313 replies to this topic

[Strega]

From FOX:

The uplifting drama, which makes its series premiere Monday, March 19 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT), features Sutherland as a widower and single father haunted by an inability to connect to his mute 11-year-old son. But everything changes when he discovers that his son possesses the gift of staggering genius - the ability to see things that no one else can and the patterns that connect seemingly unrelated events.

Although it doesn't start till March, a preview will air Jan 25. (And we're wecapping it, so I needed a thread for linkage.)

[redshirtx]

I saw a promo for this during yesterday's Falcons-Giants game. It reminded me a lot of the film Knowing, only with less darkness and more light (so to speak).

[Doom]

It looks somewhat decent to me. I rolled my eyes initially, but when I saw the extended preview, I actually was half interested. I'm sure it'll grate on me when the kid just keeps staring around and not saying anything, and they're like "What's that Lassie? Timmy's trapped in a well?!?" over and over as they try to suss out his Don't Forget to Drink your Ovaltine cues, but sure, what the heck, I'll give it a shot.

[AimingforYoko]

Kiefer Sutherland returns to network TV Wednesday, Jan. 25th on Fox:

We are all interconnected. Our lives are invisibly tied to those whose destinies touch ours.

This is the hopeful premise of the new drama TOUCH from creator and writer Tim Kring (“Heroes,” “Crossing Jordan”) and executive producers Peter Chernin (NEW GIRL, TERRA NOVA) and Katherine Pope (NEW GIRL, TERRA NOVA).

Blending science, spirituality and emotion, the series will follow seemingly unrelated people all over the world whose lives affect each other in ways seen and unseen, known and unknown. At the story’s center is MARTIN BOHM (Kiefer Sutherland), a widower and single father, haunted by an inability to connect to his emotionally challenged 11-year-old son, JAKE (David Mazouz). Caring, intelligent and thoughtful, Martin has tried everything to reach his son. But Jake never speaks, shows little emotion, and never allows himself to be touched by anyone, including Martin. Jake is obsessed with numbers—writing long strings of them in his ever-present notebooks—and with discarded cell phones.

Social worker CLEA HOPKINS (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) believes that Jake’s needs are too serious for Martin to handle. She sees a man whose life has become dominated by a child he can no longer control. She believes that it’s time for the state to intervene. So Jake is placed in foster care, despite Martin’s desperate objections.

But everything changes after Martin meets ARTHUR TELLER (Danny Glover), a professor and an expert on children who possess special gifts when it comes to numbers. Martin learns that Jake possesses an extraordinary gift—the ability to perceive the seemingly hidden patterns that connect every life on the planet. While Martin wants nothing more than to communicate directly with his son, Jake connects to his father through numbers, not words. Martin realizes that it’s his job to decipher these numbers and recognize their meaning. As he puts the pieces together, he will help people across the world connect as their lives intersect according to the patterns Jake has foreseen.

Martin’s quest to connect with his son will shape humanity’s destiny.

TOUCH is a production of Chernin Entertainment and Tailwind Productions, in association with 20th Century Fox Television. Tim Kring created the series and wrote the pilot. Kring, Francis Lawrence (“Water for Elephants”), Peter Chernin, Katherine Pope, Kiefer Sutherland, Suzan Bymel (“The War at Home”) and Carol Barbee (“Jericho”) are executive producers. Lawrence directed the pilot.

How hard they hit the 'magical autistic kid' trope will tell how this will go. Kring started strong before, only to prove he couldn't go the distance. We'll see.

[shapeshifter]

It looks like it's running 7 minutes over, so if you have a show on another network starting on the hour, better DVR, tape, or whatever you do.

[Dis Gruntled]

I wish they'd just bring back 24.

[Sparkalie]

I just finished watching this show and REALLY liked it, so imagine my dismay when I found out at the end that it won't be back until March! Why show it now if it's not going to air again for another 6 weeks? Grrr...

It reminds me of Lost (in a good way). I like the connections that I didn't see coming until the end.

I'll definitely watch it again when it finally comes back on!

[Raid Maze]

I was bored. It was 40 minutes into the pilot and barely anything had happened. I like Keifer, but he can't save this show.

