Review: Kiefer Sutherland and son look for patterns in FOX's 'Touch'
Drama gets off to good start, but can 'Heroes' creator Tim Kring make it work long-term?
- Critic's Rating B-
- Readers' Rating B+
David Mazouz and Kiefer Sutherland in "Touch."
Credit: FOX
In the new FOX drama "Touch," Kiefer Sutherland plays a single dad whose son Jake — diagnosed for much of his life as severely autistic — is revealed to have a special, near-superhuman ability to identify and manipulate the patterns in the universe that appear to most of us to be a series of isolated, random events.
And if I were to look at the premiere episode of "Touch" the way everyone other than Jake views the world — and the way that FOX is treating it, by airing it after "American Idol" tomorrow night at 9, separated by almost two months from when the rest of the series will air on Mondays at 9 starting March 19 — then it's an interesting, emotionally manipulative but still effective hour of television.
But my job asks me to look at TV shows the way Jake looks at everything. There are almost always patterns and connections to spot, whether how some piece of a pilot episode may be tough to duplicate week after week, or how one writer may repeat the same tricks over and over from show to show.
And in that case, knowing what I know about "Touch" creator Tim Kring — and seeing the many commonalities between this show and his work on NBC's "Heroes" — makes me much less optimistic about the new series' future than I might be if I couldn't recognize the order lurking within the chaos.
"Touch," like "Heroes," gets off to a memorable start, tying together a group of seemingly disparate stories from around the globe — an Iraqi teen whose father's bakery desperately needs a new oven to survive, a UK call center employee who dreams of pop stardom, a melancholy businessman on his way to Tokyo — with a bit of voiceover narration by Jake (David Mazouz) explaining that "Things that most people see as chaos actually follow subtle laws of behavior." Like the similar opening voiceover from the "Heroes" pilot ("What is the soul? Why do we dream?"), it's pretentious as all get out, but at least speaks to an ambition that's rare in a network TV drama these days.
Jake is cared for by his father Martin (Sutherland), a 9/11 widower who has never believed his son to be autistic(*), yet who despairs at never getting to hear his son speak (you only hear Mazouz's voice in the narration) or to hug him or touch him in any way without triggering a violent outburst. But just as social worker Clea (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) starts to push for Jake to be moved to a round-the-clock facility, Martin starts to recognize the patterns in Jake's obsessive scribbling and playing with discarded cell phones, which has repercussions with those far-away characters and also with a surly lottery winner (Titus Welliver) who is more closely tied to Martin than either man realizes.
(*) Given the autism epidemic in this country, it's this part of the show that has the most potential to cause problems. While Kring tries to make it clear that Jake has been misdiagnosed, the show still trades off of assumptions about autism and the "Rain Man"-like notion that the condition can also grant those afflicted with it with seemingly magical powers as a form of compensation. It's uncomfortable at a minimum.
There's a complicated but easy to follow plot logic to "Touch," in which the world is presented as an elaborate Rube Goldberg device that can make amazing things happen if you line up the components exactly right. In the pilot, the pieces all fit together and are aided by strong performances by Sutherland(**) and guest stars Welliver and Danny Glover (as an eccentric scientist who claims to understand the true nature of Jake's condition). It's shameless in its various tugs at the heartstrings, but it successfully tugs at them even as you can see it doing that.
(**) It would be easy to say that Martin is a 180-degree turn from Jack Bauer, but there's a moment in this pilot where Martin is faced with a ticking-clock scenario, and Sutherland's voice rises in intensity, and I half-expected him to shoot somebody in the leg and demand to know where the bomb is. I'm not complaining, mind you — Sutherland's good at this, after all — just noting that even though he's playing an average guy who doesn't carry a gun, some echoes of his most iconic role still come through.
But there seems to be such a high degree of difficulty to making this contraption work week after week. And with a very similar show in "Heroes," Kring already demonstrated that he's much better at beginnings than at middles or endings. Maybe he'll prove me wrong when additional episodes start airing in late March, but maybe I'll be better off looking at tonight's episode as an individual event not tied to any of the mosaic Kring will attempt to build later.
Alan Sepinwall may be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com
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About This Blog
All through his childhood, Alan Sepinwall's relatives told his parents, "All that boy does is watch television! How's he going to make a living doing that?" His career as a TV critic has been 15 years and counting of his attempt to answer their concerns. "What's Alan Watching" is a blog whose title is self-explanatory: Alan watches TV shows, then writes about what he watched. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com
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Login or create a HitFix account Login Signupevolution1085 So when does Martin shoot a pedophile in the chest and cut his head off? Episode 2? Episode 3?
