Pilot Study: Touch

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Touch - "Tales of the Red Thread" (50 minutes)
Original air date: January 25, 2012

Themes

Fate, destiny, patterns

Setting

Modern day, New York City (with scenes in other places around the world)

Opening 

Narration: voice over by a young boy (11 years old)
- Fibonacci sequence
- Golden ratio: 1.618
- red thread of fate in Chinese legend

Characters

Martin Bohm

- baggage handler at JFK airport
- scared of heights
- former report
- Jake's dad
- wife, Sarah, was a stock broker in World Trade Center and died on 9/11

Jake

- Martin's son
- autistic and mute
- math genius—uses numbers to find connections between people and make predictions
- likes orange soda, popcorn, and taking apart cell phones

Clea Hopkins

- child services representative
- evaluating the home life of Jake because he keeps getting in trouble at school (going off on his own and climbing cell towers) and Martin's succession of low-wage jobs can't provide the resources Jake might need

Simon Plimpton

- from London
- sells restaurant supplies around the world
- lost his phone at the Heathrow airport (London), and wants it back because it's the only place he has photos of his daughter, Lily, who died the previous year.

Red threads

Globe-hopping telephone

- belongs to Simon Plimpton from London

• London: Heathrow airport. Simon lost his phone.
• New York City: JFK airport. Martin finds phone and answers when it rings, but he gets interrupted by a call on his own phone from Jake's school. Martin leaves Simon's phone on the luggage carousel.
• Ireland: Niles uses the phone to record singer Kayla Graham. Then he stashes phone in a business man's luggage.
• Tokyo: A girl finds the phone, watches Kayla's video, and starts a fan club. She arranges to have the phone's photos and videos uploaded on screens around the city. Then she passes the phone on to a man traveling to Kuwait.
• Kuwait. (We don't know what happened to the phone, but it ends up in Iraq.)
• Iraq: phone become countdown for a bomb strapped to the boy who needs an over for his mother's bakery

The phone is a red thread connecting Simon Plimpton (the restaurant supplier) to the boy in Iraq (whose mother needs an oven). Bonus: Simon is in Tokyo when the phone's contents go up on the big screens, so he sees the photos of his daughter.

Winning lottery ticket 

- belongs to Randy, the firefighter who tried to save Sarah. The numbers are the details of when and where he found her. He isn't sure that Sarah was dead when he left her during the 9/11 attack, so he played the same lottery number every day and decided if he would win, he would give the money to her family.

• Jake takes the ticket after Randy buys it, copies down the numbers, and then gives it back to Randy.
• Randy tells Martin that Jake should be kept in a cage. Randy punches Martin in the stomach and leaves.
• Martin realizes that Jake's numbers mean something is going to happen at Grand Central Station. He goes there, sees Randy, and they get into a fight.
• Randy misses his train because of the fight. On his way back to his New York apartment, he sees the overturned school bus and rescues the kids on it.

The winning lottery ticket is a red thread connecting Randy (who wants to make up for leaving Sarah behind) to Sarah's family (who need money because Martin's job does not pay enough). Bonus: Jake's predictions set up Randy to be in the right place at the right time to see the overturned school bus. Randy couldn't save Sarah, but he has the opportunity to save a group of kids.

318

- school bus number (and date it overturns)
- fire department badge at Sarah's grave
- alarm clock on Martin's computer
- address of Teller Institute (who knows about children who find mathematical patterns in everything)
- security footage time on each instance that Jake gets caught at school
- Lily died on March 18, the previous year

Pilot Study: Teen Wolf

I noticed that the storytelling and degree of detail varies in pilot episodes of shows, so informally, I've been watching pilot episodes and keeping track of everything we find out in that episode. (Sometimes I also watch and take notes on episode 2 to see what the pilot episode set up and how it's resolved.) These "Pilot Study" posts come from my notes.

