'Touch' Recap: The Circle of Life

Martin and a man are held at gunpoint on 'Touch.'

The best TV shows make you think, analyze and ultimately find a deeper meaning. Just the other day I found myself trying to rationalize the existence of a show such as Touch. Could I find something deeper in its construction? I still don’t know the answer to that. But what I did realize is that Touch is like so many before it: it’s following the most commonplace, overused metaphor in literary, cinematic and TV history – the Christ figure. And Martin's son, Jake, the muted know-it-all who endures pain for other's misdeeds, is it. Martin? He who is so desperately trying to connect with his son. Well, he's Christ’s disciple, trying to decode the mystical message. Maybe I’m just trying to find meaning where none exists? I’m giving myself a headache.

Where we left off, Jake, all through his mysterious people-connecting ways, had just miraculously helped save an injured soldier and gave a metal band of Iraqi teenagers a chance to play, a distraught minister a second shot at life and his late mother's friend a sense of closure. As is customary on this show, the opening montage gives us a peek at which random people Jake will be helping "touch" this week. Give it to us! On this week's helping-hand agenda: a Saudi teenager, a pickpocket, a random man on a Montreal subway and a grieving woman in church. Let's do it!

Today is a big day: Jake is being evaluated by child services to see whether Martin should get custody of him or whether he needs to be transferred to a different facility. Martin is going, well, a little bit crazy. "I'm starting to see signs where there aren't any," he tells the crazy-scientist-of-an-old man that is Arthur Teller (Danny Glover). Martin is recounting Jake's latest oddity: that morning at breakfast, Jake arranged packets of sugar in a circle-like shape, and then, a moment later, as he left with Clea (the one worker at Jake's facility who is on Martin's side), he left a hand print on the restaurant's glass of a similar circular shape. "Jake's progressing," Teller says. The circle pattern represents a number, he explains: 22 , which is how many "points" are in the circle. OK, so 22 is our number this episode.

We're now in Saudi Arabia. A teenager name Norah is wearing a burqa. She's frustrated by the social constraints placed upon women in her country. More specifically, she doesn't want to be forced into an arranged marriage that's set to go down with a young man who is currently in Canada. Deciding to rebel, Norah sneaks out of her house and gets in the car – women apparently aren't allowed to drive, so this is a big no-no. Norah hops into her family car and goes to pick up her friend. They joy-ride until they come upon a woman stranded on the side of the road. She's pregnant. And about to burst! They pick her up – she still doesn't know these are women driving her (how, we don't know, considering they aren't wearing their burqas). Their car dies. What now?

In Montreal, the random subway dude works at a hospital. He and his friend talk about this woman he always sees on the subway – he never has the guts to talk to her. Plus, he's set to marry a girl he's never even met back home in Saudi Arabia. (I wonder who that is?) He's going to talk to his crush later tonight on the subway. But his hospital boss needs to stay late to find a bone marrow donor for a sick teenage boy, and he can't leave until he does so.

Back in New York, Martin is on his way to Jake's evaluation. He bends down to tie his shoe, and as he does, the pickpocket from the opening montage steals his laptop. Martin chases him onto a bus, but the man escapes. Martin takes a seat next to a woman, Marisol – the same woman we saw grieving at a church earlier. Marisol jabs Martin in the side with a gun. Huh? Turns out she's planning to kill a guy on the bus who murdered her family years ago in a village raid in El Salvador.

In Saudi Arabia, the pregnant woman is about to deliver her baby. She calls her husband in a panic. He's in New York, and she wants him to come back home to help. Unsurprisingly, he's right near the bus that Martin is on. He runs in front of the bus in an effort to catch a cab. This causes the bus to swerve. Marisol is knocked over and her gun falls. Martin gets up, grab the man she's trying to kill, and runs off the bus. The woman catches up to them and is now holding them at gunpoint. A scuffle breaks out and the man Marisol has targeted escapes. The woman chases him, but then she's hit by a car. Martin helps her and calls 911.

