For the most part, Touch is pretty decent at telling an interesting story about Martin and his son Jake. The show knows well enough that this is its most important aspect and that the connections are sometimes nice additions, but not the main reason why people are tuning in. “Noosphere Rising” gives us a fairly decent Martin story; unfortunately the two connection stories, which take up at least half the episode, are some of the worst that Touch has done so far.
The main plot here is that Martin was left a key from the now-dead Teller with the number 1188. Martin recognizes this number as a Dead Man’s hand (two aces, two eights) in poker. Fittingly, he is led to an underground poker game, which Teller used to frequent. Martin meets Stacey, a dealer who was wronged by a former player and now owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to her boss. Martin must find the man, Logan, which leads the two of them to try to win the money she needs using the Amelia sequence, the same sequence that Jake weekly gives bits and pieces of. All this is fine, albeit not that exciting. In return for helping Logan, Martin is told where the key leads, an office with the Amelia sequence on a blackboard, most likely Teller’s.
In all this, we see that Martin’s sister-in-law has shown up, trying to take custody of Jake away from him. We’re never seen any way in which she is evil, except that she wants to split up Martin and Jake, but we immediately are supposed to realize that she is a huge villain for no real reason.
The true problems here are the ludicrous side stories. First, the least ridiculous of the two: a man from Australia who moved to New Jersey returns home to hear the reading of his father’s will, in which everything is left to his father’s horse. Yes, this is the more plausible of the two. In order for the son to earn his father’s land, he must learn how to ride the horse. He’s cocky about it at first, but with the help of this dad’s business partner, he grows, has an emotional breakdown with the horse really aimed at his father, then rides the horse, all in one afternoon. In the middle of this, he receives a call from Martin, since Martin has found Logan unconscious in his office and the Australian man is his partner. Once the Aussie tells Martin that Logan is diabetic, the connection is pretty much done. The son decides to give his father’s partner the land, in a plot move that could be predicted by anyone who has watched any entertainment before. Or at least Billy Madison.
Here’s where my real gripe is with “Noosphere Rising,” a side story involving a woman named Natalie and her video blog. While in Paris, she found a flash drive at her hostel from a man named Paolo looking for a woman he shared a gelato with and then never saw again. Now he is searching for her and vows to meet her in New York on her birthday. Natalie takes this as an opportunity to put Paolo’s video on her blog and try to find someone that can help Paolo find this girl. Also, Natalie has posted 1188 video blogs. 1188 well-edited video blogs?! About what? What is wrong with this girl?