Autism in Media, Pt. 1: Touch(2012)

It's 2012. I am a little ten year old, I get home after brownies or guides or whatever I was at at the time, and I sit down to watch a new TV show with my parents. It's called touch.

It's 2026. I am a 24 year old who now knows they're autistic, and every so often randomly remembers this TV show that felt like a fever dream because it's so obscure no one ever mentions it. And I remember that one of the main characters was an autistic boy.

And so, after hunting it down and paying, to be frank, too much to watch it on amazon, here I am, writing a review.

Well to be honest i've only watched a few episodes as of starting this review, but I thought I might as well start.

So first, i'll give a summary of the show. I've split it up into the two seasons cause they are relatively disconnected.

Season 1

The show follows Martin, a single father who is clearly struggling to look after and connect with his non verbal, presumably autistic son Jake. Jake has a tendency to elope, and end up in dangerous scenarios. His silence means he slips away and disappears in mere seconds. In the first episode, he ends up sat at the top of a cell tower, legs hanging off the edge...

Social services are obviously concerned that no one seems to be able to keep this child in their sights, and sends social worker Clea to their house to encourage Martin to send his son to a "Board and Care" facility which, supposedly, should be able to keep Jake safe.

We also quickly realise that Jake has an obsession with numbers. I wouldn't say he's your typical autistic math-whiz, but he has a fascination with numbers that we as the 'neurotypical' audience cannot understand. He writes numbers and sequences of numbers over and over in his notebook, in spirals. He also seems to have a fascination with phones, and Martin collects lost phones from his job at the JFK airport to give to jake.

We, along with martin, start to realise that Jakes obsession with numbers is not just a random obsession. This kid can predict the future.

Martin starts to realise that Jake is trying to communicate with Martin through the numbers. So, naturally, he googles it, and stumbles apon a website under the name of "The Teller Institute", which just so happens to be near by. It also happens to be just a random guy in his house who's been waiting for someone to come and say "hey, I also see the numbers".

Teller tells Martin that Jake sees and experiences the unrest in the timeline of our universe through numbers, and that he is expressing this unrest or disturbance to Martin, and that Martin should follow it to fix these timeline breaks.

For the rest of the season, the show follows an episodic structure following this basic concept: Jake gains a new obsession with a sequence of numbers, martin spends a while going "idk what this means", eventually stumbles upon something that relates to that number or numbers, and is thus led to insert himself into some strangers life in the bid to fix the timeline. We also get to see other storylines intertwined in this. The first season is very much themed around this idea that everyone is interconnected and a small gesture done by someone in one country can affect someone else in an entirely different country or culture.

I will say I do enjoy this side of the show. I like how we get glimpses of these random peoples lives and you watch as they unravel and intertwine in front of your eyes. It's pretty cool.

And this show reminds you of how numbers are everywhere around us, which, as a bit of a former maths nerd, I do like.

As the season progresses we do start to see a through-plot starting to form, involving the owner of the board and care facility Jake is being held at. This starts with Dr. Teller discovering that jake is being held there, and tries to break in to get to him, and later we find Dr. Teller, mysteriously murdered. More suspicious things start to happen, as Jake consistently stands by room 6 at the facility, which the owner insists no one is in, but we start to realise this isn't true.

Then suddenly Martin's sister in law reappears, insisting that she can take better care of jake, wanting to take guardianship over him. At first this seems like just a salty sister in law wanting to take jake away or something, but this starts to get more sinister as we find out she works for a company called Aster Corps. Over time it becomes apparant to us that the board and care facility is in kahoots with Aster Corps... and is experimenting on jake. And that they also have a role in Dr. Teller's death, and the suspicious room 6.

Martin, in attempt to further understand why Aster Corps is after his son, seeks out Tellers work, at which point he's able to find Tellers original office, which is shared by a Hasidic Jew called Avram. (who - side note - I love. He has a certain way of speaking, like his intonation and cadance is so satisfying to me and I don't know why.)

Avram informs Martin of the Jewish belief of the "righteous 36" (a real Jewish Belief, known as Tzadikim Nistarim or Lamed Vav Tzadikim which states that there are 36 righteous people that sustain the world, or justify the purpose of humanity in the eyes of God. It's generally believed that these people are "hidden", are just ordinary people, not spiritual leaders or anything. Which is funny in the context of the show where the 36 are all supposedly autistic savants.). Avram is part of a group of other Jews who attempt to follow and observe these 36 people, which explains why he shared an office with Teller.

We learn about Amelia, one of Teller's previous "patients", who presented very similarly to Jake. Non-verbal, sees patterns and numbers. Everyone insists Amelia is dead, having died in a car accident, but more and more holes start to appear in this story. By the end of the season, we realise that Aster Corps have taken Amelia, and are essentially holding her hostage, to experiment on her. And they're trying to take Jake. The season ends with Martin grabbing Jake from the facility, and running away with him to Los Angeles.