[Sarkygal]

I found it a bit underwhelming after all the hype, but I'm willing to watch a few more episodes, if only for the Kiefer. The social worker lady was not the best casting choice IMO, but the kid is great. It was all a bit emotionally manipulative and cheesy. But Kring gave me 1 great season of Heroes. I could give this a shot till he ruins it.

[Diana Berry]

I'd rather just see Sutherland in a basic cop show.

[AimingforYoko]

Well, we only had to wait ten minutes for our first "Damn it!"
It walked right up to the line of ridiculous hokum. I just don't know if I trust Kring to stay on the right side of the line.

[marleyfan]

It was good to see Titus Welliver again. He'll always be Silas Adams to me. This is so convoluted. I hope that a person can still keep up if they miss an episode here or there.

[dizzyd]

Looks like each episode is going to be a separate string of events. Already baffles me how the kid can separate relevant strings from all the noise in the universe.

[cabelcb]

My DVR cut off. What happened to the boy at the end?

[MarkHB]

As a veteran of Heroes, I immediately noticed Kring's using subtitles again, and also in the Japan segment a reference to "Ando's brother." TK has another great setup; it remains to be seen how well they'll follow through,

However, the freakiest thing was that, at the exact moment that the kid's cellphone rings at the climax of the show in Baghdad, my own cellphone made it's startup noise as it rebooted. This means something. I'm going to build a mountain in my living room.

Edited by MarkHB, Jan 25, 2012 @ 10:31 PM.

[queasy]

Oy. The boy in the Middle East:

1. Got caught trying to steal the oven by the group of terrorists.
2. The terrorists promised to get his family an oven if he performed a suicide bombing mission for them.
3. They used the lost phone as the bomb's timer.
4. The man who owned the phone called the phone company because he wasn't able to call through to his phone any more (signal was blocked in the Middle East).
5. The customer service rep at the phone company was the singer.
6. She put a call through to the blocked phone and convinced the boy not to bomb himself, promising she could get him an oven.
6. The phone-owning man -- a restaurant supply salesman -- was in Toyko when the phone's images were broadcast on the jumbotron and got to see his dead daughter's photos.
7. The singer's video was uploaded to you tube and had some coincidental number of hits that I didn't catch.
8. The final scene showed the Middle Eastern boy's family installing their new oven.

It was good!

Edited by queasy, Jan 25, 2012 @ 10:33 PM.

[Maverick]

I kept waiting for Kiefer to cut Titus' head off.

[halo_pub]

Hey guys, here's a link to the Touch thread that Strega started over in Sci Fi shows a few weeks ago.

[meatball77]

I liked it but I don't know how it's going to work on a weekly basis.

[shapeshifter]

8. The final scene showed the Middle Eastern boy's family installing their new oven.

It was good!

First, just you don't hate me: I did cry at the end.
But the cry-inducing hug seemed OOC.

And really, Show? The terrorists are just gonna forget about it? Maybe terrorists/gangsters are different in that country, but in this country they would not want a potential snitch living to see another day.

And what is the show supposed to be about? Is it that the kid can see numerical patterns? OK. But having one number magically signifying a variety of important events/dates/badge numbers/bus numbers/lottery numbers is not really a pattern. It's magic. So is the kid Harry Potter or The Rain Man?

There was a lot I liked about it, but I'm not sold yet.

[AimingforYoko]

My bad, I didn't think of this as science fiction.
Maybe the mods can merge the threads.

[forumfish]

Early Edition meets Numbers meets Lost meets Person of Interest … I'm a geek for the Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden Ratio, so they pretty much had me at the intro. I also believe everything happens for a reason, so when the clock struck 3:19 and then the guy said he was supposed to be on a train, I said, "no, you're not."

Add a dust-up between the Man in Black and Jack Bauer? Priceless.

[sleekandchic]

I loved it. When the firefighter/lottery winner/hothead was revealed in his phone message, I cried. I thought the episode should have ended there, so I agree the show went a little bit too far and over the top. The oven bit and, even, the hug between father and son, when the boy suddenly had the light of recognition in his eyes, were too much for me.

Kiefer is very good, as usual, and I'm just a soft-touch for stories that depend on coincidence and serendipity and interweaving. The movie, Crash, for example, sends me into a tailspin no matter how many times I see it.

