Touch (Pilot)

When an actor takes on such a role as Kiefer Sutherland did on 24, it can be hard for people to see them as anything but that character.

His portrayal of CTU agent Jack Bauer is one of the best characters in recent memory and should one day become a television icon, if not already.

Even though Jack will still live on through fans and the upcoming film series, Kiefer has to move on to new things.

I had no doubt that when he was excited about Touch, that it would be something to look forward to, and after the pilot, I am definitely ready to see more.

The show is about a single dad, Martin Bohm, who is trying to keep together with his mute and autistic son, Jake. The intriguing part about this show, however, is that Jake is somewhat of a genius.

He is always scribbling numbers in a notebook and as the pilot unfolds, we see that he has meaning behind the numbers he deals with. Martin finds out that his son is communicating something when he manages to get multiple phones to ring at the same time from the same number.

I still don’t know how he managed to do this, but the episode really got started at this point. We find out that although Jake has his problems, he can see the past, present, and future in such a way that he can communicate them.

He isn’t psychic, but he can see a roadmap within these numbers, or something like that. This show is quite confusing, but the main idea is that Jake will try to communicate to his father using numbers, and then Martin has to try to figure out what it means.

In this episode, it all worked to a point where a bus was saved due to Jake focusing on the number, 318. There was another storyline going on throughout the episode.

Martin leaves a man’s phone at the airport and it ends up in many people’s hands throughout the world. By the end of the episode, a suicide bomber had it and was talked out of it by a future pop star.

The bomber, singer, and the man whose phone were lost all had their stories connected and the whole point of it was that everything can be connected somehow. That is really what I got out of this first episode.

I think this show has a lot of promise, but it felt very weird to me. This show seems like some sort of parallel universe to 24′s where Jack never went into the military.

Martin tries to be a tough guy, but he really doesn’t have anything to back it up. At the beginning, he gets punched in the stomach and falls over for several seconds. He is somewhat similar to Jack, but not really Jack at all. It is very strange.

Having said that, Kiefer was great, of course. The only issue I had with this episode was Jake. He is certainly going to be the focus on the show and a great character, but could that actor, David Mazouz, express any less emotion? He was like a robot and it is worse when Kiefer was in a scene with him.

I don’t know much about being autistic or being mute, and I understand that life must be awful for that kid, but sometimes you can try to be happy about something. At the end, he hugged Martin and to me, after he realized that he caused those kids to be saved, a smile should have been the response, no matter what issues he has.

Anyway, along with the show being a little hard to follow, Mazouz needs improvement. Otherwise, it was a solid pilot with some surprisingly tense moments. As a fan of 24, I really know tense moments, and this show had a couple in the pilot.

In the end, I am really glad to have Kiefer back on TV. This show has a lot of promise and is quite interesting. It is certainly way to early, but Kiefer may have another hit with Touch. It will be years before it can be compared to 24, but it certainly has the right elements.

Unfortunately, this was just an advance screening of the show. It will start on March 19 with the series premiere. While it will be hard to wait, my years of waiting on 24 has me prepared for anything.