This week’s episode of Touch is brought to us by the number 0175.
In case any of you were wondering, the recap for this episode took over a minute, so we know this is going to be a complicated, and hopefully, wild ride. Thankfully, for those who thought the last episode was an attempt and an epic fail at a wild ride, this episode is going to return some of that lost love for the show.
This episode starts with Amelia running through the desert, and Jake narrating about how bodies at rest stay at rest, and bodies in motion stay in motion, unless acted on by force. On cue, Tony Rigby drives up and finds Amelia. He asks her what the point of it was, seeing as she would have a day and half of running before she ever got to civilization, and she doesn’t answer.
Jake continues to narrate about how people get set on paths, and their infinite futures collapse into one, just as Amelia is brought into the facility. The unnamed assistant (who we find out is named Kase) who was helping Calvin Norburg out with Amelia seems to have turned coat, and is still keeping Amelia held prisoner, just for a different man. While Tony chews out the Kase for not getting results, and warning him about how illegal the thing they are doing is, when Amelia finds a file of a unnamed man who is fairly old, and wonders “What did they do to you?”
We will not find out, unfortunately. Add it to the list of many mysteries we await to be solved.
We then find out that Kase (who wonders why she would run away when she knows Tony is not going to be as nice as Calvin was) changed sides because he needed money to pay off his bookie, and he regrets doing it. But now, he states, they have problems because Aster Corps will hurt them if they don’t produce results. Amelia doesn’t seem to care. Under the pretense of being hungry, she sends Kase out of the room so she can be alone and go to her mind landscape while he turns the key to lock her in.
She calls out to Jake for him to save her.
Jake hears it, and becomes unresponsive while Martin waits outside a hospital. It apparently has only been a day since last episode’s events, and he finds out that Phil, the man he had saved from Guillermo the night before, told the cops everything… which contradicted all the nice lies Trevor had told the police in order to protect Jake. Now the cops know way too much, and Martin has to figure out if he should be on the run. Trevor tells him no, and that he’ll figure somethigng out. In the mean time, Martin should go home. Jake writes 0175 in the condensation on the window of the car, and we already know it’s going to be a taste of something different in the episode.
Previously, Jake always influenced numbers to happen, be it by breaking microwaves, sending phone numbers, or playing arcade games. This time, he writes the number for people to see, as opposed to keeping them in his private journal and hoping they look over his shoulder.
Martin and Lucy talk about their alibis for the night, and drive back to their house. They easily get sidelined as Martin sees a floral truck that has the phone number 0175 as its last four digits, and he follows it. They see Calvin Norburg at the house the floral truck stops, and Martin decides that it’s Tony Rigby’s house. They don’t know why Calvin is there because Calvin once stated how the two now hate each other, and then Martin and Lucy jump into his car, put a gun to his face, and threaten him until they get answers.
Long gone is the Norburg from two episodes ago who warned them they would die if the dare tried to follow him.
They demand to know why Calvin is there if he isn’t friends with Tony, and Calvin states that he does hate the man. He states that Tony is the man who murdered his mother and took Amelia, and that was why he was looking for him. Martin demands where Aster Corps would hide Amelia, and Calvin answers that their about 80 facilities that would be isolated enough. Essentially, it’s a needle in a haystack.
While they go back to Calvin’s loft to look through his information, Calvin explains that he doesn’t know where Kase is, but that if he switched sides he probably already has a lab up and running already. Then he tells them that Aster Corps wants Amelia because knowledge is the new currency. Jake disappears while they were talking, and Martin goes to look for him and finds the lab where Calvin used to run tests Amelia.
Jake gets into the chair that Amelia used to test in, and Martin flips out and threatens to shoot Calvin if he doesn’t get his son out. Calvin tries not to, warning that it would hurt him. Then they realize that Jake’s speech centers in his brain are firing. Martin yells that Jake can’t talk, and then suddenly, Jake appears in Amelia’s world, smiling as he says, “I found you”.
Calvin realizes that Jake is having a conversation, but with who only Lucy can give a guess, and it’s Amelia. In Amelia’s mind landscape, Jake tells Amelia that her mother is there and that she loves her. Amelia says she can feel her, and that she knows that her mother could never give her up. She tells Jake some landmarks about where she is, namely that the building says Teller Institute, it’s in the desert, and it’s near a water tower.
Jake comes out of the conversation, takes off the headgear, and begins to write 1188 and 1997 over and over. Despite having a conversation with Amelia, Jake still can’t communicate in the real world. When Martin sees the numbers, he remembers that 1188 was Teller’s address. From there, they discover he had a lab that closed down in 1997 in Apple Valley. Apparently, that was the time Aster Corps discredited him.
When Martin and Lucy begin to leave, Calvin decides not to go, and says that Jake gave him the missing pieces to help his brother, which is really all he cared about. Showing some regret, Calvin tells Lucy as she exits that he hopes she finds her daughter. In response, Lucy says, “I shouldn’t have to go looking for her.”
Calvin visits his brother William. There, he tells his brother that he found the right pathway and begins hooking him up to a machine. Then, a seventeen year-old volunteer,who will later find out is named Evie, starts to talk to him about how she wants to be a neural surgeon, and he explains to her the implant he’s using on his brother. He says it will be like the accident never happened.