Teen Wolf on MTV.com

Teen Wolf - "Wolf Moon" (41 minutes)
Original air date: June 5, 2011

Setting

Modern day, Beacon Hills, CA

Opening

Woods - police cars, policemen with flashlights and dogs, Sheriff
House - music playing, teenage boy (Scott) fixing a lacrosse stick, doing pull-ups, brushing teeth. He hears a noise, grabs a baseball bat, and goes out on the porch. Scott's friend, Stiles, startles him and tells him he heard there's half a dead body in the woods. They go looking for it. The sheriff, Stiles's dad, finds him and walks him back to his car. Scott walks through the woods, finds the dead woman, and gets attacked by a wolf.

Characters

Scott McCall

Main character. After the wolf bite, his asthma goes away, he has better reflexes and agility, and enhanced senses. Love interest: Allison.

Stiles

Scott's best friend. Researches lycanthropy and werewolves after Scott's attack.  Love interest: Lydia.

Allison Argent

New girl in town. Her dad is one of the hunters in the woods that find Derek and Scott.

Lydia Martin

Popular girl, dates Jackson.

Jackson

Popular, rich, jock (captain of the lacrosse team), dates Lydia.

Derek Hale

Werewolf. A few years older than Scott. His family died in a fire ten years ago.

Sheriff Stilinski

Stiles's dad

Scott's mom

Allison's dad

One of the hunters in the woods

Lacrosse coach

Plot

• A werewolf in the woods bites Scott. The wound heals quickly and afterward, Scott has enhanced senses (hearing Allison's heartbeat, smelling the gum in Stiles's pocket), strength (shoving Stiles against the wall), agility, and speed (scoring goals at lacrosse practice).
  
• Police are investigating what happened to the woman's body they found in the woods. Tests revealed that the hair samples on the body are from a wolf. (But there haven't been any wolves in California for decades.)
  
• Scott and Stiles see Derek in the woods, after Derek hasn't been in town for a few years.
  
• Allison accidentally hits a dog with her car and takes it to the veterinary clinic where Scott works. The dog calms down when Scott touches it, and he makes a splint for its broken leg. He asks Allison to go with him to a party on Friday night…
  
• …but Friday night is the full moon. Derek is hanging around in the background of the party, watching Scott. Scott feels sick and goes home. He transforms into a werewolf. Stiles tells him that Allison left the party with Derek, and Scott takes off, believing that Allison is in danger. Stiles goes to Allison's house and sees she's there and safe. Scott finds Derek in the woods. Hunters find them too, and one shoots an arrow into Scott's arm. Derek saves Scott, and Stiles drives Scott back home. The next day, Allison's dad picks Allison up from school, and Scott sees that her dad is one of the hunters from the night before.

Nice touches

• In Scott's English class, they're reading Kafka's Metamorphosis, which connects to Scott's transformation intoto a werewolf.
• Scott's mom says she doesn't want to end up on a reality TV show with a pregnant teen (something like 16 and Pregnant…which airs on MTV, the same network at Teen Wolf).

Pilot Study: Alphas

I noticed that the storytelling and degree of detail varies in pilot episodes of shows, so informally, I've been watching pilot episodes and keeping track of everything we find out in that episode. (Sometimes I also watch and take notes on episode 2 to see what the pilot episode set up and how it's resolved.) These "Pilot Study" posts come from my notes.

Alphas on Amazon Instant Video

Alphas - Pilot (82 minutes)
Original air date: July 11, 2011

Setting

Modern day, New York City

Format

A case every week with a dose of character development

Characters 

Cameron Hicks

Archetype: loner, bad boy vibe, the unwilling hero
Ability: hyper-kinesis, increased sense of balance and hand-eye coordination
Limitation: Buckles under pressure (or does he?)
How we see his ability (camera work or sound editing): no cues for us, just watch him do amazing feats

