Thursday, January 26, 2012

Touch+23+5





Interestingly, the new series Touch (from Heroes creator Tim Kring) screened their pilot on January 25, 2012. It happened to be the same day that Boing Boing, coincidentally, also decided to publish my essay, "23 + 5: Robert Anton Wilson Again."






As I wrote, "The 23s, 33s, and yes, 11s, heighten our awareness of the twilight language surrounding us."






Touch goes there too.


Touch is an American procedural and science fiction television series written and created by Tim Kring and starring Kiefer Sutherland. Fox officially picked up the series for a 13-episode season in September 2011. The series premiere is scheduled for Monday, March 19, 2012, Kiefer Sutherland's old 24 spot, with a preview on January 25, 2012.
Here are the characters, and their plot lines, thusfar:
Kiefer Sutherland as Martin Bohm – a former journalist and luggage handler whose wife was killed in the September 11 attacks.
David Mazouz as Jacob "Jake" Bohm – a mute boy who is obsessed with numbers and can predict future events. Mazouz will also serve as the narrator of the series.
Danny Glover as Professor Arthur DeWitt – an expert on children who possess special gifts when it comes to numbers.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Clea Hopkins – a social worker who is sent to do an evaluation of the Bohms’ living situation.
Roxana Brusso as Sheri – a former biker and the director of the facility that Jake attends.
Karen David as Kayla Graham – a woman who works at a call center and whose dream is to become a singer.


Martin Bohm (Kiefer Sutherland), is a widower and single father who is haunted by an inability to connect to his emotionally challenged 11-year-old son Jake (David Mazouz). But when Martin discovers that Jake can predict events before they happen, everything changes.


Will it be worth watching to see how the notion that "connecting the dots" can have favorable outcomes? The challenge is, can a form of narrative visual fiction about numbers and the twilight language be created for television, similar to the movies Knowing and The Number 23, without episodes ending in constant disasters? That is, something with a bit more humanity beyond Numb3rs.


"What Touch is trying to sell viewers, in the words of Kring, is 'social benefit storytelling.' Now, that’s different. What he means is that Touch will mostly (but not always) be infused with hope — that the interconnectivity of people in the universe can be used for good, that it can produce positive results (as the pilot clearly proves through a series of international, interconnected storylines set off by Jake’s numbers)," wrote Tim Goodman in The Hollywood Reporter.


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