(Special Preview of the pilot aired on FOX last night)
What's it about?
A preternatural drama in which science and spirituality intersect with the hopeful premise that we are all interconnected, tied in invisible ways to those whose lives we are destined to alter and impact. At the center is Martin Bohm, a widower and single father, haunted by an inability to connect to his mute, severely autistic 11-year-old son, Jake. Everything changes when Martin discovers that Jake possesses a gift of staggering genius - the ability to see things that no one else can, the patterns that connect everything. Jake is indeed communicating after all. But it's not with words, it's with numbers. And now he needs Martin to decipher their meaning and connect these numbers to the cast of seemingly unrelated characters whose lives they affect.
You should watch if...
• you enjoy stories with ensemble casts whose lives intersect in unpredictable ways (ala CRASH or BABEL).
• you enjoyed the first season of HEROES.
• you've been missing Jack Bauer's presence on your television.
So, how was it?
Created by Tim Kring, who also created HEROES, TOUCH shares a focus on seemingly supernatural powers and a similar epic scope. Kiefer Sutherland stars as Martin, the father of a maybe-autistic-maybe-just-highly-evolved young boy, Jake. Throughout the first hour, Martin discovers that the seemingly random scribblings of his son are in fact incredibly deliberate -- Jake is seeing patterns in nature that connect the past with the present to the future. There's a lot of fancy talk about Fibonacci sequences and other mathematical things (mostly spoken by Donald Glover in a brief guest appearance as a dotty professor), but really the kid might as well have a superpower. Which, if you can accept that basic conceit of the show, is a terrific catalyst for some pretty compelling drama.
The whole pilot felt very cinematic, from the TREE OF LIFE-esque poster (see above) to the LIFE IN A DAY-esque credits sequence filled with beautiful but random shots of people around the world engaged in various activities. Kudos to the director and cinematographer for making the show so visually pleasing. It was great to have Kiefer Sutherland back on my television, this time in a role with vast differences yet odd similarities to Jack Bauer. Martin is nowhere near the badass that Jack was, but both characters possess an underlying desperation. While Jack was obsessed with preventing terrible events, Martin is obsessed with facilitating important connections, between himself and his son and also between random people his son points him toward.
As the pieces of the puzzle presented to us in the pilot slowly started to click into place, I found myself totally engrossed. When the social worker (played by UNDERCOVERS' Gugu Mbatha-Raw, given much better things to do here) finally realized that Jake was trying to communicate an important message, I was instantly hooked. The fact that he achieved this connection in a gasp-inducing way didn't hurt. And then when we finally reached the climax of the hour, with all the varying storylines colliding and coming into focus, the emotional catharsis was unexpectedly overwhelming, given that we had just met these characters a mere forty-five minutes ago.
This show is like the movie BABEL with a supernatural twist. I loved the global scope, the interlocking storylines, and the emotional collisions. I love the inherent optimism in the story, that everyone on earth is not only connected, but has the ability to positively impact complete strangers, if we only take the time to reach out to one another. If every episode can replicate this formula successfully, I'm all in. I especially hope that there's an overarching journey that will keep the formula from becoming stale, but we'll have to wait and see. For the time-being, I'm addicted to TOUCH.
Rating:
**** Certifiably ADDICTive. A must-see
Considering the show doesn't actually start until halfway through March, last night's special preview drew an impressive amount of viewers. The show garnered a 3.9 rating with 12 million viewers, significantly more than both of FOX's other sci-fi/supernatural shows this season (ALCATRAZ and TERRA NOVA premiered at 3.3 and 3.2, respectively). We'll see how many of those viewers return after a two month wait, and how many new viewers the show manages to attract in the meantime. We'll also hope that Tim Kring doesn't quickly run this show into the ground like he did so spectacularly with HEROES. Fingers crossed!
Your turn, Fellow Addicts? Did you catch last night's special preview? If so, were you affected by its emotional storytelling? Or were you left cold by its mathematical, destiny-focused view of life? Vote in the poll below and then hit the comments!
(For the complete rundown of when all the new shows are premiering, check out my 2012 Midseason TV Preview.)
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