Norah, the Saudi teenager, thinks her brother is coming to help them. Instead, her pissed-off father arrives and starts scolding her. But the pregnant woman is going into labor. Miraculously, the teenage girl is able to help deliver the baby (oddly, she never cuts the umbilical cord. Oh, TV).

Marisol is now at the hospital with Martin. (Side note: Martin has now missed Jake's evaluation . . . uh oh!) Martin goes to talk to the man Marisol wanted to kill. It turns out the man never killed Marisol's young brother: he says the brother is still alive, and lives in Canada! Back at the hospital Martin sees Jake's circle design on a computer monitor, which shows a listing for someone in Montreal from El Salvador who needs a bone marrow transplant. It's Marisol's estranged brother, and she's a match!

Even better, now that a match has been found, the Montreal man can leave the hospital. He goes to the subway and finds the girl he has a crush on. They go on a date and we later find out he has decided to stay with her and not marry the Saudi girl! The Saudi girl's dad has also decided he needs to give her more freedom, and he is letting her go to New York for college.

Wow! Things are crazy complicated. But here's what happened: oppressed Saudi girl is now going to college and isn’t being forced to marry Montreal dude. Montreal dude met girl and also helped arrange a donor match for the estranged brother Marisol didn't know was alive. Martin, well, he just screwed shit up and missed Jake's evaluation. And that pickpocket? Whatever happened to him? Nothing important. He gave the stolen laptop to his daughter. That's about it!

And Touch hasn't relieved my headache.

Last episode: Nine and a Half

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'Touch' Recap: Nine and a Half

Martin chases after Jake in the 'Kite Strings' episode of 'Touch.'

By the third episode of a new show (or fourth, in Touch's case, if you want to count the preview episode back in January), for better or worse, it's generally clear what you're in for. By now, for those who've tuned in every week to see Kiefer Sutherland play desperate father Martin Bohm and squeeze out every ounce of melodrama with little to no plot movement from one episode to the next, it's surely become clear that this show is, well, a group hug disguised with drama. People connect (or touch) in various ways, Martin tries to understand his silent, numbers-obsessed son, Jake, and, in the end, good things happen to people. Yay!

When last episode ended, Martin, with Jake's help, had just helped take down an evil corporation, while simultaneously helping an estranged son reunite with his family. Naturally, none of this is mentioned as we start the new episode. Martin takes in his mail and finds a letter from the Chief Medical Examiner. Apparently, DNA results for Martin's wife, Sarah, who died in 9/11, have come back inconclusive. He's crushed and decides to take Jake to visit Sarah's grave.

Jake has brought along a red kite. Upon arriving at the cemetery, Martin finds a man sitting on his wife's grave. The man, Bobby, says he was a friend of Sarah's – he was a bike messenger and she was on his route. Jake runs off with the kite and Martin follows. Suddenly, the man disappears. Jake lets the kite go, but not before dropping a notebook that says "9.5." And wouldn't you know it, just then Martin's watch changes to 9:50. So yes, as you are probably guessing, 9.5 is our number for the episode that will make everything "touch." (Phew, we were worried.) Jake wants to follow the kite . . . so he does.

As is par for the course, we're now suddenly shifted to a completely new locale. This time, it's Iraq. We are, however, reunited with a previous character, an Iraqi teenager named Abdul whom we met in the preview episode. Abdul's friends are in a metal band. They want to play for U.S. soldiers stationed in their town. A female soldier named Lieutenant Davis agrees to let the teens "audition" for her to see if they've got the chops to play at the U.S. Embassy. For reasons unbeknownst to us, this excites the teenagers.

Another new location! We're now at a church in Colorado. A distraught pastor stumbles through a sermon – he doesn't think he was meant to lead people. After the church service lets out, a man confronts the pastor and says that the pastor did a crappy job – he didn't offer any semblance of hope. It seems this man, whom we learn recently won the lottery, says he needs to make amends for letting someone die. The pastor, who says he got into the theological world through a long family lineage, agrees to help the man. So who did the man let die? Oh, of course! Sarah, Martin's wife; he'd tried carrying her down the stairs at the World Trade Center on 9/11 before giving up and saving himself. The pastor and the lotto winner are soon exploring the church when they accidentally get locked in the basement.