Season 2

We start season 2 with Martin bumping into Lucy - Amelia's mother. Martin says he can help her find her daughter, and the two start their search.

We're introduced to a new character, someone who will become very important - Calvin Norburg. He works for Aster Corps, and we know he has some connection to these numbers that Jake and Amelia frequently cite (named by Teller as "the amelia sequence"). He does a lot of research into these numbers, but he has sour relationships with Aster Corps and insists upon breaking his contract with them. Which leads to confusing business things, whatever. We then find out that he is now holding Amelia hostage. Continuing his research into her outside of Aster Corps.

As Martin and Lucy continue their search, trying to find any clue into where Amelia could be, things start to progress in terms of Jakes (and Amelias) powers. They now have the power to speak to each other through telekenesis - how convenient!

Alongside this we start to see a side plot happening. A mysterious man with a scar on his neck is finding people, other people with these savant skills - the rest of "the 36" - and is brutally murdering them. At which point it quickly clicks that he is eventually going to be after Jake.

And that he does - just as Martin and Lucy are starting to get closer to finding Amelia, this mysterious man, Guierllmo, sets up a lockdown in the office building for BreakCore, and murders several innocent employees, trying to get to jake. Jake manages to communicate with him telepathically, revealing his dark past and why he now yearns for murder, right before Martin finally appears and saves his son - yay! But guierllmo is not done yet...

After a long wild goose chase, Martin and Lucy finally find Amelia, and Mother and daughter are reunited at last!

Martin insists they go off together on a trip to make up for lost time?? which of course is a terrible idea, as Astercorps find Amelia and Lucy, killing Lucy and letting Amelia just run away I guess.

Aster Corps starts to change their plans, setting up a fake sleep lab, inviting participants (people are part of "the 36"), who they then put in induced comas and scan their brains to get the numbers they need to finish the Amelia sequence. It's never really clear exactly why Aster Corps are after this sequence, other than it supposedly has predictive qualities (how one uses it to predict things, I don't know, it's never really explained). It is however mildly clearer why Calvin wants this sequence - he wishes to save his brother who has severe brain damage after a car accident which Calvin believes he caused. And this number sequence can somehow help him do that. So he agrees to work for Aster Corps again, however it seems that he's not going to be entirely co-operative with them...

One of these sleep lab participants is a History professor from the UK, who we recognise from season one as one of the side plot characters - how convenient! She was one of the 36 all along! They totally didn't retcon this at all. (/s)

On her way to america, she transports some ancient tablet because its convenient timing i guess, and stores it in a university. Jake and Amelia, through some great sneaky heist tactics, get to the university with the Tablet. Avram panics, rightfully so because these kids who are vulnerable to being kidnapped have suddenly disappeared. Martin manages to figure out that they would have gone to the university, and goes after them. At which point our big bad guierllmo appears again, almost killing the professor! At which point Martin somehow is able to fight him out of it, into a conveniently placed university church, where guierllmo kills himself after giving up on his task of killing all of the 36 for reasons I don't remember.

As soon as it's clear to him that this "sleep lab" is harming it's participants, he helps to end it by providing evidence to martin, who takes it to the police, and Aster Corps is exposed.

This all reaches it's peak in the last episode when Aster Corps get their dirty little hands on Amelia and Jake at last. They keep them on a giant ship (?) and prepare to do the same sleep studies on them to get the last of the sequence. Just as they do, Martin manages to break into the ship, and frees them with the help of Calvin.

They're finally free, and it all ends happily ever after!

But now we should get on with the topic I believe we're all really here for:

The autism representation ....

The autism rep

.... Well, it was 2012. So I guess we should give them the benefit of the doubt a little bit.

I want to be clear that this review is not about me shitting on the show for everything it does wrong. This show is from 2012, it only ran for 2 seasons, it's not a very long show, and at the end of the day, it's done and dusted. Theres nothing we can do to fix it now, and I choose to believe that we can enjoy shows for what they are rather than for what they're not, especially when its a show that is long in the past now. And this is a stance I will always take, so bare that in mind for my future reviews.

But this is a blog about autism. And this show is also, in part, about autism. So it's worth yapping about a bit. And if i'm honest, theres not all that much positive to say in regards to the autism rep in this show.

The first thing to address here is: is jake actually autistic?

There is only ever really one time where Jake is truly referred to as autistic, to which Martin says he doesn't buy that label:

We also see Martin searching up "mutism", which obviously referrs to Jake being non-verbal, but that "diagnosis" would not address all the other traits of autism that Jake has. Lets lay them out, shall we?

