Twisted Episode 6 Recap: The Confusing Blackmail Note Wins

One day after school, Danny, Jo, and Lacey meet at the fort to talk about the envelope, which leads to a random apartment in the middle of Connecticut. The only possible connection that they know Regina had to the state was a boy toy she kept to herself, so they’re still very much in the dark. While Jo and Lacey snipe at one another over texting and what to do with the envelope, the question of their next move comes up. They could either take the information immediately to the police and hope that it’s enough to get the heat off of Danny, or they can continue digging into the identity of the sender themselves. Lacey wants more time to decide how to play this and when she leaves the fort, Danny gets on to Jo about how hard she’s being on her former best friend.

Once the trio disperse, Danny goes home and finds that the necklace has been removed from his father’s chair by Karen, who he attacks over her alleged deceit. She claims to have moved it to help him, while he thinks that he needs the necklace to help prove that he didn’t kill Regina; he lies to her, though, when he says that someone had left it in his locker at school and gets offended when she uses the word “if” regarding his innocence. Meanwhile, Jo talks to Rico at school the following day and things are awkward between the two, as he wants to mention what he saw at the park, only to back away when Jo comments that Danny being guilty would devastate her. When Danny tries once again to get Lacey to think about taking their evidence to the police, this time without Jo, the two stumble upon the possibility of going to Connecticut and straight to the address on the envelope. They decide to meet at 8:00 before going on the road trip, Jo soundly rejecting the idea as being “stupid” and something that would get her in deep trouble with Kyle. Lacey, of course, doesn’t care about that and leaves, with Danny assuring his friend that breaking the terms of his parole by going across state lines isn’t a big deal.

Danny texts Jo about going and she ultimately decides to join the road trip, but her inability to lie well nearly gets her in trouble with Kyle before Tess saves her; however, she still has to sneak out when Kyle heads down to the station for late night work on the case. While Danny gets into another near-argument with his mother over going out with Lacey, something she approves of but doesn’t lessen the tension from earlier, Lacey is told she has to have the car back by 11:00, the tension noticeably rising once Jo gets into the vehicle.

Kyle and Tess find out fairly quickly that Jo isn’t studying up in her room and go into panic mode, trying to contact Rico and any other person who would have information on where their daughter could be. Karen drops by and mentions that Danny and Lacey went out for a drive, which Jo could have joined in on and isn’t technically a lie, since they’re in the car and on the road. The only difference is that instead of cruising around Green Grove, they’re on their way to Connecticut and surprisingly, Danny’s goofy charm (and nostalgia for the days of when they were all friends) manages to get everybody in a good mood. Unfortunately, that doesn’t last long when old issues flare up while the conversation topic is on a 4th sledding trip, resulting in a lot of long faces and plenty of awkward silences.

Unfortunately for Jo, Rico isn’t much of a liar, either, and Kyle goes to the school, open late on Tuesdays for study purposes, to talk to him about where she could be. He texts Jo, who only responds with “are you with my dad?”, and Kyle leaves without knowing where to find her at. At the Masterson home, Tess and Karen are catching up and talking about their kids (they think they’re lucky to have one another again), the latter’s marriage to Vik (who drank quite a bit and had a temper), and the former’s pottery ability. Karen still has a vase in her living room that Tess made and the two wind up going into Tess’s art studio so that Karen can learn how to make something like her former friend does.

The road trip isn’t going quite as well, since Jo and Lacey can’t quite making snarky comments to one another and finding offense in everything the other says. Eventually, Danny has enough and makes Lacey pull the car over under the guise of hearing something wrong in the back. He gets both girls to get out of the car and locks himself inside, telling them that he won’t let them out of the freezing cold until they apologize to one another. Danny’s cajoling turns to out to work; after some initial resistance, Jo and Lacey apologize to one another and the three continue their journey to Connecticut, but not before the past (including Lacey dropping Jo as her friend in middle school) gets brought up again. At the same time that Rico arrives at the police station to “hang out” with Kyle, Tess and Karen are bonding over their memories while making a pot; Tess assures Karen that it’s okay for her to still be grieving six months after Vik’s death, while we learn that Tess used to date Vik before Vik got together with Karen and that the artist has a stash in her home that not even Kyle knows about.

Danny, Jo, and Lacey reach Silver Sky Apartments where they inquire about room 413. The security guard becomes noticeably irritated by their questioning and asks them to vacate the premises, causing Jo and Lacey to have it out in the parking lot over the failed plan to show the envelope to the guard being Jo’s. Jo then brings up one of the main sources of her animosity toward her former friend: Amber Klein’s 13th birthday party, where she was the only one out of their entire class that didn’t receive an invite. The reason? Lacey claimed that she would ruin the party and asked Amber personally to avoid inviting her. Lacey says that Jo became incredibly difficult to deal with following what happened with Danny, feeling the need to constantly rehash the incident and her feelings about it, and that she only wanted to have fun rather than dealing with a perpetual victim; Jo accuses her of putting popularity and status ahead of someone she claimed to be her best friend, as she deliberately cut down a person who weighed down her chances at glory. The two then go their separate ways, leaving Danny to pick up the pieces.

