“Touch” is a show about how we’re all connected. It really, really wants you to know that.
The latest brainchild of Tim Kring, the creator of “Heroes,” “Touch” treads on territory that’s familiar to fans of that show and others like “Lost” and “Fringe.” “Heroes” took on more than it can handle. A simple-enough plot took a convoluted turn and sank into a tangled, canceled mess. Somewhere, a lesson was learned: the pilot of “Touch” gives us a plot that’s pretty easy to follow. Sure, its hinting about some metaphysical connection between human beings and a league of people who can connect all the dots is a bit mind-dizzying, but all told, the show revolves around a familiar dynamic: a down-on-his-luck dad, Martin Bohm (Kiefer Sutherland), struggles to relate to his 11-year-old son Jake (David Mazouz). The problem with Jake is that he hasn’t spoken a word in his life and refuses to be touched. He buries himself in a notebook, writing down numbers in endless concentric circles.
Sutherland is the show’s saving grace. He’s believable as both a widower whose wife died on 9/11 and a father who’s both exasperated and defensive of his incomprehensible son. He brings a realism that helps distinguish “Touch” from like-minded network shows whose characters’ inner struggles seem manufactured for emotional effect. For instance: when a social worker (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) comes into the picture and points out that he’s been working a string of low-paying jobs, I was tempted to scoff at his stylish apartment. But to the show’s credit, Sutherland fires back that his wife was a stockbroker whose family had a lot of money.
The same can’t be said of the show as a whole. If Sutherland wasn’t there to anchor it, it would be tempting to write off “Touch” as another entry in a breed of modern network television dramas in which the lighting is attractively natural, the people all good-looking and the action coated in some aspirational message about how “we’re all connected.” Kudos to “Touch” for dipping into international waters, and in its defense, it doesn’t have the liberty to give us gritty portraits in the same way Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2006 film “Babel” does. So far, the characters it’s introduced us to, besides Martin and Jake, are another American man who collects lottery tickets, an aspiring singer in Ireland, a prostitute in Japan, a young Englishman and a teenage boy in Baghdad. The last one is the most compelling and ambitious. As a show about connections, “Touch” manages to draw coincidental relationships between all of them. Somewhat annoyingly, it keeps reminding us of that fact. It doesn’t help that some of these connections are far-fetched, like a phone that passes hands and in the process manages to catapult a video of the Irish woman singing to YouTube stardom.
After bouncing around variations of “we’re all connected” too many times to count, the pilot builds to a conclusion that can only be described as inevitable. Like many an ensemble piece, the strangers ultimately connect in what are supposed to be startling and inspiring ways. If you’ve managed to not be slightly off-put by its heavy-handed use of “coincidences,” you may not have the same stomach for its emotionally pandering climax. Its message about universal connectivity is a nice thought–just not when you’re being hit over the head with it.
Overall, “Touch” is a decent attempt at what it aimed to accomplish. It’s a little airbrushed and too overtly “heart-tugging.” If it tones down the sentimentality and fleshes out its potentially interesting narratives, it may have some longevity. If nothing else, Sutherland’s presence will sustain it for at least a season or two.