Early one morning, Jo arrives at the station with the intent of talking to her father. She gets to see him and asks about someone lying about their alibi, which he interprets as her way of worrying about Lacey having lied to him in her statement; it turns out, though, that she brings up Archie’s name and the fact that his alibi doesn’t check out with what she knows about Scott lending his car out the night of the party. Kyle doesn’t make much of what his daughter says and informs her that Archie Yates is not a suspect at this time before sending her off to school.
Ironically, Archie has to worry less about the police looking into the inconsistencies in his statement and more about unintentionally incriminating himself to Lacey at school, since he tells her that he’s going out with the team that night to blow off steam before their game. She calls him on his pre-game resting from the night Regina was killed and he scrambles to come up with an excuse, deciding on the fact that that game was an away game and this is a home game. Before Danny headed off to school that day, he stumbles upon Karen having a flashback triggered by being around the chair Vik used to watch soccer in, a memory that is as bittersweet as they come. She encourages him to be confident in his first practice that afternoon and he seems to soak that in, as he mentions to Jo that once the team sees how good he is, they’ll accept him as one of their own. Though Danny is excited about the chance to finally have male friends again, he’s reminded, that he has to make them like him before he’ll be accepted.
Karen runs into Tess while at the supermarket and since they haven’t interacted following the dinner party, things are quite awkward. Not helping matters is the fact that people are staring and whispering about Karen being out in public, causing her to leave. Also having a tense interaction are Jo and Lacey, who run into one another that afternoon outside a bakery. Before things can get too bad, though, Lacey’s mother Judy comes out with cupcakes for a sleepover her daughter’s having with Phoebe and Sarita. She invites Jo to come along and while Jo initially declines, she decides to join the party when it’s clear Lacey’s uncomfortable with the idea. Danny’s first practice is also pretty uncomfortable; while Scott is the one to make the first disparaging remark toward him, garnering a 5-lap penalty in the process, Farrell won’t engage with him and Archie is back calling him a freak.
When Jo and Rico go shopping for party food, she ultimately decides on bringing candy corn and tries to get him to spend some time alone with Danny while she’s away with Lacey. She knows how much Danny misses having guy friends and how he would feel left out sometimes hanging out with her and Lacey and while he isn’t exactly comfortable with the idea, Rico ends up following through on the idea and hanging out with Danny at the diner. Jo goes home and begins digging through her clothes looking for something girly to wear to the sleepover, deciding on a shirt with a black cat that Phoebe calls a demon and Sarita refers to as a fetus. Before Jo arrived, Regina’s mother Gloria stops by with a box of her daughter’s things from school and offhandedly makes note that she thinks Danny is the one responsible for the murder.
The party itself isn’t as bad as it could have been, but anytime Lacey’s not in the room (or Jo tries to be more sociable than she naturally is), it takes a turn for the worse, particularly when Sarita reveals her movie choices (We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Bad Seed, The Good Son, The Omen). After playing board games, Jo suggests they watch something and Phoebe brings out her (sing-a-long) copy of Grease, but Jo’s mind is elsewhere once she finds out that Lacey has a box of Regina’s things and that it hasn’t been opened yet. Meanwhile, Danny and Rico head to the diner the evening after another soccer practice, which saw him winning over Farrell with his play and earning a starting spot in the game to be played tomorrow. Rico hates awkward silences and tries to fill the air with anything, only for Danny to calm him down and give him his first fist bump. The evening takes a turn when Archie, Farrell, Scott, and other members of the team come into the diner for their night out, disappointing Danny that he wasn’t invited to. Rather than sneaking out the back per Rico’s suggestion, he goes right up to them and when they offer for him to hang out, rejects them outright to hang with Rico.
That night, when the girls were asleep, Jo tries to sneak over and peek inside the box, only for Lacey to wake up and think she was getting candy. The two talk and share a laugh over how badly Phoebe snores before the subject turns to Danny, who ended up trying to crash one of their childhood sleepovers due to feeling left out. Jo confirms that their friendship is extremely different than it was, but that Danny talks about Lacey a lot and misses her deeply. Later, Jo makes another go at the box and succeeds this time, finding a notebook with a picture of Josh Hutcherson, a framed photo of Regina and Lacey, and a CD case titled Archie’s Greatest Hits. Jo puts the disc into the computer and sees that it’s a montage of Archie playing soccer with compliments about his appearances inserted in, possibly meaning that he and Regina had something going on behind Lacey’s back. She takes the DVD and puts it in her bag, but not before Sarita sees what happened.