[queasy]

The oven bit and, even, the hug between father and son, when the boy suddenly had the light of recognition in his eyes, were too much for me.

The greatest suspension of belief for me was that a benevolent and caring State would be so concerned about an autistic/whatever boy that they'd remove him from a loving parent who was easily able to provide for his material needs.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see where this goes. If it turns into a new "figure out what Jake is trying to say" puzzle every week, I'm not sure I'll stick around.

[marbethofpob]

But the cry-inducing hug seemed OOC.

But, the point was, it wasn't really a hug. Jake just wanted Martin's cell phone. That's what made the emotional pay-off for me - Martin's realization that Jake still hadn't really "touched" him, but had used him.

As I read in several critics' reviews, it did play like a movie and I can see how it may be difficult to maintain as a series, but I don't think that should detract from I saw tonight.

I do wonder (cautiously because I tend to keep my expectations low for things over which I have no control (one secret to happiness?) if it's possible that Kiefer has one again found himself on the cutting edge of the national Zeitgeist. It does kinda feel like the country *wants* to feel better right now... just as, circa November 2001, the country couldn't help but feel frightened.

We shall see.

Edited by marbethofpob, Jan 25, 2012 @ 11:53 PM.

[Hughes]

Okay, alright...I wasn't disappointed. I came in to this with a host of reservations given how badly 'Heroes' spiraled out of control...and so quickly. But aside from a few too many follow the pattern, destiny spills, I thought the pilot worked very well.

Kiefer was brilliant as expected, and I thought the casting for Jake was perfection. He managed to convey Jake's feelings despite his mutism. The recognition in his eyes when the guy called off his lottery numbers. The slight smile when Martin brought him the phones. He wasn't just a blank slate. You realize he understands and is taking in everything around him, even his fathers efforts to connect.

The social worker...I don't have an opinion about her one way or another right now, but she doesn't take anything away from story.

Thought the scene with Danny Glover was rushed. The whole explaination as to how Jake sees the world and what Martin needs to do now came across as something that got added on at the end because they realized they needed something to bridge the gap between Martin cluelessness and understanding of what Jake was trying to say. Looks like Glover will make another appearance, so, hopefully that's when we'll get an explaination as to how he knows about kids like Jake.

Too bad Titus Welliver won't be a regular. His eyes are simply captivating.

The only part of the show that I couldn't suspend belief about was the young boy from Baghdad being allowed to live after disabling that bomb. The moment they discovered he didn't detonate that bomb, he would have been a goner.

All in all...I really liked it. Far better than Alcatraz, imo.

[MagniFicent]

Not gonna lie, I got a silly grin on my face when I heard Kiefer Sutherland yell "DAMMIT!" again. It's been too long.

First nitpick of the show, though -

When Jake is in the mental hospital and using rows of popcorn to spell out a phone number (speaking of which, that didn't really serve a purpose, other than making the social worker believe he's special)...the digits were represented by the number of popcorn pieces in each row. However, one of those digits was zero. How the heck do you represent "zero" with popcorn?

Edited by MagniFicent, Jan 26, 2012 @ 1:14 AM.

[Strega]

I merged the two topics so apologies if there's any weird overlaps in the timeline. Thanks for letting us know & carry on!

[jes004]

The greatest suspension of belief for me was that a benevolent and caring State would be so concerned about an autistic/whatever boy that they'd remove him from a loving parent who was easily able to provide for his material needs.

I wondered about that, too. Although, you never know. My friend who home schooled her kids in California (and then moved to Florida), said that home schoolers were hassled by the State (California...Florida is very home school friendly), and one of the methods used was child protective services.

Also figured the middle eastern kid would be dead meat, too.

Overall I liked it. I didn't have a problem with the hug, because the kid went for the phone. So was the hug a real hug, or a way to get the phone?

Edited by jes004, Jan 26, 2012 @ 12:46 AM.

[marbethofpob]

So was the hug a real hug, or a way to get the phone?

I didn't think the hug was real, and was, indeed just a ploy to get the phone. Jake pulls back and distances himself immediately as soon as he gets the phone and Martin goes from unabashed joy in thinking he's hugging back to the disappointment of realizing they weren't really physically "touching".

But, I think it's offset somewhat by the knowledge that he's actually communicating with his son for the first time.