At soccer practice, Danny gets both a new position, this time on defense while workout buddy Farrell goes to forward, and a nice surprise when Lacey stands up to Archie when he begins his name calling and defensiveness. Stunned to have her finally telling him how awful the way he talks to Danny is, especially after she rejected his advances on account of him being sweaty, Archie goes to the showers while Danny thanks his friend for doing what she did. Meanwhile, Jo has a dream that night about Danny sneaking into her room like he used to do, questioning her about something she was hiding, and taking his shirt off before ending up on the bed and on top of her.
The following morning, Karen tries to talk to Danny, but he’s very distant from her, as he doesn’t think they have much to say to one another. She then tells him she doesn’t think he killed Regina, which he’s grateful for, and wishes him a good workout with Cole; Karen has her own agenda for the day in a job interview with Bickner Realty and a pilates class, all thanks to her conversation with Tess in the previous episode. Speaking of the Mastersons, their home isn’t doing any better, thanks to Jo’s curfew breaking that resulted in her being grounded. She is allowed to go to PSAT prep that night, though, even with Tess riding her about dropping the attitude she has with Kyle. Before she heads to school, Jo asks her mother about Vik: what was he like, how was he in the months before his death, etc. Being that she hadn’t spoken to him in years, Tess can only give general information (“outgoing”, “fun”) and not much insight into the man who could be involved in Regina’s death.
At school, Lacey has begun bringing up Regina again to Sarita and Phoebe; while the latter seems okay with remembering all of Regina’s boy toys, including the ice dancer who may not have been that type of boy toy, Sarita is annoyed at having to drudge up the type of stuff they’d agreed not to bring up. The three get invited to Phoebe’s brother Tyler’s birthday that night, a cemetery party known as “Drink with the Dead”. Interestingly enough, he also invites Jo, who is too busy being stuck on Danny to notice much else in the world. He asks her to feel the muscle he’s getting from working out with Cole and annoys Rico, still battling his feelings for his best friend, in the process. Once Danny leaves for class, Rico tries to talk Jo out of the crush she has, but not even hearing about Tara or the current murder suspicion can persuade her to feel differently.
After school, Jo goes to the fort where she exchanges information with Lacey. While they couldn’t get anywhere with Tess and Phoebe/Sarita, an interesting hypothesis comes up. What if everything that happened with Vik leading up to, and including, his death wasn’t an accident? The girls think that there’s a chance Vik knew who killed Regina and the person (or people) responsible could have used his death to cover up their crime for good; no longer content with Danny’s evasion tactics, Jo arrives at a new plan: get Danny to tell Lacey why he did what he did to Tara.
Which goes about as well as you’d think. Lovestruck as ever, Danny only wants to talk about the kiss from Fall Fest and gets noticeably upset at what he perceives to be mixed signals from her: standing up for him to Archie followed by bringing up five years ago; kissing him at the Fest followed by not allowing him to be around her in public. Across town, the cops have the park closed for “renovations” as they continue to look for the necklace that could be used to implicate both Danny (for the murder) and Karen (for evidence tampering and accessory). One of Kyle’s co-workers suggests that instead of trying to badger and wear Karen Desai down, maybe Kyle should try to win her over on neutral ground and get her to confide in him. He listens and runs into her at the diner, where the two bond over stories about their kids after Karen’s botched job interview.
At soccer practice, Danny and the others are informed that Cole is out for the game with a bad case of food poisoning. Following a quick trip to Tess’s pottery class, Danny learns that there was a nearly empty bag of mothballs, which can mimic the symptoms of food poisoning if ingested, found in the weight room, meaning that the fingers are being pointed in Danny’s direction. After receiving complaints from the team and fearing for his job, and despite seemingly believing that he didn’t have anything to do with it, coach decides to remove Danny quietly from the team and keep the matter under wraps around school, crushing the boy’s spirit in the process.
When he runs into Jo after the meeting, she tries to get him to talk to her, only to be rejected, and Tyler comes over to ask her to the party. She doesn’t want to go and gets strong-armed into attending by Danny, who wants a night to drink and forget about everything that’s going on in his life. (There’s also the matter of wanting to appear normal rather than drawing any more negative attention to himself.) At the party, Lacey continues to be distant from Archie and refuses to drink before seeing Danny and Jo stroll into the cemetery, the former locking eyes with her almost immediately.
