Touch Type

Last night, the premiere of a new series aired on FOX -- Touch. It's the latest from series creator Tim Kring, and stars Kiefer Sutherland. It felt like an attempt by both to step away from their last, well-known television efforts, and I'm not sure it was a resounding success for either of them.

Touch is a multi-faceted story primarily featuring the single father of a young boy who has never spoken in his life, and who may (or may not) be autistic. For certain, the boy is able to perceive complex patterns in the world, of how people's lives are supposed to intersect. He tries to convey these visions through seemingly random series of numbers, which his father tries to interpret in time to manipulate events for some better outcome. Quantum Leap for the new century?

Creator Tim Kring is the man who made Heroes, a show I abandoned early on, but which many people I know followed bravely through what were widely considered four ever-declining seasons. Here, it feels as though he was trying to create a less "mythology" driven show, more episodic in nature and with less of a convoluted, ongoing storyline. But if this pilot is any indication, each episode is going to have its own labyrinthine series of interlocking gears -- Heroes compressed into a single episode each week.

Kiefer Sutherland is trying to embody a gentler, more fragile hero than 24's Jack Bauer. But Bauer is one of the most indelible characters of modern television. When Sutherland screams "dammit" in this pilot episode (not once, but twice), I wanted to take the customary 24 drinking game swig. When his character Martin Bohm gets beaten up during the episode (again, not once, but twice), it's hard to accept that he doesn't fight back -- indeed, seems incapable of doing so. Sutherland may simply be too typecast for a role like this now.

The pilot did have a few interesting "aha!" moments, but I think the premise is going to be incredibly challenging to sustain as a weekly series. Every episode seems to promise a wheels-within-wheels puzzle that will all reconcile by hour's end. But we the audience know that this is what's going to happen, and so we're going to be looking to solve that puzzle before the answer is revealed. It seems to me the series will be audience-vs.-writers, in a war to see who can outthink the other.

I suppose you could say that every mystery story ever written, in any medium, has the same problem going. But here I think the ante is upped given the type of audience likely to buy into a rather science fiction-like premise. And I feel like the results will be typical of how this first episode ended. Yes, there was a fun moment or two. And a few moments you could see coming a mile off. And a few other moments that were simply too trite to be clever.

Throw in a few frustrating characters -- a bristling and unsympathetic social worker, and a nonsense-spouting "expert" on autism played by Danny Glover -- and I'm just not seeing the right ingredients in this soup. It definitely wasn't "bad" television, but it also seems to me it's going to need a lot of improvement.

But this was just a special preview of the series, and it isn't starting up on a weekly basis until mid-March. So whether or not I give it another chance is probably going to depend entirely on how busy I find myself six weeks from now. If most other shows are in re-runs, I might give another episode or two a chance. If the schedule is crowded, well then, tonight will probably be my first and last episode.

Only an autistic, pattern-seeing child could see the future and tell you the answer.