Karen and Tess, now high from Tess’s stash, continue making the pottery and the talk quickly turns to a St. Patrick’s Day party that happened their sophomore year. Tess lets it slip that she and Vik were sneaking off to the closet several times that night, something that causes the entire evening to grind to a halt due to the fact that Vik was with Karen then. Karen then leaves after feeling overwhelmed at the new information. Meanwhile, Rico brings up the necklace to Kyle and asks whether it’s the only lead they have and if they checked everywhere during the raid. Kyle inquires as to why he’s asking so many questions about the investigation, knowing that they can’t talk about it, and Rico mentions that if what he thinks he knows turns out to be true, it could potentially devastate Jo. Kyle mentions the fact that Rico could be charged for withholding evidence if he chooses not to say anything now and that if he doesn’t, there’s a chance that Jo could be physically harmed rather than simply emotionally harmed. Rico leaves before saying anything incriminating about Danny and Karen.

Being that the back and side doors are locked, Danny doesn’t know how he’ll get inside without the security guard noticing, but he manages to find a way in and makes it up to room 413. He opens the door, which isn’t locked, and finds an empty apartment; he also finds the security guard, who shows up shortly after he gets inside and takes him downstairs to hold him on suspicion of breaking and entering. While Danny quickly texts Lacey to tell her about his situation, she’s busy apologizing for Amber Klein’s party to Jo, who laments that “all friendships aren’t meant to last forever” before heading inside to help save Danny. The two notice that the security guard is gone and Jo takes the opportunity to look at the building directory on the computer and find the name of the occupant in 413. The name? Vikram Desai.

Danny tries to convince the security guard to let him go and seems to consider killing him with a letter opener while his back is turned, but he has to be rescued by Jo and Lacey. The two claim that he’s actually looking for another resident in 431 and accidentally inverted the numbers. The guard lets them go and they head back to Green Grove, though neither Jo nor Lacey tells Danny about the possibility that his father played a role in Regina’s death. Back in town, Karen comes back to the Masterson house to apologize for her reaction and continue making her pot, while Rico returns to the police station to confess to seeing Karen throwing the necklace in the water.

Additional thoughts and observations:
-Hopefully Jo and Lacey are able to coexist now that they’ve survived the road trip and put (some of) their issues out on the table. Even if they aren’t tearfully hugging one another and apologizing for the past five years of awkwardness, they might understand each other better now, which could make it possible for them to be in the same room without verbally assaulting one another. I will say, though, that I absolutely loved the show naming specific incidents that got between them and allowed them to confront one another about the tension that had been building for five years. So much so that part of me wishes that the entire episode had been the road trip.
-A weird problem I had with the episode was people leaving a place and coming back multiple times: Rico and the police station, Karen and the Masterson home. It felt like awkward writing for some reason.
-More evidence that Danny could be a sociopath: the ease within which he lied to his mother about the necklace and the lingering glance he gave the letter opener while the guard called the police. The latter was a quick moment but one that I couldn’t help but live, given the moral implications of having the show’s romantic lead think about killing somebody to avoid going back to juvie. Twisted will have to tip its hand regarding whether Danny killed Regina and whether he’s a sociopath in the near future, but I enjoy the push-pull of having us sympathize with him and showing him exhibiting signs of sociopathy.
-So there’s a possibility that Vik was cheating on Karen with Regina. She had someone in Connecticut that she didn’t want to talk to her friends about, he’s shown a penchant for not being faithful to his wife and a temper that might not be able to be controlled - but could Danny have known this and killed Regina to keep her silent and avoid sullying the name of the father he looked up to so much? Or is there a chance that (a still-alive) Vik hired someone to take Regina out?
-Now that Rico has spilled the beans, how long will it be before Jo knows that her father knows the whereabouts of the necklace? If Kyle gets the necklace, what will Danny do when he finds out that Rico was the one who tried to put him away for good? Are we going to see a darker version of Rico emerge over the second half of the season, assuming that Jo sticks closely to Danny despite everything that’s going on?
-I didn’t like that they failed to show how Danny got into the building. A very minor detail, of course, but when you make a point to say that certain doors are locked, it’d be nice to see what steps he took to get past the guard and into the building.
-The last two episodes have felt like the story was really ramping up. Yes, we’re still on the necklace, but a lot more information surfaced thanks to the Fall Fest and road trip, so I can imagine that things can only go up from here. I have no idea where the story is going or what type of twists we can expect, the type of flying blind that can be exciting television but also scary, in that things could very easily take a turn for the worse.
-Next week on Twisted: Phoebe’s brother holds a party at the cemetery, while Lacey and Jo press Danny on the secrets he’s been keeping, Rico confronts Jo about her obsession with the case, and Karen’s failure at a job interview might be the opening that Kyle needed.