Lacey and Danny’s make out session gets interrupted when he receives a text from Jo about Vik’s body being found. After getting Lacey to stay put, he rushes to meet Jo in the woods and the two sojourn to the cliff that Vik fell from; though Danny laments the fact that a normal life wasn’t in the cards for him, he has bigger worries when he sees that Vik’s body has been moved. It turns out that the body had already been recovered by the police at a different location, the result of an apparent car crash. Danny learns this when he returns home and immediately goes to the morgue with Karen, where she identifies the body and tells her son about the life insurance policy that Vik had on himself. She suggests, though, that he initially faked his death in order to get the money.
Danny climbs through Jo’s window and the two wonder who could have moved the body and whether the person responsible is a friend wanting to protect them from the long arm of the law or a foe looking to blackmail them into doing their bidding. The following morning, Jo heads to the diner to get Kyle coffee and chats with Rico and Andie, still on a collective Homecoming high, before running into Charlie, who expresses his sympathies for Danny. When Jo brings the coffee back to Kyle’s office, she asks why he never came home and about Vik’s body already being ready for burial; though Kyle isn’t fully convinced that what happened was an accident, he notes that since there’s no evidence of foul play, he cannot legally do anything to stop the burial. He then tells an increasingly curious Jo that if she’s so concerned about the fight that she walked into between he and Tess, she should speak to her mother.
Tess is already busy, though, being chewed out by Karen. After she brought a condolence casserole to the Desais, Tess confessed to knowing that Vikram was alive this whole time, causing Karen to blow up at her, kick her out of the house, and throw the casserole at her. Meanwhile, Danny and Lacey watch as Vik gets buried, the second time Danny’s lost his father in six months, and he reiterates that he can’t tell people the truth about what happened with Tara because there’s no way anybody would believe him, not with the only witness dead. Elsewhere, Jo returns home and asks Tess about what she did to draw Kyle’s ire; Tess decides to be honest and informs her daughter that she knew Vikram was alive, something that, had she been honest about, could have changed so many people’s lives. Tess assures Jo that she never meant to hurt anyone, that she only had a phone number for him and never an address, and that she and Vikram are just friends in a similar situation to her and Danny – two people who have been through everything together and who were the only people the other could trust at one point.
At the Desais, Danny tries to get Karen to forgive Tess, citing that Vik is notoriously manipulative and that it’s not her fault that he forced her into helping him. However, Karen wants nothing to do with her former friend and has instead focused her attention on the insurance agent who arrived at the door looking for signatures. She’s surprise, though, to find that he wants signatures from both she and her son, as Vikram changed the life insurance policy so that it’s now in the form of a trust for Danny. Later, Karen researches the trust, which has to be used strictly for Danny’s welfare until he hits 18, and he assures her that she doesn’t have to clear every purchase and transaction with him. He promises to not take her to court about the money and mentions that she should treat it as her own. However, Danny’s forced to deal with a different type of tension at school, with word spreading quickly that his family came into money. He mostly gets a lot of looks in the hallway and the occasional bum for money, along with an apology from Charlie about everything that happened.
While Kyle goes to the junk yard and curiously notes that the passenger side window of the car Vikram was in was rolled down, unusual for the type of weather they’ve been having, Danny goes to lunch with Jo, Andie, Rico, and Charlie, where he’s immediately bombarded by suggestions of buying a plane and setting up charities. He notes that he doesn’t even want the money anyway and when Andie mentions all the good it could do, he purchases tickets to the charity auction Tess is throwing for the Children’s Burn Foundation. Also putting the insurance money to use is Karen, who went on a bit of a shopping spree upon getting Danny’s permission to use the money as her own. When he arrives home from school, failed exam in hand, she’s too excited to show him the laptops and clothes that she bought, one dress in particular penciled in for the charity auction. He notices that she also bought a diamond bracelet and when he questions her enthusiasm for shopping at the expense of a dead man, she reminds him not to feel guilty, that the real Vikram was a bad man who got what he deserved.
Danny and company arrive at the charity auction and he’s continually approached by people looking to handle his finances, all the while Karen works the room in her new dress. The auction, where Andie acts as assistant, kicks off and Danny takes Jo outside to tell her his suspicions that Karen was the one behind cleaning up the accident. She knew exactly how much she would get if Vik was declared dead; she has Jack under her thumb to help move the body; she’s extremely enthusiastic about spending the money; and the night after he and Jo came back from the woods, she couldn’t get him home quickly enough. If she gets caught, he argues, it would be his fault and he promptly goes inside the auction and bids $10,000 on a painting, looking Karen dead in the eyes afterwards. With everything wrapping up, Charlie approaches Jo again trying to make her smile with his dancing, this time to no avail. The two talk about how destructive secrets can be and he advises her to not obsess or let whatever she’s carrying around with her destroy her sense of fun and appreciation for life. He invites her to go skip rocks, which she accepts, while Rico gives Andie a $53 donation that she’s extremely moved by and Danny laments the fakeness of events like this to Lacey. She tries once more to get him to speak up about whatever it is that’s torturing him and he once again opts to leave her out of the loop.
