It’s 48 hours until Sobriety Awareness Day at Green Grove and Phoebe is directing the annual anti-drinking skit, while Sarita, Lacey, and Archie have agreed to act in it. They all signed up for their roles to get out of writing a required essay about drinking and their attitudes show it, as Sarita complains about her feet hurting and Archie can barely get a line out without giggling. Across town at the diner, Danny’s back from an unfulfilling therapy appointment and gets right to talk about ways to get information about Regina. As Rico and Jo aren’t exactly social butterflies and don’t participate in extracurricular activities, their best bet is Lacey, who is extremely connected throughout the school and was Regina’s best friend, meaning that she could have an understanding of her that no one else would. Danny senses that at least a part of her misses him and Jo, so he decides to go in and see just where she’s at with regards to forgiving him and coming aboard the investigation.
The following morning, Tess informs Kyle that she’s no longer renting space for her pottery at a nearby studio and has decided to use their garage for her artistic output. She’ll need him to help her clear some things out, though, and that might be asking too much, considering how obsessed he gets on big cases like Regina’s murder. Jo comes down and tries to suss out any information about the case, such as whether there’s another suspect or not, before heading off to school on her own. She typically drove with her dad every morning, but after hearing from Danny about how she never put herself out there or tried anything new, she decided to alter her routine and walk – which almost makes her late for 1st period, of course.
While Jo is trying to book it to chemistry class, Danny approaches Lacey for the first time since the plan was hatched at the diner, only to be pretty thoroughly rejected and then insulted when Archie arrives and dismisses him from the conversation. Once school starts, Jo makes it to class on time after worrying her lab partner Eloise with her curious absence. However, she makes a major move in gathering information on Regina when Jana demands to switch lab groups after Scott, the guy Danny nearly got into a fight with at Regina’s party, hung out with her and never called. Jo volunteers to join the group, which includes Sarita, thereby disappointing Rico. Later in class, the two meet by the pencil sharpener where Rico complains about being paired with someone who won’t shut up about her love life (and the type of birth control she uses) and Jo reasons that she’s just trying to spread her wings with her earlier impulsive decision.
On the way to work, Kyle pays a visit to Karen and exchanges some small talk before directly asking her about the photo of Tara that was moved during their dinner party. He doesn’t find anything out, though, and Karen tells him that the next time he wants to talk to her, he can do it through her lawyer. When he leaves, she goes over to the table where she keeps the family pictures and notices that he was right – there’s a hole where the picture of Tara should fit.
Danny finds Archie sometime during the school day and tries to reason with him about his friendship with Lacey and how important she is to him. If Danny’s going to get to talk to her on a regular basis again, he’s going to have to go through her boyfriend and from the looks of things, Archie has no intentions of letting him around his girlfriend anytime soon. Even with Danny sincerely telling him that there are no plans to mess his relationship up, Archie coldly refuses to engage or give Danny even an inch of leeway. Meanwhile, Lacey’s gone in to give her statement to Chief Masterson and she fibs by telling him that once she dropped Jo and Danny off, she went home and went to sleep. He doesn’t let her by with it, since Karen told him that she spent the night, and she finally tells the truth, including what little she knows about the necklace Regina got last spring. Interestingly, there’s a six-hour window in Lacey’s statement where she couldn’t act as an alibi for Danny, one Chief Masterson will be looking to explore/exploit from here on out.
Danny makes another attempt at talking to Lacey, only this time she’s the rude one, not Archie. She thinks that he’s the one who told the officer that she stayed the night and curtly orders him to stay the hell out of her life, causing him a lot of confusion that he takes back to Jo. She suggests that maybe he should focus less on being charming and more on being real and appealing to their former friend’s emotions, something that worked on her and turned her around from her earlier attitudes toward him. Another idea then pops into her head: the Sobriety Awareness skit. They’re likely looking for crew members or extras and this would guarantee they’d get a decent amount of time near Lacey, where they could eventually get her alone and try to hash things out. Also motivating Jo is being called a “mole person” earlier by Sarita, in reference to how she tends to keep “underground” rather than putting herself where everyone could see her, and she offers to join Danny in making the effort to be near Lacey.
Helping matters is that Phoebe can’t turn away any volunteers for a school-sponsored event, so while Danny and Jo get accepted onto the staff of the skit, they’re relegated to working in the AV department with control freak Doug. Their presence on the crew, in addition to Danny’s third attempt at charming Lacey, gets under Archie’s skin and he bares his teeth at Danny for both showing up and lying during the speech he made about not being into Lacey like that. The rest of rehearsal doesn’t go well and Sarita even tweets that it’ll be a disaster, which makes Phoebe want to throw in the towel completely. However, Danny offers to re-write the script into something a bit more entertaining and informative and while Phoebe deems it to be a little heavy, she accepts it and reluctantly names him assistant director and Jo the leading lady.
Back at the police station, Tara’s file has been pulled, revealing that the necklace was in her purse when she passed, but there aren’t any pictures of her online. Chief Masterson gets the idea to check out photos from the realtor that listed the Desai home and find one of the table that had the photo of Tara on it. He gets the disc from Bickner Realty the following day, only to learn that the Desais staged the home and rather than their personal photos, placed stock pictures on their living room tables.
Jo, who actually volunteered to take on the role of leading lady, reminisces with Danny outside school about their 4th grade play on photosynthesis and alludes to how much of an impact their conversation in the diner had on her. He assures her that there’s nothing wrong with doing well in school, making her remember that she had a date to study with Rico that evening – that she ended up being really late for. So late that when she finally arrives, giddy about her new role and eager to run lines, Rico’s ticked off and packing up to leave; before he goes, though, he admonishes her lateness by telling her that he thought they cared about the same things and that he can get good grades on his own. Kyle also isn’t making any friends with his behavior, as he unintentionally stood up Tess and the garage cleaning to work on the case. By this point in their marriage, she accepts and expects it, but he still feels bad for doing what he did.