Back to Martin and Jake. Jake has now led Martin to a random apartment building in search of the kite. More things point to the significance of 9.5: a store offers a discount of 9.5 percent; construction on 9th Street causes a half-hour delay. Jake goes inside the building and winds up in front of an apartment. The door opens. It's Bobby, the man from the cemetery who knew Sarah. Martin wants to know more about how he knew his wife. Bobby, who named his daughter after Sarah, says she used to tutor him (their last session was on 9/5). Like the lotto winner, Bobby feels guilty and thinks he could have saved Sarah's life because he was near the WTC tower after it was hit by the first plane and didn't tell her to get out.

Just before Bobby's wife comes home, inexplicably causing Jake to lock himself in a room, Bobby tells Martin that Sarah was not wearing her wedding ring during their tutoring sessions. This causes Martin to freak out.

Back in Iraq, Lt. Davis is involved in an ambush. She and another soldier are shot and hobble away into the desert. As night falls, her fellow soldiers can't find her and worry she might die if they don't locate her. Meanwhile, Abdul and his metal-band friends are trying to prepare for their audition. They write an email to a man who calls himself "King Roadie" with a question about how loud to turn their amp.

King Roadie, it turns out, lives in the same building as Bobby. He tries to respond with his answer (50 watts). But Jake, who escaped onto the building's fire escape, scares King Roadie's wife when she opens the window and sees him. This causes her to bump into King Roadie's keyboard, changing "50 watts" to "950 watts" just as his response to the Iraqi teenagers is being sent. (Complicated, we know!)

Receiving the "950 watt" instruction from King Roadie, the teens end up blowing out their amp while playing. But in the process, they cause an electric spark that goes through the power lines and magically sends up a flare right where the injured soldiers are located. This allows them to be discovered. (Crazy how things work out like that!)

Back at Bobby/King Roadie's building, Jake is climbing to the top of the fire escape to get his kite. Martin, for reasons we don't understand, realizes that Jake wants Bobby to come save him. As Bobby comes up to grab Jake, Jake falls but Bobby saves him. Bobby has now redeemed himself for Sarah's death. Want more redemption? At the church, as the pastor and the lotto winner are found in the basement, the pastor gets a call from his wife/girlfriend (we're never told). Wouldn't you know it, it's the injured female solider in Iraq. She tells the pastor his words of wisdom – "one footstep at a time" – inspired her to keep going when she was stranded in the desert. Beautiful. The pastor, who decides to leave the church and go see the woman, is now redeemed.

OK, so Bobby is redeemed. The pastor is redeemed. The lotto winner is (kinda) redeemed (he decides to buy the church from the pastor). But what about Martin?

Don't worry. He's also good by episode's end. He discovers something in Sarah's old ledger that shows she had made an appointment at a jewelry store the week she died. He goes there. Turns out she was having her wedding ring engraved with "1+1=3" – what she used to say about their family dynamic. So she did love Martin after all! 

The only ones who get the shaft in all of this are Abdul and the Iraqi metal band. They get nothing more than a meaningless chance to audition for some U.S. soldiers. Doesn't everyone get a happy ending on Touch? Apparently not.

Last episode: Tell Me a Bedtime Story

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'Touch' Recap: Tell Me a Bedtime Story

Martin (Kiefer Sutherland) encounters a homeless man (Rob Benedict) with the same obsessions with numbers as his son on 'Touch.'

Fox's new Kiefer Sutherland drama Touch is a smash hit! Or so say the ratings gods: The world premiere of the show starring Sutherland as Martin Bohm, a father desperately trying to piece together the mysterious, people-connecting, number-infatuated ways of his silent son, Jake, scored gobs of eyeballs last week, drawing an estimated 11 million viewers. But enough about the sort of stuff TV suits get giddy about.

