Touch stars Sutherland as Martin, a harried widow and single father whose son, Jake (David Mazouz), has been misdiagnosed with Autism due to never speaking and his aversion to being touched. But what the audience learns about Jake immediately, and what Martin and the persistent but easily flappable social worker Clea (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) learn by the end of the episode, is that the boy can "see" the mathematic equations that make up the universe, determine what and when things will happen, and connects all of us, no matter how distant we are from one another (physically and emotionally).

Kring's show has a lot of parts working for it, and many of them are familiar to the lot of us who love TV so much that it is listed as one of our emergency contacts. Below are some of the similarities I recognized to shows like Heroes, LOST and 24. Check them out, and let us know what else Touch reminded you of.

Heroes
 What makes us think of it?
For starters, there’s a kid with an apparent superpower. Let’s get that right out there. Jake’s ability is grounded in math and a certain type of spirituality, yes, but it is still, in essence, “superhuman.”

Additionally, we witness a bunch of people around the world—New York, Dublin, Tokyo, Baghdad—who are all introduced as separate but thematically connected characters in this episode. Kring kept New York and Tokyo, ditched India and brought in Iraq.

The larger connections to Heroes are plentiful. First off, the aesthetic and the pacing are almost identical. Both series start inside the mind of the show’s protagonist, placed high up above the ground as he ruminates on the meaning of the universe. One of them can fly, but still.

There’s also the matter of the “There’s something larger that we’re part of” theme that was Heroes' bread and butter—although we’ve only scratched the surface with the pilot, it seems as though the show will be traveling with the “Great Power, Great Responsibility” route in terms of Martin’s drive to help people thanks to his son’s gift.

Can Touch pull it off as well?
Heroes started out like a glorious thunderbird, but then went to hell as early as the first episode of Season 2. If anything, I’d implore Touch to avoid the mistakes of its Kring predecessor by not aching to draw itself out as much. It is uncommon for American series to voluntarily restrict themselves to fewer seasons for the sake of artistic integrity, but if Kring cares about his characters and his message—which could be a very uplifting and important one—then I hope he considers letting Touch grow and eventually settle organically.
LOST

What makes us think of it?
The first thing that calls attention, I’d say, is the numbers. Jake is obsessed with the number 318—it appears and reappears repeatedly throughout the episode, suggested and then proven to have an incredible significance, as did the LOST digits: 4 8 15 16 23 42, or any jumbled combination thereof.

Although casting is hardly something to attach with thematic similarity, I do have to make mention of the presence of the Man in Black in this episode as a New York fireman crippled with guilt over his failure to have saved a woman who turns out to have been Martin’s wife back on Sept. 11.

The larger similarity here is in the uncanny connecting thread between each of these worlds-apart characters. LOST played around with, and then smacked us in the face with, the idea that all of its islanders were, in fact, destined to be connected. Touch pretty much comes right out and says that about its own collection of characters.

Can Touched pull it off as well?
LOST is a once-in-a-lifetime TV show—although hardly perfect. For better or for worse, we became obsessively attached to the characters thanks to the dynamic they built in their island community. Touch, so far, does not have this luxury, as its characters are largely separated. But I have a feeling this will not be permanent. And I already find myself rooting for most of them.
24