Touch

Touch is an American drama television series that ran on Fox from January 25, 2012, to May 10, 2013. The series was created by Tim Kring and starred Kiefer Sutherland. During its first season the series aired regularly on Thursday nights beginning March 22, 2012. Thirteen episodes were ordered for the first season, with the two-episode season finale airing on Thursday, May 31, 2012. On May 9, 2012, Fox renewed the show for a second season. The second season was originally scheduled to begin Friday, October 26, 2012, but was pushed back to Friday, February 8, 2013. On May 9, 2013, Fox canceled the series after two seasons. Plot Touch centers on former reporter Martin Bohm (Kiefer Sutherland) and his 11-year-old son, Jake (David Mazouz), who has been diagnosed as autistic. Martin's wife died in the World Trade Center during the September 11 attacks, and he has been struggling to raise Jake since then, moving from job to job while tending to Jake's special needs. Jake has never spoken a word, but is fascinated by numbers and patterns relating to numbers, spending much of his days writing them down in notebooks or his touch-screen tablet and sometimes using objects (for instance popcorn kernels). Season 1 Jake's repeated escapes from special schools put Martin's capacity to raise the child in question, and social worker Clea Hopkins (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) arrives to perform an evaluation of Jake's living conditions. Martin, worried that he might lose his son, attempts to communicate with him, but the boy only continues to write down a specific pattern of numbers. This leads Martin to discover Professor Arthur Teller (Danny Glover), who has seen and worked with cases like this before, claiming that Jake is one of the few who can see the "pain of the universe" through the numbers. Teller also alludes to the interconnectivity of humanity as envisioned by the Chinese legend of the red string of fate, whereby actions, seen and unseen, can change the fate of people across the globe for the better. Martin realizes that Jake is trying to tell him to follow the numbers. On subsequent days, Martin does as Jake wants, each time finding his actions improving those touched by the numbers, though his devotion to following Jake's message puts his evaluation with social services at risk.