Interlude The commercials are there to pay for the shows. Unlike some folks on Superbowl Sunday, I'm not just sitting here watching the ads! So I'll occasionally be taking an interlude to talk about what's good about the shows. Or not.

I just watched the double episode premiere of season 2 of Touch. It was always a weird and annoying show, but it also had this charming thing where the numbers connected all these people, who sometimes needed a little push, but who were, in general, converging and affecting each other. A pair of Japanese schoolgirl bloggers through various devices often provided a link in the chain. It's very layered and complex, and probably hard to keep fresh and high quality. Probably expensive to shoot, too. But it was the magic that made Touch worth watching. They've jettisoned all that to make a ho hum, conspiracy, let's save the world and put on a show, show.

Feh.

I guess guys with guns, serial killers and evil ubercorporations are supposed to bring in more eyeballs than charm, delight and hopefulness.

Too bad.  They could just have made the kid a little more engaged and had less of the father yelling, "JAKE!" and running after him--which they did do...there were only a few JAKE!'s in the 2 hours.  That, the interfering state and the evil corporation were what was wrong with the old show.  They've mostly just tossed out what was good about it, and kept those things.