Touch - "Pilot"

Season 1, Episode 1 

Much like Terra Nova and Alcatraz before it, Touch interests me by the very fact that it's a genre show on a network that doesn't seem to know what to do with genre shows, or at least hasn't since the days of The X-Files. But what makes Touch an interesting exception in that unlike the former two shows, it doesn't shy away from the fact that it's a genre; it goes full force into it, to an almost unbearable degree. Indeed, the latest show from Tim Kring (yeah, that's right, the guy who created Heroes) doesn't falter for a lack of ideas, but rather from a fairly lazy execution.

Cards on the table, I have to say I admire how Kring just sort of lays the entire premise of the show out at the very top of the hour. Well, okay, maybe admire isn't exactly the right word, given that the premise in question is that an autistic child, Jake Bohm, who, though he suffers from mutism, is so observant of the world around him that he can see all the hidden connections in the world, and that he uses this knowledge to influence events in a positive way by pointing his father, Martin, in the right direction. It's a premise that reeks of the “autistic people are magic” myth, which is perhaps my least favorite all of the mental-illness-related tropes that filter out of Hollywood, both because it reeks of false support for the autistic community, and it tends to gloss over the difficulties of the disease.

Granted, Kring doesn't shy totally away from the disease. Since Jake doesn't speak (except for in the opening narration, which lazily explains everything for us in the first 30 seconds), the burden of showing the difficulty of the disease fall on Martin, whose sacrifices for his child have caused him a great deal of stress both at work and at home, all for a child who can't show (and possibility doesn't even feel) appreciation. However, given that this role is played by Keifer Sutherland, an actor who default setting is mostly just yelling at people, and can't seem to capture the heartache that the show seems to be going for, and that hinders what it clearly meant to be a moving story.

As for the show's larger concept of showing how the world is interconnected, that's done much better (narratively at least), and it helps to give the show those uplifting moments that it seems to be going for. Now, I'm a sucker for stories that have multiple parts come together in the end, and in that regard, Touch is right up my alley. I have to give the pilot credit for how it was deftly (by my count) five different elements throughout the hour and ended up bringing them all together. The best was the journey of the cell phone, and how it weaved it's way through most of stories, which felt like payoff for what was frankly a fairly subtle beginning.

The problem of course is that none of these individual stories are all that original, and in some parts – like say the Arab teenager who ends up with a suicide bomb to his chess, or the parts of the phone's journey in Japan – are so lazy as to be offensive and borderline racist. Others – like Titus Welliver's 9/11 firefighter, and the Englishmen who just wants to see pictures of his dead daughter on his birthday – are just so treacly and cloying and (especially in the case of the 9/11 story) such calculated attempts are pulling our heartstrings that it becomes nauseating. And oh, did I mention that Martin's wife was killed in 9/11? Because that just makes things worse.

Now, a lot of these problems can be fixed. Kring can stop being such racist, and telling stories that while not organic (given the premise of the show, plot machinations are pretty much unavoidable), at least don't feel so calculated. He can likewise drop the 9/11 backstory, and Sutherland can become more used to acting like an actual father than like Jack Bauer whose been charged with protecting the president's son. These are the kind of things that improve with time, and I'm even willing to overlook the fact that Heroes only got worse as it got older.

However, what does worry me is I'm not entirely sure where this show's supposed to go from here. Now, the pilot end with Martin on the phone with a man that Jake wants him to contact, so I can guess that guy's going to pop up when the show comes back in March. But I'm not sure if this means that Martin's going to go on a mission of the week each episode, or if there's going to be any build to the show. Given that the show just won't drop the “everything is connected” conceit, I have to assume that the former is true, and that leaves me with a few questions. 

Exactly what's going to differentiate one episode from another, apart from different global players? Is there some sort of overarching plot that's going to keep people tuning in? Because this is the kind of setup that seems like it would get old pretty fast without some variation to the episodes, especially with a concept like this where it would be difficult to maintain quality week-to-week. There are some things to like about Touch, but it never comes together as whole as much as I would like to, and I doubt it's longevity, so I doubt it's going to stick around for long.

But then again, over 11 million people watched the pilot, so what the hell do I know?

Quotes and Other Thoughts:

Here's where I should probably admit that I've never seen Heroes or 24 (because I guess I'm just a horrible person), so my viewing of this show probably isn't clouded by those shows as many others' viewings are. However, even I wasn't so blind as to notice that the show gives a purposefully off pronunciation of "Bohm" so that people won't recall Jack Bauer yelling about the need to find a bomb.

You'll notice that I didn't put down the names of the characters that were part of the Grand Connection, because really, who cares? 

So apparently Jake freaks out whenever touches him. Heavy-handed irony aside, how many episodes before that become a plot point?

Oh, did I mention that Danny Glover is in this? Because he totally is, and as his is MO these days, he's taken a pretty cushy role, as playing the role of an eccentric Doctor who works out of his home A) means that he doesn't have to do a lot of moving and B) he apparently gets to wear a robe all the time.