Firstly, as mentioned many times at this point, jake is non-verbal. He does not speak, has never said a single word. It's clear to us though, that Jake has the vocabulary to speak, given to us through the monologues we hear from him at the start and end of most season 1 episodes. He just isn't able to speak it.

This is the final shot of Jakes first opening monolgue.

Though there is also suggestion made that Jake not speaking isn't a matter of capability, it's a choice made by him to not speak because its "pointless, an evolutionary speedbump" which is..... questionable. I sure hope this didn't lead viewers in 2012 to the conclusion that non-verbal people choose not to speak out of choice rather than out of a lack of ability.

Jake, beyond being non-verbal, is generally very silent. The only time we hear him make a sound (in the first season at least) is when he's in distress. Aside from that, we have very minimal communication from Jake, besides all the numbers. He rarely expresses any physical or personal needs, but we'll get to that later.

The next most noticeable trait he shows is his affinity for numbers, which is obvious, but coupled with that is also his tendency to line up objects or organise them in patterns. It's established in the first episode that jake likes to line up popcorn kernels in rows of numbers, and we also see him laying out phones and cereal into patterns. His tendency to line things up is a way in which his communication with numbers presents, which I feel separates it slightly from your traditional autism trait of lining things up.

Jake also hates touch. Ayyy, wouldya look at that, its the name of the show!

Jake cannot be touched by anyone, including his father. At least that is what is set up in the first episode. This episode then ends with the big plot twist of jake hugging martin!!!!

Wow, he's suddenly progressed leaps and bounds- oh never mind, he was just grabbing a phone from his fathers back pocket.

(I tried so many times to pause this at a good point to get a good screenshot but it's so blurry this is the best you're getting sorry)

What we see throughout the series is that jakes distaste for touch is mostly one-sided. He dislikes when other people touch him, but if he is initiating the touch, he is fine with it. I'd say he quite often ends up touching people when he's trying to communicate, grabbing peoples hands to give them things or whatever. This is pretty relatable to a lot of autistic people who are sensitive to touch. It's more tolerable when we're the ones initiating it as opposed to sudden touch we never consented to.

Jake does also demonstrate a lack of eye contact, only seeming to look at people when it's important to get his point across. When he does look at someone in the eye, it's a big deal. Like, wow, something very important must be happening because he's looking at someone.

He also rocks when he's in distress, this distress usually being brought on by something thats happening in another storyline, often in another country or something because of course Jake has this sixth sense or whatever. But hey, he stims!

Jake also elopes, which is common for autistic people, but for jake it is usually because he is on a mission to restore the balance of the world, whereas for autistic people who don't have divine superpowers, this elopement is usually to escape overwhelming sensory situations, of high demand scenarios.

I also noticed he tends to walk and especially run without swinging his arms, which is quite common for us autistics, and I thought that was a nice touch (badum tssshhh).

So Jake is obviously autistic, right?

Well it turns out... not really.

I mentioned in the summary that towards the end of the first season we learn about a girl called Amelia. We become more and more aquainted with her through the second season, and in my opinion, I don't really think she shows as many autistic traits as Jake does, at least when we meet her.

But when we first hear about her, we're told she was basically identical to Jake in terms of presentation. She was also non-verbal for a while, had the same affinity for numbers and predicting the future.

But eventually she spoke.

And we can assume that similarly to Jake, she always had the language capabilities in her head, because her first words were "The puzzle is a metaphor for itself."... Heck even I don't know what that means.

I don't see many other traits in her when we start to properly meet her. She has what could be interpreted as a meltdown, but given the situation she's in - held hostage by strangers and used as a lab rat - i'd say its reasonable to explode. She's shown reading through a book at lightning speed, which could be condusive to hyperlexia, though it could also be her "future telling abilities" meaning she doesn't even have to actually read.

Here she's turning the page about every 2 seconds or so.

She is also then able to recite a quote from the book to the word and name the page and line its from. Which I feel like i've seen before as a typical "autistic genuis" trope.

After finishing the series, I sought out some interviews with Jakes actor, David Mazouz, to see if he said anything that would be useful to use in this review, and turns out there is - the poor kid can't even work out if the character he is playing, is autistic or not. In one interview, he explains that he watched videos of autistic children as research (which is questionable in his own right but i'm not about to cancel a child for watching videos for research lol), but in the same interview says Jake isn't autistic, and just appears it because of his "super powers". And in another, he introduces Jake as autistic, but later says he's not.

I get the sense that this is a sheldon cooper situation, where the creators wanted to create an autistic character, without calling them autistic. They just cherry picked the traits of autism they liked for story-telling purposes and then called it a superpower. They didn't want to commit to calling Jake or any of the other characters autistic, and risk getting it wrong, so they used the excuse of "oh, but he's not really autistic, he just has traits because he has superpowers."

