This week’s episode of Touch is brought to us by the number 948.
After last week’s episode, I can say that I wasn’t sure how this one was going to stack up. So far, it’s been a really yo-yo of mediocre to great to awful episodes this season, and I think that this one going to be firmly placed in the pretty decent side.
The episode begins with Jake sleeping, and narrating about how time doesn’t exist; that it is a human concept. Since the whole episode seems to be about clocks, it’s a pretty relevant speech. While he speaks, we see Amelia running in the desert, her thoughts focused on the mother she just saw die.
Waiting for Jake to wake up, Martin researches the Teller Institute, and a man on a piece of paper Jake had given him. He is interrupted by someone at the door, and it turns out to be Avram, who is worried about Guillermo Ortiz and his penchant for murdering people like Jake.
We follow Martin as he goes to Breakwire, where he plans to use the facial recognition software and figure out who Jake wants Martin to find. However, there is no one at Breakwire except Trevor, who is staring at a photograph of his old employees, some of whom had only died in the last few episodes. No one is at the company because they either quit, or were arranging funerals, and Martin apologizes for the trouble he caused Trevor, asking what he can do to help.
Trevor tells him to help by investigating a story about a man named Philip Green, a murderer on death row. Instantly, Martin realizes it’s the same man that Jake wants him to find. They don’t show it, but I think Trevor knows he’s not going to get the story while Martin runs around at Jake’s beck and call.
Then we meet Blake, a man who seems like a decent dad because he’s building a play set for his son who seems to think he’s a super hero but can’t climb more than four feet. His kid, Max, flies around the background when he takes a mysterious phone call from his pregnant wife. Once he hangs up, they argue about something he has to do, and the wife says it’s not him, and he replies that it’s something that he needs to do. We find out later that he’s on Philip’s execution team.
We then go Martin, who meets Ben Miller, Philip Green’s attorney. Miller, who is under the impression that Martin is a real journalist, accepts the interview in order to get the governor’s attention, but is immediately chagrined by Martin’s crazy talk about Teller Institutes, his magical son, and saving the day because he was meant to. However, talk of a cover up more or less convinces him to let Martin see Philip.
While this happens, Avram and Jake play chess, and Avram challenges his move. Jake starts to breath loudly, making one wonder if he’s mad that Avram made a smarter move, gets up and takes down a nearby clock. Avram has no idea what he’s doing, but he watched Jake take the clock apart gear by gear.
Meanwhile, Martin finally gets in to see Philip Green. He explains that he wants to help, and that he knows about the Teller Institute. He gets Green’s attention when he said that Teller died. Martin talks about how he thinks that Green can see things the way Jake can, and asks if he’s one of the 36. Green nods, and Martin asks how he is supposed to help. In response, Green hands him a crumpled photograph of his daughter. When Martin asks if he wants him to bring his daughter, he almost speaks, but decides against it. Martin decides that’s where he’ll start.
We next find Martin at the office Dr. Kate Gordon. We learn that she deals with childhood trauma, and nonverbal children which, in oldTouchstyle, is important later on. Remember it. She asks if that is why Martin’s here, and he tells her that he needs to talk to her about her father. That was obviously the wrong thing to say, and ahe asks him to leave, but relents to talk to him after he shows her the photograph her father gave him. Martin tells her that her father wants to see him.
Martin tells her about patterns and numbers, and realizes that Dr. Gordon already knew that. He then tells her that he thinks the murders and the robbery that leads to his death sentence was caused by someone else. Dr. Gordon disagrees, telling Martin that she asked her father and he said he was guilty. After explaining how hurt she was that her father refused to see her in prison, and left her with an aunt she barely knew, she said that her father wasn’t the same man and that Martin should leave.
Back at the house with Jake, Avram explains clock making, and watches Jake organize the gears from the clock he just tore apart, realizing there is pattern. Six piles of six gears, which Avram knows equals to 36. At that moment, he gets a phonecall from Martin, and when Martin states that he thinks Green is one of the 36, Jake stops.
Avram tells Martin that he has to convince Dr. Gordon that her father is worth saving, especially if Green is one of the 36.
