IN REVIEW: TOUCH – “PILOT”

Touch: David Mazouz, Kiefer Sutherland

I’ll admit that I was skeptical about the premiere of ‘Touch,’ the pilot for the upcoming TV series slated to start March 19 on Fox. After all, despite having a cast with Kiefer Sutherland and Danny Glover in it, the show was created and written by Tim Kring, whose promising ‘Heroes,’ despite airing four seasons, crashed and burned with its first season finale. ‘Touch,’ while presenting some story elements that could potentially be Kringe-worthy, also has many positive elements that could make it overcome the crap that the previous series could not.

The show’s core is the relationship between Martin Bohm (Sutherland), a former investigative journalist whose life has spiraled downward since his stockbroker wife died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and Jake (David Mazouz), his autistic and mute son born less than a year before that. Jake has never spoken a word and does not like to be touched by anyone, including his father. Jake is also obsessed with numbers, and, as the opening of the pilot conveys, sees connections between the numbers, history, and sequences of events, as determined by the Golden Ratio – 1:1.618. It is the events that unfold around the core relationship between Martin and Jake – and the numbers Jake is obsessed with – that spiral outward like a Fibonacci Sequence in a chain of connected events.

What ties the story together is one lost cell phone with little pink teddy bear stickers on it that is lost by a man in an airport. The phone is briefly in airport employee Bohm’s possession, but moves on to other destinations and stories – including that of an office worker/aspiring pop star in Ireland; of ambitious call girls in Japan; and a teenage boy ready to risk his life to prevent his family from losing everything in Iraq – as he leaves work, because Jake has been found sitting on top of a cell tower for the third time in a week.

From there, the relationship between Martin and Jake simultaneously becomes endangered by social worker Clea Hopkins (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who seems determined to remove Jake from his home, and more compelling as it becomes more evident that Jake is obsessed with specific numbers. A series of numbers show up over and over again. The first of the numbers shows up as times, addresses, a school bus number, a badge number, and a date, in all the connected stories. The next series of numbers appears as a winning lottery number that is purchased by a pivotal character in the story, but as Martin learns, when arranged in a different order, makes up a Fibonnaci Sequence.

That discovery leads Martin to a web link on “Mutism and Fibonacci,” and the home of Professor Arthur Teller (Glover). Teller convinces him that Jake is communicating with him, and it is up to Martin to figure out what he is trying to show him. Jake, in the meantime, sends Clea Hopkins on a journey that leads her to the same conclusion.
As each begins to see what Jake is communicating, we start to see the ultimate connections between the numbers, and all the characters in the story. The pilot is concluded in a somewhat predictable fashion. The predictable part of the ending is forgivable, as this was a pilot, which is easier to sell if the story is wrapped up neatly. As a self-contained story, its weaknesses are far outnumbered by its strengths.

Included among its other detractors is the story of the teenager in Iraq. While I appreciate Kring’s efforts to humanize Iraqi people who have been victims of US imperialism, it at the same time serves to dehumanize them by perpetuating the stereotype of “Iraqi terrorists” that permeates US media.

Another source of ambivalence for me is Mbatha-Raw. Having only seen her in ‘Undercovers,’ where her acting was underwhelming, and ‘Doctor Who,’ where her acting was forgettable, I am not sure she can pull off a long-term performance with gravitas. Then again, she could prove my doubts wrong.

Even with these misgivings, ‘Touch’ has a great deal going for it. Sutherland is a revelation, as he has proven he can play a character well who is not Jack Bauer. As a man who has suffered from a traumatic loss left to raise a high-needs child on dwindling resources, he alone could carry the show.

The pilot also is loaded with Fibonacci-decorated Easter Eggs, only a fraction of which I can point out after one viewing. The names Bohm and Teller are most likely references to David Joseph Bohm and Edward Teller, both of whom were theoretical physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project, and went on to specialize in quantum mechanics and quantum entanglement. Even the wire mesh we see one character peering through in a scene is an allusion to the intertwined connections that hold the entire piece (the glass window, the characters, the story, the fabric of the universe) together. There are a phenomenal number of details like this just in one episode. If this show takes off, finding them all may become a full-time pursuit for many!
Ultimately, what makes this a show with great potential are the connections made, not just between Martin and Jake, but also between each character, and every story. It’s an lofty undertaking that will require tight writing, acting, and attention to detail if it is to be pulled off successfully.

The big question is whether Kring can successfully combat interference from network shirts and not drop the ball and his ambitious vision halfway into the season as happened with “Heroes.” I’ll be waiting for the actual series to air to see.

‘Touch’ will air as a series in the US on Fox beginning Monday, March 19, at 9 pm EST.

Score: 4/5

Follow Us On Twitter @SciFiPulse

Join Us On Facebook At: www.facebook.com/scifipulse