January 24, 2012 at 2:09PM EST Reply to Commentevolution1085 I wouldn't even say Kring was that good at beginnings based on Heroes... the one thing everybody said out of season 1 of the show was "I hope it can be as good as company man was" consistently... and it never got even halfway close.
January 24, 2012 at 2:13PM ESTcultstatus 24 had tons of problems in it's later seasons but I miss the hell out of that show. No matter how stale and convoluted it got, seeing Jack running around was still fun. I'd rather have new 24 seasons over half the stuff on TV nowadays.
January 24, 2012 at 2:14PM EST Reply to Commentradda I think it's unfair to judge Kring too harshly on Heroes. The strike caused all sorts of problems with the second season, and things just dominoed out of control.
January 24, 2012 at 2:24PM EST Reply to CommentNow I'm not saying that seasons 3-5 weren't his fault, just that you should cut him a bit of slack.
That said, I'm still looking forward to this one. Hope he keeps it up.
sepinwall I would say Heroes had a very strong pilot, then a bunch of nifty cliffhangers, then a couple of other episodes ("Company Man," the alternate future episode) that suggested it was capable of greatness. Then we got the first season finale, which came well before the writers strike, and which very much revealed the emperor's new clothes to be non-existent. I can't speak to everyone, but so much of what I invested into the early part of that first season was a belief that this was all building to something interesting - and also to the ways in which the show seemed an antidote to a particularly dire period for Lost (the polar bear cage arc) - and it simply wasn't. At all. It was building to Peter beating Syler up with a parking meter.
January 24, 2012 at 2:30PM ESTchuchundra Yeah, and wasn't it the network who wouldn't let him kill Syler in the S1 finale? I think that coop out really poisoned the rest of the show.
January 24, 2012 at 2:36PM ESTDave I I do not think it is unfair to judge Kring too harshly at all.
January 24, 2012 at 2:46PM ESTSure, there were problems with the strike in season two. That does not really cover the lackluster first season finale, or how they never really figured out where to go with the series, how they all too conveniently gave everybody powers, never came through with promises of the future heroes, and just wrote off loose ends like nobody would care that Peter's girlfriend just ended up in a hellish future but why bother to save her? They he just happened to lose his powers, only to get them back in a different-yet-conveniently-easier-to-write version. Or the mom who died but has Ice Woman for a twin (and a triplet they never got to). Or how the mind-reader went crawling back to his wife after just losing the love of his life, even though the speedster was supposed to mean sooooooo much to him and his wife was the most unsympathetic cheating spouse in quite some while. Did I mention Hiro? The lack of the future self-confident version, or the fact they ignored/regressed character growth to keep him border-line retard? Then there was Sylar. The bad-guy-good-guy-bad-guy-good-guy-again (I think) character who is practically a god yet has no consistent motivation and does some of the stupidest stuff even for an alleged psychopathic serial murderer. But they resurrected the dead Petrelli brother (kinda/sorta) with him, for a while, so it's all good.
He had five seasons with the show. The end result is only most of the first season was well done, and a few Bryan Fuller episodes (that guy has the Midas Touch though). Sure, the Fuller arc with Parkman and Daphne ended up incredible, with a very moving ending, however that is based on strong writing by one guy who they put in charge of a scant few episodes. The rest was largely floundering around with a few decent episodes in a largely boring show that was going nowhere.
The point being, I do not think it is unfairly bashing Kring when there were four seasons that were not very good, and one season that was pretty good with a lousy ending.
-Cheers
Dave I "I can't speak to everyone, but so much of what I invested into the early part of that first season was a belief that this was all building to something interesting - and also to the ways in which the show seemed an antidote to a particularly dire period for Lost (the polar bear cage arc) - and it simply wasn't. At all. It was building to Peter beating Syler up with a parking meter."
January 24, 2012 at 2:52PM EST^^^^^
Pretty much. It should have been an epic showdown with two people that had, pretty much, the powers of mythological gods. It ended up a pretty lame fistfight. They did not let Sylar die, which undermined everything that came after. And the whole end-of-the-world/impending-doom, epic scale with an alternate future and a special sort of show really never came close to what was promised.
-Cheers
chudleycannonfodder Five seasons? Woah, hold on a moment. There are only four in this timeline (unless I've somehow found an even darker timeline!).
January 25, 2012 at 3:22PM ESTConcerned citizen Do we know if this is more procedural or serialized?
