Touch 2.10 "Two Of A Kind" TV REVIEW
Episode 2.10
Writer: Rob Fresco
Director: Michael Waxman
THE ONE WHERE Jake and Amelia team up to save the life of a Professor who's on Ortiz's hitlist. With Martin's help, they succeed, and Ortiz takes his own life.
VERDICT “Two Of A Kind” lives up to its title and features a very welcome double-act between Jake and Amelia. Jake's been on his own with his powers for so long that it's a pleasure to see him have back-up in the form of someone who understands him completely, and Saxon Sharbino is consistently watchable as Amelia. As a bonus Avram gets to babysit them, providing some comedy moments in the process – his frustrated, “Oy!” when Jake runs out of the house is hilarious. Incidentally, isn't it charming that Avram talks to Jake endlessly without ever expecting a reply? It's as though he's Jiminy Cricket to Jake's Pinocchio.
There's another cool team-up between Martin and Trevor, who really is the world's most understanding friend, as they hunt down Ortiz, while elsewhere Calvin gets an unexpected offer from Aster Corps head Nicole Farington. She's so nice in this episode that's it's easy to forget that she was responsible for Lucy's death, and she's so saccharine sweet and honey-tongued that it's no wonder she lures Calvin back into the fold. She's set up a sleep clinic to help insomniac members of the 36, thus luring them in to have their brains scanned without them realising why. It's a brilliant idea and also, as is the case so often with Aster Corps, kind of creepy...
We have to say, Ortiz's death is a bit of a disappointment. This is the guy who was shot and fell off a building but still came back, Terminator-style – yet all it takes is a quick scuffle with Martin to have him wailing and shooting himself in the head? Really? Saying that, it is a very satisfying scuffle, and Martin gets to clunk him a few times with a large gold candlestick. Perhaps Ortiz couldn't handle the fact he was beaten in a church, thus proving God wasn't on his side. Don't you just hate it when that happens?
WHO'S COUNTING? Last week we wondered how many of the 36 were left, and this week Ortiz mentions a “nest of seven”. There are six people in the sleep clinic, with Nell arriving to presumably make seven. Are they the only ones left, then, other than Jake and Amelia?
NUMBERS GAME Two this week: 10 26 2000, which happens to be Jake's birthday, and 2013 10 26 – another date, but it's also spotted on a dead guy's toe tag, a flight number and map of Los Angeles bus routes.
FANCY POWERS Popping up for the third time on Touch is Nell (Samantha Whittaker), the woman who was grieving for her baby in the pilot episode and then turned up again to do some more grieving, before finding out she was pregnant, in “The Road Not Taken”. She gets a lot more to do than pine in this episode, thankfully, with the fact that she's one of the 36 revealed rather beautifully. She can see into the past: looking through the window of an airport, she sees beyond the plane to the Indians living there hundreds of years before. What a cool gift – no wonder she became an archaeologist.
BAD BRIT! We see Nell's husband Simon reading to his baby, Lulu, from a book called “Colors”. Simon is British. For choosing the American way of spelling “colour”, the rest of us Brits should rise up with flaming torches and chase him from our shores. Traitor!
EARWIGGING There's a moment when Avram gets on the bus, sees Amelia, and announces loudly: “Amelia... you're alive!” Can you imagine being a passenger on that bus and overhearing a sentence like that? Fantastic!
LIAR LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE Martin pulls off some very convincing porkies this week, lying to the cops at the end of the episode, lying to Nell's husband about being her driver at the airport, and – most brilliantly – telling a sleazy landlord that he needs to see Ortiz's room. “US Customs doesn't require a warrant,” he tells him. “Do we have a problem? DO WE HAVE A PROBLEM?” Yup, we'd have let him see the room without a warrant, too.
BEST LINES
Jake [speaking to his dad for the very first time]: “Find... him...”
Jayne Nelson
Touch season 2 starts on 2 April on Sky1