In the next scene, Martin and Lucy drive towards the former Teller Institute. They discuss Lucy’s past (she was in advertizing), and the locket she was holding just as the car begins to over heat.
Meanwhile, whatever crazy science mumbo jumbo Calvin is doing on his brother which involves drawing a neural pathway on a tablet makes his brother both feel pain, and able to focus his eyes. Eventually, his brother begins to talk, and asks, “What happened?”
While this is happening, Jake, Martin, and Lucy find a truck driver , Jerry Woods, who is willing to take them where they need to go, though it takes 200 bucks for his trouble. The old coincidences of season one are back, and we find his daughter is the volunteer, Evie, that is helping Calvin at the Neural Institute. Apparently, since her mother died, they don’t talk much anymore because he doesn’t like to be in the house where his wife died, and he travels for his job.
Lucy tells Jerry to keep trying to talk to his daughter until she talks back when the GPS announces that they are at their location. Jerry says he doesn’t feel right leaving them in the middle of the desert, but does it anyway.
They find the institute, and while they talk about sneaking in, Jake betrays their location to the armed guards in Jeeps. Martin, thinking on his feet, realizes Jake wants him to go in with the gaurds, so he abandons Lucy and Jake to their hiding place, confronts the guards, and tells them a story about how his car broke down and needs help. The gaurds take him back to the institute, where they promptly lock him up.
There, Kase hears Martin yelling. Obviously, he knows who Martin is, and pays him a visit. In the jail cell, Kase states that he works for Frances, and not Calvin, and his job is taking care of Amelia. Martin then promptly punches Kase and demands to know where Amelia is, which Kase quickly obliges. Obviously, he is well used to Martin beating him up by now and knows the best way to get him to stop.
Back at the Neural Institute, Calvin is talking to William about how sorry he was that Frances died before she could see him. William struggles with words, and chooses weird ones like “aria” instead of “voice”. They talk about their childhood, and Calvin begins to cry. Finally, he asks his brother if he remembers the accident. William answers that it was stormy, and that William was supposed to get back to Connecticut for school, and when Calvin turned the car… we don’t know. I assume the car flipped. In any case, Calvin apologizes, and William says he’s happy because Calvin is still moving mountains to save him.
Lucy and Jake sneak into the garage of the Teller Institute, and Jake steals all the keys and deposits them in a drain. He leaves one set on the hood of a Jeep, which means they are going to be helpful, presumably, later. During this time, Tony finds that Martin has escaped, and then promptly finds that Amelia is also gone. He and his gaurds look through all the security cameras trying to find them but Amelia knows the blind spots. While she and Martin hide, Amelia says there are seven possible exits, all of which have cameras on them. Amelia tells him that the need to overload the system, which they do but not before Tony finds them on the cameras. Here, they split up with Kase, and we don’t find out what happened to him.
While they run, Martin finds the keys that Jake left him, and the guards find out the rest of the keys are gone. Before they can discuss it further, Martin drives the hell out of there. When they are outside, Amelia tells him to stop driving and gets out of the car. Lucy comes out from behind the bushes, has a have a heartfelt reunion with her daughter, and Martin ushers them out of there.
Because of their escape, Tony gets a call from someone named Ms. Farrington, who berates him for losing Amelia and she decides takes over the operation. In anger, Tony throws the phone against the walls.
Now that Lucy has Amelia back, Martin says they can go to the cops. Instead, though, he suggests that Lucy should hide because Aster Corps will find her especially if the cops know where she is. Lucy agrees, and they laugh because she never does what Martin says. They say good-bye, and then Lucy kisses him a bit more intimately than just friends.
Before part ways, Amelia hands Jake a piece of paper, and tells him he knows what to do. Jake touches Lucy, and Lucy tells him that she’ll see him soon.
Martin and Jake splits from Lucy and Amelia, and that time we find Calvin at the Neural Institute fast asleep. While he was sleeping, his brother had returned to the way he was before Calvin did his scientific mumbo jumbo. Calvin, angry Evie didn’t wake him when William regressed, yells at her to get out. Evie cries outside the hospital, and her dad shows up. Happy to see him, she hugs him.
While Lucy and Amelia drive away, the road is blocked by Aster Corps Jeeps driving towards them. Eerily, Ms. Farrington tells the envoy that Lucy doesn’t need to survive the encounter.
Amelia tells her mom that there is no way for them to escape, and Lucy asks for a way for Amelia to escape. Amelia cries, because it’s obvious that it means the death of her mother, but she runs while Lucy confronts Tony.
We hear a gun shot, and when we return to Tony we no longer see Lucy’s body. Jake narrates about deviations which put people on unknown and uncharted paths. It’s clear that Amelia didn’t foresee this happening, and she breaks down in the middle of the desert. Whether or not Aster Corps will get a hold of her is the cliffhanger.
This episode is a small return to season one, with coincidences enriching the lives of people the main characters only tangentially know, and mix of all the things that make season two great. It’s action packed, complicated, and there are finally consequences that no one can predict. I’m thinking we’re over the Touch hump, and we may find the end of this season a lot more fun than the last few episodes.
So, hang on to next Friday for the ninth episode of Touch! I’ll certainly be there, and I’ll have a recap all ready for you when it airs.