January 24, 2012 at 2:32PM EST Reply to CommentM Tell me where the Bohm is!
January 24, 2012 at 2:41PM EST Reply to Commentsepinwall Well-played.
January 24, 2012 at 3:02PM ESTVisionOn This sounds like a cross between Early Edition and Mercury Rising. I can even imagine Kyle Chandler playing Kiefer's role.
January 24, 2012 at 3:07PM EST Reply to CommentJobin I'm holding you respondsible when NBC tries to launch a reboot of Early Edition sometime next year.
January 24, 2012 at 3:19PM ESTJobin Alan,
January 24, 2012 at 3:13PM EST Reply to CommentIs this show attempting to be a have story of the week format, with the the added element of "what is his actual condition" mystery surrounding the kid the entire series?
Because if that is what the big mystery of the show is going to be is, then it doesn't sound all that exciting a question to ponder.
Gabe I totally agree - At 11 years old, Jake should have seen several doctors, psychologists, sociologists, scientists, therapists, etc by now that he would be on several different meds.
January 25, 2012 at 11:26PM ESTJC I'll watch, and despite Kring's track record (I still don't know why I watched every episode of Heroes instead of checking out early like most people I know), I'll keep an open mind. But I gotta say, this seems to me like yet another idea that makes for a good pilot, and might've been a good movie or miniseries, but I don't see how they're going to get 13-22 hours out of it for multiple seasons. We'll see.
January 24, 2012 at 4:02PM EST Reply to CommentVisionOn Simple. In three episodes time the son makes a prediction that terrorists are going to blow up Washington in less than 20 hours. Kiefer is the only man who can stop them but has to go rogue because the cops don't believe him. We follow his attempts to save Washington over 20 episodes.
January 24, 2012 at 4:08PM ESTDan3320 And THAT is a show I'd gladly watch...again
January 24, 2012 at 4:34PM ESTsusan my son has autism and at IEP meetings Ive turned into Jack Bauer
January 24, 2012 at 4:22PM EST Reply to CommentAndrei I hear you.... I've been there too!
January 24, 2012 at 5:06PM ESTBigTed "There's a complicated but easy to follow plot logic to "Touch," in which the world is presented as an elaborate Rube Goldberg device that can make amazing things happen if you line up the components exactly right."
January 24, 2012 at 4:45PM EST Reply to CommentIn real life, this kind of magical thinking can be a sign of mental illness -- it's exactly what John Nash does in "A Beautiful Mind."
Of course, this won't be the first time a sci-fi-tinged show treats crazy concepts as mere "secrets" hidden from most of the world.
James The intro reminded me of A Beautiful Mind
January 26, 2012 at 1:49PM ESTdmbfan825 They like this
January 24, 2012 at 11:16PM EST Reply to Commentbrian After the terrible way Lost ended, I am really reluctant to jump into these "each episode is a cliffhanger/mystery, but don't worry it will all make sense in the end" type of shows. Im just assuming the finale will dissapoint and the creators will say that the show was really about the characters all along.
January 25, 2012 at 9:56AM EST Reply to CommentRyan "I half-expected him to shoot somebody in the leg and demand to know where the bomb is" Oh man I just burst out laughing reading this because it's how I felt just watching the one commercial I saw for this show where Kiefer's voice is more intense than loud. That alone made me break out the 24 Season One DVD.
January 25, 2012 at 2:27PM EST Reply to CommentHatfield Hold on, Danny Freakin' Glover isn't a regular cast member? That ain't right. I had enough of things that ain't right.
January 25, 2012 at 3:37PM EST Reply to CommentGabe Rather disappointed with the fact that the son has never verbally communicated to anyone, not even to yell out in pain or scream ? Doesn't add up. Young Jake doesn't like touching, but at the end of the episode, he hugs his dad with such emotion - yet he doesn't emote as a living being. Even psychics and mediums are more interesting compared to this blase character. As a fan or Kring's Heroes, I am disappointed for him and don't see this show lasting longer than two months - after it's season premiere in 2 months. Ya, right FOX, tonight's show was just so awesome that you're going to make us wait to see another procedural go down just like the rest. Being fecetious, of course.
January 25, 2012 at 11:22PM EST Reply to Commentfrank I could be wrong but I don't think he has never yelled or screamed ever as Keifer's charatcer explained in the begining, he said if you touch my son you be peeling him off the walls. Also I don't know if was meant to be a hug or a way to get the phone out of his dads pocket (and a way to play with the audience).
January 28, 2012 at 9:12PM EST