Danny arrives home to find his mother drinking and full of questions about the photo of Tara that he moved. In turn, rather than answering, he asks her about telling Chief Masterson about Lacey and how that might have completely shattered any chance he had of gaining her friendship back, not to mention that it was something he specifically asked her not to do. The following day at school, Sarita is upset due to being written out of the skit and sent to the AV unit with Doug, while Archie thinks that Danny writing a new (and better) script is just an act of manipulation that proves he’s a sociopath after all and quits on the spot, vowing to write the essay instead. That decision could also be due to the new direction of the skit, which will focus less on the anti-drinking message and more about forgiveness after a drinking-related car accident, something obviously written as a metaphor for what Danny’s going through right now. When Archie quits, he even takes over the male lead role and he, Jo, and Lacey are the ones who’ll go on stage after all.
After Scott loudly (and obnoxiously) boos the beginning of the skit, it’s performed quite well and goes over about as well as a mandatory high school assembly skit with an accused murderer could go. The kicker, though, is the planned anti-drinking PSA that Phoebe had planned to show after the skit is now replaced with footage of Jo’s assembly speech from the pilot, only remixed and set to music. Everyone laughs, while Jo is humiliated and leaves the auditorium, followed by Rico. After the assembly lets out, Lacey confronts Sarita about how cruel what she did was to Jo and how Regina wouldn’t have wanted that; Jo, meanwhile, is outside of school and claims to be strangely okay. She apologizes to Rico for ditching him and informs him that she’s not going to go back to the way she was before Danny came around, nor is she going to be the social butterfly that she might want to be. She’s going to find a happy medium because in hiding in the study booth all those years, she became even more scared to be seen by other people and she’s tired of being scared. Rico doesn’t want to lose her and when she suggests that he step out with her, even once in a while, he reminds her of an important chemistry assignment they have that requires some booth time that evening.
Later, Danny finds Archie and tells him that he was right about Lacey not ever being his friend again. While he’s going to accept that, he wants things between him and the soccer player to be at least cordial; he’s tired of being called “freak” or “psycho” every time Archie enters a room while he’s in there. He just wants to fit in with the rest of Green Grove, to which Archie replies is never going to happen. Danny’s going to try, though, by joining the soccer team as a forward, since he used to play, it’ll give him time to soften Archie up, and he’ll blend in better by joining a sports team. When he gets him, though, he finds that Karen is looking through their photo albums and has found no photos of Tara, all of which he destroyed. He argues that he didn’t want them around as a reminder of what he did and that he moved the photo in the living room due to being scared about Chief Masterson and how bad keeping it in the house looked. He urges her to believe him and sensing that he’s sincere, she pledges that she does and the two hug.
At the diner, Rico is again complaining about Jana and mentions that Scott hooked up with her at Regina’s party after she was turned on by him shoving Danny. Jo overheard Scott mentioning during the day that they only hung out once and it was due to him not having his car – the car that Archie borrowed the night of the party. He had told Jo (and Lacey) that he was home resting up for the big game during that time, so why would he need the car?
Kyle is in the garage looking through photos and after seeing a few baby shots of Jo, finds one of a birthday party. That Tara attended. While wearing the necklace.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-Phoebe kind of came into her own this week, right? I thought she was interesting last week, with her false grief that manifested as attention-seeking, and she definitely showed out while directing the skit and having to deal with the likes of Archie and Scott. As a whole, Twisted is much more comical than I expected and she provided the most laughs this week, if only for her “are you trying to ruin my life” and the various facial expressions she had. Perky demon monster, indeed.
-Another comic highlight: Rico faking sharpening his pencil – while his pencil was in his hand.
-I’m glad that there’s something else to Archie aside from “aggressively awful bro-douche.” He’s been extremely grating (and one-dimensional) in every scene thus far, so to have suspicion cast on him (and eventually, the reason he’s so upset at Danny being around) is a nice move that could pay off.
-It’s interesting to see just how much popularity means to Lacey. I mean, she was even willing to lie to the police so people wouldn’t know that she hung out with Danny the night of the party, so the emotional scars that she has from directly after he murdered Tara must be something fierce to pull something risky like that in order to remain “cool”.
-I’m not sure about the timeline of the show, but shouldn’t they be getting Regina’s autopsy soon? The coroner’s report should be quite telling, especially since it’ll confirm/reject the working theory I have that Danny hooked up with Regina, grabbed the necklace without her knowing, and went home, with the murder occurring sometime afterward.
-One thing I appreciate about the show is that it hasn’t tipped it hand about Danny yet. A lot of other shows would have cast doubt in the pilot and then completely undone that during episode two, but Twisted seems to be keeping the possibility that Danny did it (his very dark argument with Karen over her telling Lacey, his blank reaction after they make up at the end of the episode) in its back pocket while working to have us sympathize with him. Either they’re going to do the really risky thing and have Danny actually be the killer, forcing us to examine our loyalties again, or they’re doing a really good long-con and he’ll end up being the hero in all this.
-So, Danny and Lacey almost made out in the hallway. I think I’d be down for that, at this point, if only to see if something like that could provoke Archie enough to showcase enough of a dark side where he could feasibly be the killer. Also, because Danny and Lacey have great chemistry.
–Next week on Twisted: Jo tries to get closer to Regina’s friends at Lacey’s sleepover, while Regina’s mother confronts Karen about Danny and Kyle steps up the investigation.
