By John Keegan

"Touch" has always been a show with potential.  It could have been something very interesting.  Instead, it quickly became apparent that Tim Kring was using this show to promote a lazy brand of spiritualism that predicates itself on the human tendency to find patterns in the noise.  All too often, the writers force connections to imply that there is a grander scheme of things, and it shows.  This season finale is no different.

By John Keegan

While "Touch" is still too self-indulgent for its own good, and I don't see myself watching it after the end of the first season (unless the season finale changes things dramatically), this is the second episode in a row that worked for me.  One big reason is the tighter focus of the writing; this episode, like the previous installment, has only two plot threads.  This forces the writers to make the connections more logical.

By John Keegan

I've been very critical of "Touch", which I find to be a very poorly written show masking its lack of consistency behind its premise.  Nothing I've seen so far has changed that opinion; however, I must admit that when the writers actually pay attention and make all the story elements intersect in logical ways, it makes for a less cloying episode.

By John Keegan
I'm now caught up with "Touch", and I still think that the show has a number of problems.  It's nice, though, that they are trying to incorporate a larger story arc to the series.  So far, they're being about as subtle as a brick to the face, but at least they seem to be trying.

By John Keegan

For various reasons, I got behind on "Touch", but part of it was the simple fact that it has fallen very far towards the bottom of my priority list.  The underlying "message" of this show is just a bit too facile for my liking, and I don't like it when writers modify real information or fake significance to prove a point.  Especially when they know it's a point that many will accept without any level of critical thinking.

By John Keegan

Considering the fact that I was ready to give this show up for good, I was surprised to see that this episode might have actually delivered a legitimate game-changer.  Unfortunately, this is where the reputation of the showrunner can be a distinct disadvantage: having seen Tim Kring fail utterly at long-form storytelling with “Heroes”, is there reason to trust him to do better this time?

By John Keegan

In this episode, Jake tosses out a random number, demonstrating his superior otherworldly intelligence, while his father Martin is sent on a bizarre quest to determine the number’s meaning, strangers’ lives intersect in super-convenient ways, and foreigners who embrace Western values are saved by high speed internet.  Sound familiar?

By John Keegan

This episode crystallizes everything that works and does not work for “Touch” on a conceptual level.  When the story centers on human drama, as it does with its three main plot threads in this episode, it is a reasonably good show about the better angels of our nature.  As soon as Jake’s numerically-based insight comes into play, along with all those spurious connections, it all falls apart.

By John Keegan

I made the case, in my reviews for the first two episodes, that this show was going to succeed or fail on the merits of the writers’ ability to avoid hand-waving in terms of the connections being made between total strangers.  Internal consistency was always going to be a huge factor, and with Tim Kring at the helm, that was always going to be a struggle.  And sure enough, it took all of three episodes for the show to fumble.