Where we left off, Martin had just been led on a wild goose chase around town as Jake, divulging number patterns as Martin's only real clue, helped random people (a stewardess, a pawn shop owner, a burglar who moonlights as a peanut vendor) connect with one another and make nice at episode's end. As Jake launches into what appears to be his customary voiceover to start the new episode and we see shots of various people – an African woman, a homeless man, a girl at Coachella – it's safe to assume their respective storylines will soon be woven together.

The episode opens with Martin receiving a call on his cell phone . . . it's silent. Naturally, it must be Jake. So he rushes over to the child-care facility where Jake resides. What do you know? Jake isn't in his room. Instead, he's sitting outside of a random room, in the hallway, repeatedly writing the numbers 3287 into a notebook. (Yay, 3287 is the number-of-the-episode!) "Can I ignore the numbers?" Martin asks Arthur Teller (Danny Glover), a wise dude who seems to understand Jake's weird ways. He says Martin can't ignore the numbers. Why? "Bad things will happen.” Such as? Well, for one "Jake feels the pain of people touching those numbers" and "until things get right, he suffers."

Right. OK, so where to now? We're in Africa. A woman is taking a computer test. She hopes to move out of her village to the big city, but her friend, who is in an abusive relationship, is not likely to join her. The abusive man threatens to hurt the woman if she doesn't stop butting into her friend's business. The woman's younger brother, we learn, is also trying to enter an online dance competition.

Now we're at Coachella (yup, it's become this mainstream). A young woman, after being creepily complimented by a security guard, is going to the very same dance competition the young African boy is entering, to meet a guy. On stage, the reigning dance competition champion, the Beastmaster, grinds and convulses in dance ecstasy to LMFAO's "Sexy and I Know It."

Back to Martin. He's walking down the sidewalk when a woman runs by him, into the street and is hit by a car. As she lies on the ground, a homeless man grabs a notebook out of her purse. Of course Martin pursues him. Turns out the notebook is just like Jake's, filled with the number 3287. The homeless man tells Martin he's the "Invisible Prince," that the "dragon is loose" and they need to stop it. He also says he gave "a magic sword" to the King that can make everything better. The man leads Martin around; they follow two women who end up at a building with (wait for it) a dragon emblem. We learn the women are involved in a lawsuit with the company housed in the building, which has fleeced them out of money. The case will settle at 6 p.m. . . unless, that is, Roger King's people uncover any new evidence. (Get it? Roger King = THE KING. Deep stuff here, people.)

Martin follows the women upstairs, where he sees a reporter he knows who is covering the lawsuit (Martin was once a reporter) and he decides he must find this Roger King character. The reporter says King lives at 3287 Avondale. (We know those numbers from somewhere, don't we?)

Martin goes to visit King; it turns out he's dead. But when he mentions the "Invisible Prince" to King's son over the intercom, Martin is let inside. The Invisible Prince, we learn, was a character in a bedtime story that King used to tell his other son (who we now realize is the homeless man). We also learn details of the lawsuit. The homeless man, a.k.a. King's son, had developed a product for his father's company that ended up ripping people off due to its flaws. At the apartment, King's son (the other one) leads Martin to a box that the now-homeless brother left for the father before disappearing. (King lost all his money due to the flawed product.)

There's a safe. Code: 3287. Inside is paperwork. It's the "magic sword." It's a memo explaining that King had informed the company about the faulty product and they knowingly kept using it. Martin delivers this information to his reporter friend, who prints a story about the company's misdeeds before the plaintiffs settle. Yay! The dragon loses.

Time to get back to Africa. The African woman's younger brother and his friends prepare for the dance battle. In completely unsurprising fashion, they beat the Beastmaster! Nearby, what looks like all the women in the African town surround the abusive man and start banging on tin pans. The woman is now free from the man (tin-pan banging does that, people), and she can leave for the city with her friend.

