When Fox decided to premiere the pilot of its new show Touch two months ago, it was an odd way for the network to debut its newest drama. Airing your pilot separate from the rest of the series can be a way to build excitement for your upcoming show, but after watching the show’s second episode “1+1=3”, it seems more likely that Fox was trying to have some distance between Touch’s promising debut and its incredibly familiar yet much weaker follow-up episode.
After the pilot, which featured people from all over the world being connected because of Jake, a mute boy who connects people via numbers, Touch decides to mostly scale it down to the Los Angeles area for the second episode. Jake’s father Martin now believes that Jake can see the future by using numbers to see the past and present of other people, so Martin is now ready and willing to accept instructions from Jake regardless of the cost. This time Jake writes a phone number, which Martin tracks down to a pawnshop. When he enters, the owner Arnie seems ready for a stick-up. A few seconds later, a man in a mask comes in to rob the place and beats up Martin. We later find out Arnie has cancer and hired the criminal to come in to rob him and shoot him. The criminal escapes since things didn’t go as planned and takes a baseball with him.
Here’s where things get complicated and quite ludicrous. Martin works at an airport and loses a dog that a stewardess is supposed to make sure gets on a plane. After a rough day, the stewardess runs into an Indian boy who is carrying his father’s ashes. Since she caused the boy to spill some of the ashes, she decides to help the guy spread his father’s ashes at a baseball field. Meanwhile, the criminal owes money to the Russian mafia and tries to give them the baseball, which he had previously sold to the pawnshop. The head of the mafia says that he still has to get him his money. The criminal heads to the baseball field to give back the baseball to the player who hit it, since it turns out catching the ball changed the outcome of the game. The criminal leaves to find the mafia outside waiting for him. Meanwhile in Russia, the head mobster’s son finds out that he has no friends because his father is such a horrifying man. The son calls the father to question him about this, leaving the mobster to have a change of heart, letting the criminal go. The criminal leaving the field left the door open, which allows the Indian boy who hadn’t made any plans to sneak right in. Also, his stewardess companion sees the dog she lost once they arrive at the stadium and chases after it. Confusing? Somewhat. Ridiculous? Even more so.