The following day is the first soccer match that Danny will play in at Green Grove and to assure that it goes well, he approaches Archie and proposes that for the duration of the match, they hate the other team more than they hate each other. Archie seems to go along with it and the Grizzlies go into the half leading 1-0 thanks to a goal from Danny. While Jo encourages Danny to score more goals, Sarita tells Lacey that something was taken from the box; as the game turns south for Green Grove due to Archie’s insecurity about Danny being the reason they were doing well, Lacey goes to confront Jo about what exactly she took. Jo rationalizes that she took the DVD due to the possibility of its contents hurting Lacey, only briefly touching on the inconsistent alibi, but that doesn’t matter right now, as Lacey’s upset at the violation of her privacy and storms off. The Grizzlies end up losing the game 2-1 when Archie refuses to pass the ball to a wide open Danny in the closing moments of the game and drills a shot right into the goalie’s hands.
In the locker room, Archie tries to give a speech about the loss; unfortunately for him, no one’s trying to hear what he has to say, since he lost them the game. Danny goes as far as bringing up the alibi from the party and getting Archie to admit that he wasn’t at home resting for the impending away game. He says that he was meeting with a coach from another school whose soccer team consistently goes to the state tournament, further losing his team’s confidence. Meanwhile, Karen arrives at the charity brunch that Tess invited her to and that Judy helped put on as a favor to Gloria, who was too upset about her daughter to handle that type of responsibility. Karen seeing Gloria for the first time since Regina died is tense but coolly cordial and she spends some time talking with Tess and Judy about the good results of the sleepover, which brought back memories of better times for all of them. Not wanting to leave well enough alone, Ms. Desai goes over to the bar and extends her support to Gloria at such a difficult time. It ultimately backfires and Gloria dresses Karen down for her “deranged monster” of a son and pledges to have him kicked out of Green Grove High and into a state prison, where she says he belongs.
If that wasn’t enough humiliation for one day, Karen’s visited by Kyle with a search warrant approved by Judge Davis. Nothing turns up, though, and they leave, with the house in shambles and needing to be put back together again. Meanwhile, Archie confesses to Lacey that the DVD was something Regina made to give to her uncle, the dean at the school he was trying to get into; she was going to do her best to pull the strings necessary to get him on the team and onto the team. It had nothing to do with romance or cheating and Lacey badly wants to believe him. For now, though, she accepts what he has to say. She later runs into Jo at school and hears that her former friend is just now getting her life back following Danny’s murder of Tara. And she’s not willing to let it go this time after five years of not having it.
Tess goes to see Karen and apologizes for the ambush, stating that she didn’t have any knowledge that Gloria would be there. Karen accepts and informs her what her husband did before beginning to pick up the pieces that he left on the ground. She was initially going to wait for Danny to come home, as he’s off at the diner with Rico and Jo, but she finishes and sits down in Vik’s old soccer chair. She puts her hand on the cup holder and notices that it’s slightly propped up. When she removes it, she sees that the necklace was shoved in there.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-I like that they’re not letting Vik’s death turn into a minor plot point. It could have very easily been a passing reference and a way for Karen and Danny to stay in town, but this episode used it to show just how surrounded and defined by death Danny’s life has been.
-Judy’s Beyoncé homage outside the bakery was cute. Also, how great does Robin Givens look?
-Another thing I liked: getting the sense of how Danny’s friendship with Lacey and Jo was before he killed Tara, e.g. the details of him feeling left out from their sleepovers and the longing he had for guy friends after his time in juvie. Their connection has been my favorite part of the show thus far and the deeper they make it, the more interesting the mystery elements become.
-Shows like this thrive on tension, but I don’t know if Twisted has had a more tense moment that Jo going back to the box for a second time. I assumed that Lacey would be the one to wake up, but having it be Sarita deflate her friend’s happiness at reconnecting with Jo made it a more impactful scene. It was nice to see that Lacey does actually still care about her former friend, though.
-Do you believe Archie’s story about meeting with the coach and Regina using her connections to help him? I’m more liable to believe the first than the second, though I don’t know if I truly believe either, seeing as how he’s not exactly the most trustworthy character on the show.
-I’d really like for the show to fill us in soon-ish on why exactly Danny killed his aunt. I’m all for ongoing mysteries, but if they drag it out too much, this could very easily turn into Pretty Little Liars levels of wheel-spinning and I don’t welcome that whatsoever.
–Next week on Twisted: Danny’s presence at the annual fall festival causes an uproar in Green Grove, while Jo questions the significance of the necklace in the investigation and Lacey approaches Gloria for information.