Oh, and yes, as all things must wrap up smoothly here, the Coachella girl, who was stood up by her date, ends up getting cozy with the Beastmaster, who is sad he lost the dance competition. The homeless man also reunites with his family.

As the episode closes, Martin is now back with Jake, who helped save the day yet again. As all the concurrent story lines came to a climax, Jake erupted into a yelling fit, which Teller observed. But now Jake is OK. "Once upon a time there was an invisible knight," Martin says to his son, the quiet savant. This time, Martin was that invisible knight. Things just work out tidy like that on Touch.

Last episode: Take a Number

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'Touch' Recap: Take a Number

Martin is led to meet pawn shop owner Arnie in the world premiere of 'Touch.'

The world premiere of Kiefer Sutherland's new Fox drama Touch may have occurred on Thursday, but as those who live and die by new TV shows surely know, the show's actual premiere occurred back in January, in what the network was calling its "preview" episode. While this may be the first Touch episode we're recapping, in actuality it's the second episode. To that end, here's a bit of background about what the show entails.

Sutherland plays Martin Bohm, a widower and father to 11-year-old Jake (David Mazouz). Jake has never talked in his entire life. He's not mute; he just communicates in other ways. It seems Jake is of the genius variety: he can see patterns in numbers, knows how various people's lives intersect and sees the big picture of the world. In the preview episode, we were also introduced to two recurring characters: Clea Hopkins (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a Child Services worker trying to help Jake, and Arthur Teller (Danny Glover), the founder of the Teller Institute, a facility that looks at alternate reasons, other than mutism, for why people don't speak. As the preview episode also indicated, multiple storylines featuring random characters will weave together, all thanks to Jake's unique insight. Jake is able to connect these people's lives in ways that defy explanation. And as the "world premiere" episode showed, multiple intersecting storylines are going to be a recurring plot device. Think of it as Crash goes to the tiny screen.

Just as the preview episode did, the world premiere opens with a voice-over courtesy of Jake explaining how patterns are hiding in plain sight. "It's my job to keep track of those numbers . . . and to make the connections for those who need to find each other," he says. "The ones whose lives need to touch."

As the voice-over fades, Martin, Jake and Clea are at Martin's home. The last episode ended with Jake running away from the facility Clea oversees, going to a cell tower and dialing a number. "I know what he wants," Martin, who had never understood Jake before, tells Clea. Martin doesn't want Clea to take Jake back to her facility. Eventually, he gives in and tells Jake to go with Clea. However, before he leaves, Jake writes the phone number of the person he called onto Martin's hand. After looking up the number, Martin finds out it's for a store called Arnie's Pawn Shop.

We're now at JFK airport, Martin's place of employment as a baggage handler. A flight attendant is rushing through the airport to get to a dog she is supposed to hand-deliver to a man in Moscow. While running, she bumps into an Indian man who came to New York to spread his father's ashes on the infield of "New York Stadium" (guess the Yankees aren't big Kiefer fans). As she bumps into the man, the flight attendant knocks over the elephant urn holding the man’s father’s ashes. When she does finally get to the dog, which is in a cage a flight tarmac, it breaks free and runs away.

At the Child Services facility, Jake and Clea are working together. Jake starts writing the numbers 5296. When Clea gets up for a minute, Jake disappears. She runs to find him. When she reaches a door with a coded padlock, she decides to enter 5296. The door opens. Cue the opening credits.

Back at the airport, the flight attendant finds the Indian man still in the terminal and apologizes to him for knocking over his father's ashes. The woman offers to accompany him to New York Stadium. Later, on a bus headed to the stadium, the Indian man explains that his father didn't even like him, but a child owes his father respect, so that’s why he’s carrying out this task. The flight attendant realizes the Indian man never made arrangements to get into New York Stadium, so that may pose a problem.

