Cast: Kiefer Sutherland, David Mazouz, Danny Glover, Gugu Mbatha-Raw
Writer: Tim Kring
Director: Francis Lawrence
Network: Fox, airs Wednesdays @ 9 p.m.
Original Telecast: Jan. 25, 2011

On the surface, Fox’s new drama TOUCH, seems like a RAIN MAN rip-off but just with a bratty kid and Jack Bauer (from 24), but it isn’t. Nor is it HEROES (as it is created by Tim Kring) with Jack Bauer as a superpowered killing machine – because that would just be too freaking awesome.

This time Kiefer Sutherland isn’t running around yelling that “There’s no time!” or “Dammit!” (although he did say it!) but instead is a single dad named Martin Bohm that is solely responsible for his son, 11-year-old Jake, that is wrought with problems. He loves climbing up on cell phone towers, he can’t talk, you can’t touch him and he loves drawing numbers (and is highly technologically savvy).

Things get so bad for Martin that social services pay a visit and convince him to put Jake into a special facility. Martin isn’t sure because the night before Jake rigged a slew of cell phones together that all go off at 3:18 with the same number. Turns out those same numbers were the winning lotto that night. And before anyone goes “Hey, that’s a LOST rip off with Hurley” … uh, wait, OK that’s a valid statement actually.

Anyway, Martin isn’t convinced that Jake is just spewing out nonsense, so he visits an old crackpot coot named Arthur DeWitt (Danny Glover), that says Jake isn’t spewing out nonsense but he can see the past, present and future. Better yet, he can predict the future. Oh, Tim Kring, venturing into that time travel/paradox department yet again.

Just a random tangent here: You ever wonder while watching TOUCH would have happened if Sutherland was opposite Glover in all those LETHAL WEAPON movies? Glover would be all “I’m too old for this sh**” and Sutherland would be all “There’s no time!” Explosions, hilarity ensue.

But I digress. It turns out that Jake does indeed have some sort of supernatural ability to predict the future and he sets in motion a chain of events that sends Martin to influence the decisions of another man – who has ties to Martin’s wife dying in the Sept. 11 attacks – causing the man to miss his bus. Because he missed his bus, he was in the right place at the right time to save a bunch of school kids from a burning bus. Jake’s ability to influence his father and others then changed the course of the future in it saving children.

Meanwhile, there’s an entire subplot surrounding a lost phone from an English dude that contains photos of his dead daughter. That same phone another man recorded a video of an Irish lass singing in a nightclub that gets sent to Japan, then to Kuwait, then to Iraq where a poor Iraqi kid is searching for an oven for his family so they can make money. To make a long story short, the phone connects the English dude, the kid and the singer together in order to prevent a suicide bombing, give the man a look at his dead daughter and show the chick’s singing ability to the masses.

Of course, all of this was set in motion by Jake who first got the phone, or at least that is what we are led to believe.

TOUCH isn’t bad and for a “Pilot” episode it certainly is well constructed with all of the pieces falling into place at the right time. However, I’m not sure how long this “one future telling riddle/problem to solve a week” format will work in the long run without some overall mythology being set in place. But with Kring at the helm, this will probably get flushed out in later episodes one would assume. We’ll have to see where it goes but it certainly has some promise.

How Martin Bohm differs so much from Jack Bauer:

• He’s scared of heights.
• He likes little kids.
• One punch and he goes down like a pussy (Bauer died like eight times in six years and came back every time).
• He cries … a lot.
• He carries an old 2007 clamshell phone (Bauer’s phone worked anywhere even 100 feet underground).

Article: Exclusive Interview with TOUCH star Kiefer Sutherland on his new series and the 24 movie

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Related Link: TV Review: TOUCH –Season 1 – “1+1=3″

Related Link: Kiefer Sutherland says his TOUCH role is different from 24’s Jack Bauer

Related Link: Kiefer Sutherland says 24 movie will shoot this Spring

Related Link: AX’s Exclusive Interview with Howard Gordon on 24 movie

Related Link: Review of 24 – THE COMPLETE FINAL SEASON DVD

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Article: TV Review: TOUCH –Season 1 – “Pilot” – Season Premiere  

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