Genre: Drama | Fantasy

Air Date/Time: March 29 at 9/8c

Network: Fox

Creator: Tim Kring

Cast: Kiefer Sutherland, David Mazouz, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Danny Glover

Synopsis:

We are all interconnected. Our lives are invisibly tied to those whose destinies touch ours. This is the hopeful premise of the new drama TOUCH from creator and writer Tim Kring (Heroes, Crossing Jordan) and executive producers Peter Chernin(New Girl, Terra Nova) and Katherine Pope (New Girl, Terra Nova).  Blending science, spirituality and emotion, the series will follow seemingly unrelated people all over the world whose lives affect each other in ways seen and unseen, known and unknown.

At the story’s center is Martin Bohm (Kiefer Sutherland), a widower and single father, haunted by an inability to connect to his emotionally challenged 11-year-old son, Jake (David Mazouz). Caring, intelligent and thoughtful, Martin has tried everything to reach his son. But Jake never speaks, shows little emotion and never allows himself to be touched by anyone, including Martin. Jake is obsessed with numbers – writing long strings of them in his ever-present notebooks – and with discarded cell phones. Social worker Clea Hopkins (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) believes that Jake’s needs are too serious for Martin to handle. She sees a man whose life has become dominated by a child he can no longer control. She believes that it’s time for the state to intervene. So Jake is placed in foster care, despite Martin’s desperate objections.

But everything changes after Martin meets Arthur Teller (Danny Glover), a professor and an expert on children who possess special gifts when it comes to numbers. Martin learns that Jake possesses an extraordinary gift – the ability to perceive the seemingly hidden patterns that connect every life on the planet. While Martin wants nothing more than to communicate directly with his son, Jake connects to his father through numbers, not words. Martin realizes that it’s his job to decipher these numbers and recognize their meaning. As he puts the pieces together, he will help people across the world connect as their lives intersect according to the patterns Jake has foreseen. Martin’s quest to connect with his son will shape humanity’s destiny.

I liked this episode better than the previous one. The second episode was, for me, overly heartwarming. This third one leans a bit more on “hope” than on sweetness, and I appreciate that. They are starting to develop the Danny Glover part of the story just a bit, we see the Japanese duo again, and more is learned about Clea’s backstory. As for the this-episode-only stories, there is the requisite foreign language story, another with a Zoe Deschanel lookalike, and the story that Martin is involved in, which includes a little fantasy story told in turn by a couple of guest stars that was really sort of lovely.

Unfortunately this episode’s patterns didn’t fall into place quite as magically as they did in the first two episodes. It wasn’t as full of wow what an amazing coincidence, what a beautiful pattern, which I had thought was one of the main premises of the series. In fact, two of the stories are only connected to each other because of the internet, and while I agree that the internet is miraculous and magical, the worldwide influence is hardly “special” enough to count as pattern-worthy. Worse, however, is the fact that they are not tied to Martin and Jake in any discernable way, other than the time that something happens. Nothing that Martin does has any impact on those stories, unless you count the touched-by-Martin cell phone with the Japanese girls that have been in every episode. If that’s the best they can do this early in the season… If the non-Martin-and-Jake stories are not ultimately tied to Martin and Jake, why are we seeing them? They become distracting vignettes using time that could be better spent developing Martin’s life.

The actors are great – Kiefer Sutherland in particular is exemplary in his earnestness, and Danny Glover of course is terrific – but I’m really not sensing any chemistry between any of them, much as they try. Of course lack of chemistry between Jake and anyone else is expected, and Martin has only just met the other series regulars, but I’m just not feeling it yet, which is ironic given the heartwarming nature of the show.

It is very possible that Touch is suffering from my comparison of it to another midseason show that shares the day, time, and single-word title: Awake. In that series we also have a man who suddenly finds himself being put in an unusual circumstance that most people don’t or wouldn’t believe, with only two people to talk to about it. In Awake, the man is a detective and single father (at least on one side) who uses his new circumstances in part to solve crimes; in Touch the man is a former investigative reporter and single father who uses his new understanding of his son and a clue he provides, to solve an unknown imbalance in the world. In Awake we see the man use his excellent detective skills, aided by the mysterious clue. In Touch, we only know the man had been a reporter because we are told; more visible use of his investigative skills might make him seem less desperate and flailing.

In Awake we see the man attempting to deal with his new circumstances while also trying to help his grieving son and wife adapt to their new lives without each other. This means that his story is not only about the unusual circumstances but it’s about change and adaptation and family life and work life. He has to be extremely intelligent to maintain his separate dual lives without exposing the “fact” of them. He has layers and there is variety in his story.

In Touch the man has apparently no friends, family, or, since the pilot, co-workers. His supporters are both new to him, and one is potentially hostile. Acting upon his son’s one form of communication with him, a numeric clue with nearly no context whatsoever, must be done on blind faith, with the knowledge that if he fails, something horrible might happen, not the least of which is inflicting actual pain upon his son. This circumstance has the effect of making Martin Bohm appear constantly stressed, fearful, frustrated, driven, and eventually frantic, with no letup other than when he finally is able to fix whatever is out of balance for the week. That repair of balance is the heartwarming cure to his stress.

Given a choice between a multifaceted main character with talent, edge, a high degree of intelligence, and a variety of complex circumstances with which to deal every week, and a two-toned main character who is near-constantly stressed but leads with his heart and whose successes seem miraculous and Hallmark-worthy, along with some mostly-unrelated-if-not-entirely separate stories… That’s an easy choice for me. I’ll go for the smart guy. Smart and complex is more interesting and attractive to me than stressed with a weekly heartwarming payoff.

I can see how the show could become and may already be adored by many. A heartwarming show about hope, with a neat little twist, will happily meet the requirements of the throngs who adore other very popular shows of a similar nature. If you are one of those people, I am truly pleased for you; here is another to add to your list. If, however, you are like me and feel the need for something different from that, then this is not the show you’re looking for. Move along.

I give Touch: Season 1, Episode 3 “Safety in Numbers”  Three Out of Five Stars.