRESS
If you guide your hopes to a slightly lower orbit, CBS’s futuristic summer series “Extant,” starring Oscarwinner Halle Berry and premiering at 9 p.m. Wednesday, isn’t the disaster one might have feared — especially if you supply your own oxygen in the form of harmless mockery. As with nearly every piece of scifi television programming of late, “Extant” quickly runs up its credit cards when it comes to borrowing imagery and ideas from other classics. Some scenes are heavily aped (including more than one nod to “Extant” executive producer Steven Spielberg’s own “A.I.,” as well as Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”), while some are just glancingly cribbed (“Solaris,” “Gravity”). In a quite stylish future, Berry is Molly Watts, a well-regarded astronaut who has recently returned from a solo mission on an outer-space lab, where she shared company with only an amiably voiced computer, a la “2001’s” HAL. Upon her return to her engineer husband John (Goran Visnjic) and their son, an artificially intelligent robot kid named Ethan (Pierce Gagnon), Molly discovers she’s mysteriously pregnant. Soon enough, she has to face her bosses at the international space agency, which is connected to a
CBS BROADCASTING
TV Review
Being in outer space on a solo mission is apparently giving astronaut Molly Watts (Halle Berry) quite a headache.
Backstory Mickey Fisher, “Extant’s” creator, was a theater director in New York before h e won a TV pilot contest with the show’s script, which eventually led to the series. Fisher told Variety that he made “Extant” in hopes of putting a new strong female lead on TV. “It just seemed like there was a place for this,” he said. “And not a female anti-hero but somebody who could be a hero but also be complex and interesting and at the top of her field.” (E XPRESS)
‘Extant’ quickly runs up its credit cards when it comes to borrowing imagery and ideas from other sci-fi classics. corporation that oversees funding for robot children and everything else replete with a mastermind chief executive (Hiroyuki Sanada). The show gets off to a serviceable start — coolly conceived and professionally directed. “Extant’s” creator and cast seem to be taking things seriously enough as a work of sci-fi origami, folded and layered
with a certain precision. The secret of what’s gestating inside Molly will perhaps be revealed over the course of “Extant’s” 13 episodes. In the meantime, the show delivers some truly dispiriting news about transportation: The self-driving Google car really does become a thing. HANK STEUVER (THE WASHINGTON POST )
Snowmen, Prepare Your Headshots: ABC’s “Once Upon a Time,” which last season revealed it would incorporate characters from the Disney film “Frozen,” has cast the roles of Elsa, Anna and Kristoff. “Fringe’s” Georgina Haig, left, will play Elsa, “Greek” actor Scott Michael Foster will play Kristoff and newcomer Elizabeth Lail will take the role of Anna. TVLine reports the “Once” plot will pick up after the events of “Frozen.” (AP)