I don’t watch very many hours of television in a day but there are some shows that grab my attention. I watched a new show last night. It had Kiefer Sutherland playing a different role than the terrorist-chasing hero that he played on his show “24”. He plays a single father of a boy, who, I presume is autistic. They never mention autism in the show but the young boy named Jake played by David Mozouz seems to play the role of an autistic child.
There are various degrees of autism. Asperger Syndrome is one form that I am slightly familiar with since my friend’s son has this condition. To learn more about autism, I read some interesting articles on the subject such as “Autism Spectrum Disorders” http://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/asd.cfm.
“What is Autism?” ” Autism is a complex developmental disability that causes problems with social interaction and communication.”
Kiefer Sutherland is one of my favorite actors. I loved him in his show “24” and movies such as ” A Few Good Men” a military drama in which he played a tough marine. In “Touch” Kiefer Sutherland plays a widower named Martin Bohm. He struggles to communicate with his son, who doesn’t talk or like to be touched. He constantly writes numbers down in his notebook.
The numbers seem to be connected, phone numbers, dates, and a specific time. The boy gives his school and authorities a fright by climbing up to the top of a cell phone communication tower. He does this more than once, much to the chagrin of the school and his father, who has to entice the boy to come down with an offer of a cell phone. Jake is obsessed with cell phones and counting things and arranging things in a certain order.
After too many times climbing to the top of the tower, a social worker named Clea Hopkins, who is played by actress, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, visits Martin and his son.
She is concerned about the safety and well-being of the boy and she tells the father that the boy needs to go to a facility to be assessed and examined, while Martin gets his life in order. He not only struggles to communicate with his son, he can’t keep a job for long. Martin, also, still mourns for his wife, who died in one of the towers when “9/11″ happened in New York City.
Jake cannot stand for someone to touch him, Martin warns Clea , the social worker, as she approaches the boy to talk to him. Martin reluctantly says good-bye to his son leaving him at the facility that the social worker recommended. He tries to figure out what the numbers mean that his son constantly scribbles down in his notebook.
Martin finds a scientist, played by another one of my favorite actors, Danny Glover. He plays a character named Arthur Teller. The institute that he runs focuses on numbers, the universe and people and how they are all connected. Every event that happens connects to certain people and things in the universe. There are certain patterns that we normally don’t see in things in the world, eg. Patterns in a fresh pineapple. Arthur tells Martin that his son is trying to communicate something and that it’s his purpose to find out what it is or what will happen. Arthur said Jake sees everything in the past, present and future. Jake’s father asks if his son could predict the future. Arthur said that Jake can see how the past, present and future all connect, touch, if you will.
This concept interests me, because I believe if certain events happen at a specific time and day then a particular outcome happens and touches people’s lives in a certain way.
I found some video clips on-line on Global TV. Shows :
#http://www.globaltv.com/touch/index.html
Global T.V. – Preview Event clip of “Touch”
“Martin Bohm ,(Kiefer Sutherland) is a widower and single father haunted by an inability to connect to his emotionally challenged 11-year-old son, but when Martin discovers that Jake can predict events before they happen, everything changes.”
#http://www.globaltv.com/video/1+++1++3/video.html
In an interview E.T,(Entertainment Tonight) had with Kiefer Sutherland, he said, “I play a single father who desperately wants to connect with his son who doesn’t speak of let him touch him. His son was misdiagnosed as autistic but he actually just has a special ability to see things in a way 99% of us never see.”
I don’t want to give away all the details of the show “Touch” because you should watch it. You can find it on your local channels and listings. I found it on my local Global channel at 10 pm., Wednesday night.