Martin, meanwhile, decides to go to Arnie's Pawn Shop. When he arrives, a man in the dark, who we later learn is Arnie, the owner, says "I'm ready." Martin is confused. He says he came because he was supposed to help him somehow. All of a sudden, a robber comes in wielding a gun. Regaining some of his Jack Bauer-esque capabilities, Martin attacks the robber, who subsequently shoots Arnie. The robber clocks Martin in the face. A baseball rolls out from God knows where. The robber takes the baseball and leaves, and Arnie is taken to the hospital.

We now see the robber meeting with Russian mobsters. He owes them $10K. He takes the baseball out and explains that it's a famous home-run ball hit by Patrick McGrath – one that he actually sold and now has gotten back, like magic. The mobsters don't want it, and they say he has three hours to get them their money (or they'll break his legs, we can only assume).

Martin, still trying to comprehend the pawnshop events, visits Arthur Teller to ask him questions about what all these bizarre happenings can mean. "Sense, are you looking for sense?" Teller asks. Teller tells Martin that Jake sees pain as numbers, and Martin's job is to follow where it leads. Just then, Clea calls Martin and says she's lost Jake. But Martin looks out the window of the Teller Institute and sees Jake . . . about to get on a bus. He runs out and hops on the bus.

We're suddenly now in Russia, where a teenage boy named Pavel is about to put on a magic show. He is nervous, because people don't like his show. After he performs, only one girl claps. Later, he sees the girl when he's at a store trying to return his magic tricks out of frustration. The girl tells him that people don't like his show only because they are scared of him. “Why?” he asks. She says it’s because his father is a mobster in America, "like Tony Soprano." (Yup, the teenager's dad is the mobster who is owed money by the robber. It’s all coming together.)

Back in America, Martin and Jake get off the bus. They're now back at Arnie's Pawn Shop. However, Martin realizes the number he called was actually Arnie's apartment, above the store. They go upstairs, enter the apartment when no one answers and find Arnie’s chemotherapy pills. A man appears and gives Martin a wad of cash – $10K, to be exact. The man realizes Martin doesn't really know Arnie and shouldn't be in the apartment. He attacks Martin, but using a baseball bat – one with the number 5296 on it. Martin fends off the attacker, grabs Jake and runs outside, escaping into a cab. Father and son head to the hospital to visit Arnie.

Arriving at New York Stadium, the flight attendant and Indian man aren't allowed inside. All of a sudden, the dog the flight attendant was supposed to deliver to Russia appears. She must chase the dog, so she hugs the Indian man goodbye. Inside the stadium, the robber – who we learn is also a peanut vendor at the stadium – has had a change of heart and decides to return the valuable ball to the player, McGrath, who was in a legal battle with the robber-vendor over the ball. As he walks out of the stadium, the robber-vendor leaves the door open, and the Indian man, waiting outside, smiles, realizing he can now go in and spread his father's ashes. The robber goes to meet with the mobsters to tell them he doesn't have their money. But just as the mobster – a.k.a. the Russian teenager's father – is about to hurt the man, his son calls and confronts him about being a mobster. Like the robber, the mobster also has a change of heart and lets the robber free. "People change," the mobster tells his son.

At the hospital, Martin and Jake can't find Arnie; it seems he has escaped. Out the window they see him, still in his hospital gown, walking on a bridge. They approach Arnie as he's about to jump off the bridge. Martin suddenly puts all the pieces together. Arnie, who has terminal cancer, paid the robber to kill him, but Martin botched it. Arnie wants to die so his daughter, with whom he does not speak, will get insurance money. But just as he's about to jump, Martin grabs him and pulls him back over the edge. Just then, the flight attendant and the dog show up (yup). It turns out the flight attendant is Arnie's estranged daughter, Becca. And just like this, all is resolved as Becca and Arnie reconcile.

Cue a closing montage with Jake's voice-over and images of everything falling into place: Arnie and his daughter are at the hospital holding hands, the Indian man is spreading his father's ashes in New York Stadium, the mobster comes back to Russia to be with his son, and Martin and Jake are together at home. "It's you teaching me," Martin says to Jake of the whole bizarre sequence of events. "And I'm OK with that."

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