Then we come back to Blake, where he and his wife talk about his decision to be on the execution team of Philip Green. We figure out that Blake’s father was killed by someone in front of him and his child, and Blake thinks the only way he can heal to kill someone, even if it isn’t the same man. His wife says it’s going to change him, and that it will ruin the image of a hero his son, Max, had of him. He ignores her pleas.
The clock is still ticking 24-style, and Martin finds him self at the antique shop that Philip Green had worked at. Martin finds it suspicious that three people would be killed for something that isn’t a robbery. He calls Trevor, who says that the three who were murdered all worked for Mobius, and Martin says that is a part of Aster Corps.
Martin makes his way to the pawn shop, where he speaks with the owner, who doesn’t believe that Philip could kill anyone. He explains that nothing was taken form the store that belonged to it, meaning that the only thing that was taken was something Philip owned, which brought him to the fundamental question of why he believed in Philip’s innocence: Why would Philip kill three people to take something that already belonged to him?
At this time, Blake leaves when he hears the horn honking. He gives one last look to his wife and his son before getting into a yellow car with an unknown man who takes him away.
After driving every, Martin gets back home with Jake, sets down the box Philip had, and Jake immediately goes into it. Jakes starts reorganizing the gears in the box, and Avram recognizes it as a cipher. They decide that Philip kills to protect the messages the cipher could decode, and Martin goes to find Dr. Gordon… who, for some reason, decided to see Martin again even after asking that he never contact her again. Changes of heart are fast in furious in this episode, it seems.
When Martin talks to her, she tells a story about how enthusiastic he was at her piano recitals, and when it embarrassed her she made him promise to sit in the corner and put up three fingers, his symbol for “I love you”. She cries because she thinks that he’s not the man she thought he was, and she hated him for pushing her away. She would have stood by him, and it hurt that he wouldn’t even look at him. Martin explains that the horror of what he did made him shut down emotionally, but more importantly, her father was protecting her from Aster Corps.
He shows what Aster Corps was trying to take. Dr. Gordon recognizes it immediately. She says he worked on it for years, and he told her a story about it. It was a road map to finding 36 magical people who could save the world, and then she notes that the key gear is missing. Excited, Martin informs her that his son and her father are of the 36, and Dr. Gordon stares at him incredulously. He convinces her she is the key to save her father’s life, and that he believes in the 36.
Then, things go a little fast, so bear with me. Philip goes to get prepped for his death, and Martin brings his daughter. While this is happening, Avram watches Jake write 948 and asks what it means. Jake walks away and puts the clock back together, and sets the hands at 9:48. We find out this will be the time Philip dies. Martin can’t get through the protestors to get into the prison, so Miller tells him to go to the East entrance. There, they run into Blake, who knows Dr. Gordon, as she worked with his child. After she asks him how Max is, he says he wishes he would be okay. She responds that as long as he is okay, Max is.
Blake calls the warden’s office to pull out of being on the execution team, which delays the execution long enough for Dr. Gordon to see her dad again. He gives the three-fingered sign that says “I love you” to Dr. Gordon and she follows him out to watch his death and Martin promptly flips out because he couldn’t save the man. Dr. Gordon comforts Martin, saying that Philip did what he had to do, and he was willing to pay the price. Dr. Gordon is happy though, because she gets to remember her father.
Alone in the prison room, a guard brings Martin a box of Philip’s belongings that were left to him, with a note that says “your son knows”.
On the phone with Avram, Martin finds out the number Jake is obsessed with today is 948, and remembers that it is the address of the pawn shop, so he decides to take him. There, Jake finds the missing key to the cipher in an old clock. The owner tells him that Philip fixed it the night he was arrested, and Martin buys it.
The episode ends with Trevor knocking on Martin’s door to tell him Lucy is dead (though, you should note that he doesn’t say the word “dead”, and Amelia never saw the body). Inside, Jake’s cipher shows 318, and outside his window we find Amelia.
All in all, a fairly good episode, and one that turns most of Touch on its head in that Martin didn’t get to save the day the way he thought he was supposed to. As each episodes in this series goes by, we get a darker side of what is really going on in the world of Touch, and I, for one, love it.
