Touch (FOX)
Posted by The TV Critic on 26 January 2012 | 0 Comments
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Touch
Show: Touch (FOX)
Type: Drama, sci-fi
Rating: PG
One line description: A boy who has never spoken sees patterns in the world that affect the lives of people around the globe
Tone: Optimistic, emotional, manipulative
Similar to: Heroes (topic, format), Once Upon a Time (tone)
Starring: Kiefer Sutherland, Danny Glover
Quality: ?
So Martin Bohm (Kiefer Sutherland) is an increasingly desperate single parent because his eleven year old son Jake (who has never spoken) keeps climbing telephone towers. Social worker Clea tries to help but eventually takes Jake away. Martin is convinced that the endless numbers that Jake writes and records mean something. In the end he is proven right as the numbers push him to help save a bus full of children while simultaneously saving an Iraqi boy from blowing up, a British couple retrieve photos of their daughter and an Irish woman begin her pop career.
If you are having trouble picturing how all those events came together then think of Heroes. Touch is being run by Tim Kring, the Heroes creator who clearly believes that a story about how people across the globe can interconnect will make a good TV show. In some ways he may be right. This focussed tightly on Martin and Jake and gave them more attention than any of the various Heroes characters ever received. Kiefer may not be the ideal choice for this role but he is a familiar presence and star attraction. He has to handle the talking of course and the end of the episode was very strong as his son finally hugs him after a decade of refusing to touch anyone.
The interconnecting stories also had immediate consequences for those involved. On Heroes there was always the promise of action and danger but never any delivery. Here though we see the smaller characters witness something astonishing that has a real impact on their lives. The building sense that their stories really were connected was well put together. The episode moved at a great pace and the pieces came together in a way that was broadly satisfying.
This was however manipulative with a capital M. Jake's mum died on 9\11 and the story of a father desperate to communicate with his (presumed) autistic child is an easy tear jerker. Not content with that though we have the bus full of children getting saved, a dead child's photos bringing her parents together and an Iraqi boy who turned to suicide bombing to save his family business.
The suicide bomb story felt like typical Heroes nonsense I'm afraid. He was seriously threatened by the local fanatics who then put a suicide vest on him and wired it up to a phone. He was talked out of his mission and was then seen proudly installing the new oven and grinning at his mother. Umm, what happened to the terrorists? Did they let him just walk away unharmed despite being a dangerous witness to their activities?
Another thing that makes Touch hard to review is that I have no idea what episode two will look like. Will any of these smaller characters recur? Will Jake prevent a catastrophe each week? Will a bunch of new people have heart warming interconnected tales in every episode? I can imagine it getting tiresome pretty quickly. Then again perhaps with a little more characterisation or an overarching storyline this could be a fun show.
I'm so wary of Kring that my money would be on tiresome. However the tolerant part of me is warning that I shouldn't judge this so soon. I will have to watch episode two and see what Touch is trying to be. Unfortunately I won't be able to do that until March 19th because that's when the show begins properly. FOX may be on to something here though. The pilot is a strong episode and this might get people's attention and mean the audience actually grows when it begins its full run.