Tess returns home and Kyle asks her if she knew who was targeting Vikram. She doesn’t and reiterates that she and Vik were not romantically linked; the reason she lied was that she felt like she owed him after her helped her through a rough time in her life. Said rough time? She had a baby girl by another man while she and Kyle were broken up. Vik ended up finding the family to adopt the girl into and paying for all the expenses, while Tess held on to the secret due to her feelings of shame and insecurity at how it would impact her relationship with Kyle. While Karen tells Jack that she’s done being a town pariah before he leaves after dropping her off, Danny returns home and confronts her about the act that she’s putting on. He then confesses to killing Vikram.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-Rico’s schmoopiness with Andie: cute, endearing, and much deserved or an annoying waste of an interesting character?
-Charlie’s “watch where you’re going” at the diner felt like a big neon signing with the words “DON’T TRUST THIS GUY” emblazoned on it. He’s a little mustache twirl-y, but I think he could have been greatly redeemed if he was the baby that Tess gave up for adoption and this season of Twisted turned into something much darker as a result. You could also fanwank that Tess was lied to about the sex of the baby and that Charlie’s time in juvie held him back at least a grade, making up for the age/grade discrepancy between him and Jo. I don’t think the show would do something like that, not when they’re cleared away a lot of the darkness found in the summer episodes, but having his motivation be familial vs. romantic would make him a more interesting (and dangerous) character to have around.
-Related question: who do you think will end up being Jo’s sibling? Charlie is my crackpot theory, but I could see it being, say, Jack’s daughter Whitney, since he and Vikram were close.
-For all the reasons Danny mentioned, it makes sense that Karen would be the one to move the body, but her reaction to his confession at the end of the episode makes me think that she had nothing to do with it and that he just opened up a can of worms. Karen’s fondness for wealth was established before Vik’s body was found, as were the Desai financial problems, and you could argue that her thirst for her husband’s blood was as much in retribution for the hell Danny had been put through as it was for the money the family would come into. I will say, though, that her reaction to finding out about the changes in the life insurance policy, as well as her rush to get the case wrapped up, won’t let me rule her out completely.
-I do like that the show is bringing Karen under the microscope, shaking Danny’s emotional foundation and calling into suspicion everything he thought he knew about his mother. But if she and Jack weren’t responsible for covering up the accident, who could be the culprit?
-For some reason, the show feels smaller this season. I know we have new additions in Andie, Charlie, and Jack, but with Marilyn arrested, Gloria vanishing after her confession, Lacey’s mom MIA, Archie and Scott expelled, and Phoebe and Sarita no longer in with Lacey, the show’s more compact and I don’t know if it’s for the better. A show like this can thrive on a claustrophobic atmosphere and the intimacy of relationships between its characters, but Twisted has made a point to use Green Grove as a plot device, an influence on Danny’s behavior and mental state, and something like that isn’t as effective with a smaller (and more scattered) supporting cast.
-Popsicle bird houses are not worth $75. Stop it, Green Grove.
-Next week on Twisted: Jo runs for student body president, while Danny feels like he’s being haunted by Vikram and Jack’s daughter Whitney returns to town from boarding school.
1 Comment
Thanks again for a terrific re-cap — appreciate the skillful way you synthesize all the details into a full yet succinct summary.
I think Andie and Rico were cute together… but really added very little to the plot and took time away from needed Lacey screen time – she’s become nothing but a love interest in the past two episodes.
I’m guessing Charlie will not be such a good guy – his pursuit of Lacey, then Jo, Danny’s best friends, combined with his shared secret with Danny definitely lend him an untrustworthy air. Tess claims the baby she gave up was a girl, so unless she was lying (or had been lied to), it can’t be Charlie. That leaves Whitney, whose blonde hair perhaps points to a resemblance to Jo. Or it could be some unknown character to be revealed during the season finale.
Its possible that Jack is covering up the murder (he told Karen he’d do anything for her, and protecting her son from a murder rap might fall under that claim). Or it could be Charlie – he said he owed Danny. Or Tess – she’s been hiding multiple secrets already.
OMG, yes, I totally agree – the show seems to have lost half the town. What happened to Cole, Phoebe, Tyler, Sarita, Jana? And will Archie and Scott return from their suspension? Even Doug and Eloise should have made an appearance by now. And all the parents are regularly part of each episode except Lacey’s. How Green Grove reacts to a murderer (or suspected as the case turned out) in their midst was one of the key themes of this show, so this is all a bit disconcerting.
Lastly, I don’t know about you, but I have been underwhelmed by the heavy-handed inclusion of Jo in nearly every single scene and plot point. Its as if nothing can happen in Green Grove w/out her (or the Mastersons’) involvement, and its been feeling increasingly unbalanced to have her POV be prioritized when there are 3 leads. Allegedly.