Gary

Archetype: social outcast, little brother vibe 
Ability: transduction, can see electro-magnetic waves (tech in the air)
Limitation: Underdeveloped social skills, Asperger's Syndrome
How we see his ability: wavelengths as lines floating/running through the air; colorful, translucent tubes; he uses his hands to move info and zoom in; uses grids in real space to organize data (whiteboard, chessboard), or works freely in the air

Bill

Archetype: all business, bossy
Ability: super-strength when fight or flight response is triggered
Limitation: Major headache afterwards, anger issues
How we see his ability: veins in his arm tense, images of synapses firing, forehead sweats, panting for breath

Rachel

Archetype: smart but quiet
Ability: "synesthesia" - she can enhance one sense by muting another one (e.g. enhanced sight --> temporarily deaf)
Limitation: Low confidence, self-esteem issues, except when she's using her ability to help people
How we see her ability: objects glow or give off smoke, her vision zooms in, we hear sounds from her perspective

Nina

Archetype: attractive woman who gets what she wants (but she's emotionally/psychologically damaged)
Ability: can persuade people to do whatever she wants, temporary brainwashing
Limitation: Doesn't work on everyone, seems like she's paying penance for past mistakes
How we see her ability: person focuses on her and everything else fades; voice sounds hollow and echoes

Dr. Lee Rosen

Archetype: guide/comforter
Leader of the Alphas, psychologist/neurologist, bit of a health freak
Does he have a special ability?

Don

Government agent, liaison between Alphas and government
No special ability

Questions

How did the Alphas develop? (Evolution or something else?)
How did the group get together?

Pilot Study: Being Human (U.S.)

I noticed that the storytelling and degree of detail varies in pilot episodes of shows, so informally, I've been watching pilot episodes and keeping track of everything we find out in that episode. (Sometimes I also watch and take notes on episode 2 to see what the pilot episode set up and how it's resolved.) These "Pilot Study" posts come from my notes.

(x)

Being Human (U.S.) - "There Goes the Neighborhood: Part 1"
Original air date: January 17, 2011
"There Goes the Neighborhood: Part 2" aired on January 24, 2011.

Opening

Aidan narrating:

We're all hiding something, aren't we? From the moment we wake, look in that mirror, all we do is spin our little lies. Suck in that gut, colour that hair, twist off that wedding ring. Any why not? What's the penalty? What are the consequences, really? "I'm only human," you say, and all is forgiven. But what if some cruel twist of fate makes you something else, something other? Who forgives you then? Every human spends a night or two on the dark side and regrets it. But what if you only exist on the dark side? We just want the same things that you do: a chance at life, at love. We're not so different in that way. And so we try and sometimes fail. But when you're something other, a monster, the consequences are worse. Much worse. You wake up from your nightmares. We don't. [x]

We see Josh go into the woods. It's a full moon, and he changes into a wolf. Aidan and Rebecca are on a date. Aidan vamps out and kills her.

Characters

- Josh: werewolf, hospital orderly, has a sister (Emily)
- Aidan: vampire, nurse (works in same hospital as Josh), out on a date with Rebecca
- Sally: ghost, had a fiancée Danny (who becomes Josh's and Aidan's landlord)

Setting

Modern day, Boston

Plot

Rebecca is missing. Will the police trace her back to Aidan?
---Resolved: Bishop turns her into a vampire (leads into episode 2)
How and where can Josh transform in a controlled environment?
---Resolved: Hospital basement, but Emily locks herself in there with him! (leads into episode 2)
Is Sally supposed to move on?
Should Josh and Aidan try to have a normal life?
---The first step is renting an apartment together (the apartment where Sally and Danny lived). This question is not resolved in this episode because having a normal life is an on-going goal.

Questions

How did Sally die? (we find out in episode 2)
How did Josh become a werewolf? (answered in episode 2)
How did Aidan become a vampire? (answered in episode 2)
How did Josh and Aidan meet? And how did they find out each other's secret?
When/why did Aidan decide to stop feeding on people?