This is probably the biggest glaring problem about the autism representation in this show. That being, that 'autism' for Jake (and possibly for other characters, depending on your reading) is presented as a super power. It’s presented as genuinely being able to predict the future. The people around them are constantly astounded by their ability to predict future events. So much so that the giant corporate entity “Aster Corps”, a company which does…. Something - is attempting to research into this phenomenon of non or minimally verbal savants.

If we were living in an alternate timeline I might say that autistic people are allowed to have superpowers, the same way neurotypical characters are also allowed to have superpowers, and frequently do. But unfortunately the idea of autistic people having superpowers is too frequently cited as truth, that this type of representation now just feels kind of… icky.

I think if you're gonna give autistic characters superpowers, it has to be done really carefully and in a way that emphasises that said character is just an autistic person who also happens to have superpowers, not that the superpowers are caused by the autism. In this case, it cuts it way too close to saying they are one and the same.

They even tie this "superpower" thing to religion. Throughout the first season we meet a character called Avram, a Hasidic jew, who believes that jake is one of the "righteous 36". From what I can find, the creator of the show Tim Kring, is jewish, which would explain its religous themes. It's possible that these themes may reflect Tims true beliefs, at least to an extent. But again, this was 2012. Times have changed! Who knows what his opinions on the topic are now.

Another big problem I have with the character of Jake specifically, is that he is not given much development at all. He has no personality beyond being a non-verbal prophet. He never expresses any personal needs, the only needs he expresses are related to this sense of timeline disturbances. He never shows any desire to express any other needs (aside from his meltdowns when touched). He is a complete blank slate. Very robotic. Which of course, a lot of autistic people can come off as robotic, but this show takes that to its extreme. He barely feels human, and it honestly makes me sad.

In the second season, we start to see hints of development, but that development is mostly him "improving" in relation to his autistic traits. For a moment we're led to believe he's starting to show a desire to live a normal life after he sets up a phonecall between Martin and a nearby school, suggesting to Martin that he wants to start attending school.

This doesn't last long though, as we soon realise Jake only wanted to go to the school to build a relationship with another student with connections that would help them get closer to Amelia.

Jake does show more tolerance to touch throughout the show, but again this is just an "improvement" of his autistic traits, which is a bit disappointing. He shouldn't have to be able to touch people. Though again, most examples shown of this involve Jake initiating the touch.

We also do see jakes first spoken words. This is played as of course, a big deal, and as development. We see him speaking in a sort of telepathic mental wonderland between Jake and Amelia, but in one instance we do see him speak in real life, in a moment of desperation - the words "find him", asking Martin to find our religious murderer Guillermo.

I will say though, I do like that we do not see him say any more words after this. Some might expect to get to the end of the finale and see that Jake is suddenly able to speak, like Amelia, but he does not suddenly start speaking, and I think that's a nice touch given I'd imagine most of the audience are, for some reason, desperate to hear jake speak. I mean heck, I remember watching as a kid and also wishing that it ended with Jake speaking, which is ironic and perhaps a bit hypocritical because I also watched the series feeling slightly jealous of the fact that Jake didn't speak.

But It's great that they showed that verbal communication didn't suddenly appear, as of course, this is not how it would work for real non-verbal children. While he was able to say those few words in a moment of desperation, it wasn't like that was the straw that broke the camels back, that suddenly all these words came flooding out of him and he could speak seamlessly. He was still nonverbal despite that momentary "breakthrough". Because for kids who are non-verbal but are able to start speaking, it will, at least usually, be a slow process.

So, overall, is this show a good piece of autism representation? Almost definitely not. Is it an enjoyable show to watch? I'd say so. It's not bad but it's no masterpiece. But if you're curious to watch a piece of old autism rep that no one ever really talks about (probably for good reason) then go give it a watch. Maybe go the seven seas route though. I don't think it's worth the £40~ it cost me to get on amazon.

And you may be thinking "Robin, why on earth did you choose this for your first media review if its so bad?" Well, the answer is simple. A. this series is just nostalgic for me, and B. it's just not one that anyone ever talks about. I think it would be boring for me to start on the same old autism rep that everyones already talked about 10000x like Heartbreak High or Good doctor (though I will probably still cover those! Definitely heartbreak high, probably will be next while season 3 is still fresh in my mind). I want to talk about something new, bring something new to the table.

That is something I hope to do for future reviews too, even for those frequently cited shows and movies. I don't want to repeat the same talking points we've heard over and over. I want to switch it up a little. Though I guess that will all depend on whether I can find something else to talk about!

Anyway, that's all for now. I hope you enjoyed this review, and if you do decide to go watch Touch, let me know what you thought of it!