In recent years, any new US drama show that features a thickly-layered backstory arc running through the standalone weekly episodes – which, let’s be fair, is pretty much all of them – is faced with a dilemma.
Do the writers and producers keep things as enigmatic as possible in the first season, hoping that the broadcast network commissions a second run in which everything can be explained, or do they blurt out a gutful of factoids to prevent loose ends being left dangling if the first batch of episodes turns out to be your lot?
There are potential pitfalls either way, of course. Give away too much in the first year and there might be nothing left in the can for second; give away too little and run the risk of nothing being explained if the show gets cancelled.
Fortunately, Touch has been renewed for a second season, so it seems as though its policy of keeping the viewer as bewildered as main character Martin Bohm (Kiefer Sutherland) regarding his numerically clairvoyant son Jake (David Mazouz) and the mystical world he inhabits has paid off.
However, despite each instalment maintaining an impressively high level of cerebrally tortuous plot wizardry and punch-in-the-soul emotional connectivity, what’s really required after eight weeks are a few answers about the Amelia Sequence, or the secrets regarding room six at the Board and Care home kept by devious director Sheri Strapling (Roxana Brusso), or how many times Martin can say, ‘I know this sounds crazy, but…’ before someone replies, ‘Well, yes, actually, you big, husky-voiced loon. Keep your kid under control and stop saying “Damn it!” under your breath. Who do you think you are, Jack Bauer?’
That said, Touch gives away next to nothing about any of these things in Zone of Exclusion. Instead, it presents a beautiful story of isolation and inclusion that is convoluted even for a show so habitually labyrinthine it’s frequently in danger of collapsing under the weight of its own complexity. Yet as ever, the tousled knot of storylines are untangled by the end, the strands connecting twin sisters separated at birth but reunited by a video wall (and Jake Bohm’s mute machinations, natch), a ham radio-loving taxi dispatcher, an Italian couple separated by 400km of space and an evil, baby-stealing obstetrician who gets to drop philosophical zingers like ‘You can’t put spilt milk back in the bottle, brother’ in a laconic English accent unravelled and restrung into a discernible, comprehensible pattern.
There’s also the usual venture into foreign languages to demonstrate that the interconnectedness of everything extends beyond the American borders (this week, it’s French, which Martin doesn’t speak but Clea does, and Italian – if you ever wanted to learn how to say, ‘You’re practically naked and I’m in orbit over Africa’ in the latter lingo, you’re in luck) and the inevitable but overlookable implausiblities of Martin’s citizen’s arrest on evil Doctor Knox and the way Clea wastes a stranger’s phone battery, running up a massive bill into the bargain.
The emotional climax is more subdued than in recent weeks, although this reduction in resonance may be down to the fact that twins Veronique and Nandu are played by the same actress (Tyia Sircar) and their meeting at the episode’s end is filmed using very obvious doubles. We can accept an eleven-year-old kid being able to predict the future and see the connections inside coincidences that bind the world together, but the way Veronique’s red hair changes shape as the camera cuts from one shot to the next? Never.
Aired at 8pm on Tuesday 15th May 2012 on Sky1.
> Order the Season 1 boxset on Amazon.
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