Lacey confronts Jo over Danny arriving at the party and the two agree to meet in 20 minutes behind a tomb away from the party. Jo drags Danny away from what could have been round two in his fight with Archie and Lacey fakes like she has to call her mom in order to get away from a suspicious Sarita and Phoebe, who feels like she’s in a horror movie. Once the three are together, the girls tell Danny that they’re tired of the secrecy and the evasion tactics that have left them as in the dark as they were when he first arrived back from juvie. When he tries to paint himself as the victim over what happened with Archie, Jo blurts out that they know about his dad renting the Connecticut apartment that was on the return address of the envelope. Lacey fills in that they think he could have been having an affair with Regina (or that his death is connected to her death in some form or fashion) and Danny leaves, upset.
Jo catches up with him and he tells her that Tara and Vik hated each other and that she had something that she could have used to tear their family apart, which is why he killed her. As far as why he cares so much about protecting Jo, he thinks that if he keeps her out of the loop, she’ll be safe and since she’s the most important person in his life, he doesn’t want anything to happen to her. He goes on to talk about how being on the soccer team made him feel like his father was still around and how without it, he might have to let him go, something he doesn’t seem to be ready for.
Lacey walks back to the disbanding party and meets with Sarita, who warns her that not only does she know about her friend hanging out with Jo and Danny, she’s forcing Lacey to make a choice between them and her group. Before heading to the diner, Lacey goes to see if Danny is okay and after he expresses a fear of never being happy again due to what he did to Tara, the two share another kiss, this time ending up on the ground of the cemetery. Tara Desai’s grave, to be specific, as Lacey had caught him staring at the tombstone. Weirded out, she gets up and leaves to the diner. Once she gets there, she motions to Archie and takes him outside to break up with him. She then shows up at Danny’s door, assuring him that nobody can know.
At the Masterson house, Jo tells Tess that she may be in love with Danny, while Karen informs her son that while her interview went really bad, she managed to get the job thanks to a last minute recommendation from Kyle. After making up with Tess, Kyle receives a knock on the door. It’s his co-worker Eddie, holding an evidence bag that contains the necklace.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-Lacey kind of killed it this episode, right? I loved seeing her (finally) stand up to Archie’s bullying of Danny and her showing up at Danny’s house at the end was such a good moment. They have some strong chemistry and it’s better for the show the more they’re around each other, both in terms of their ability to bounce off of one another and the impact this could have on Danny’s friendship with Jo. (As well as her friendship with Rico, her relationship with her parents, etc.)
-Although it makes sense that they wouldn’t have talked, I don’t know if I believe Tess when she denies knowing much about Vik. It’s always the characters that seem like they have the least to hide that end up having the most secrets, so keep your eye on her for the rest of the summer season. I’m sensing that she’s more involved in this than what they’re showing.
-I like the dynamic of Jo and Lacey trying to work together and break down Danny’s walls, if only because the fighting would have gotten tiresome after a while. Could Lacey’s decision to break up with Archie have been, at least a little bit, about the opportunity to get closer to Danny and pry information from him? She would have more opportunities to talk to him and earn his trust if they begin sneaking around with one another.
-Alternate recap titles: Wow, I Guess You Have a Soul; Every Party Needs a Socio; Regina and the Gay Ice Dancer; Don’t Be the First Victim.
-Kyle’s conversation with Karen seemed a bit non-subtle for her to not pick anything up on. I mean, telling her about being manipulated by a 4-year-old who loved blueberry pie? C’mon, Karen. You had a bad day, I know, but get it together.
-I have to admit that I’m a little tired of Danny’s secrecy re: Tara’s death. I know we’re only seven episodes in, but it feels like they’ve had the same conversation 100 times and that this is too much writer manipulation. Hopefully they’ll disclose, at least to the audience, what Tara could have had that would have destroyed the family.
-For the record, Danny and Lacey making out on the grave of the woman he killed is the greatest scene in the history of television.
-Next week on Twisted: Danny deals with masked pranksters and an increasing feeling of loneliness, while Jo goes on a date with Tyler and Kyle steps up the pressure on Karen.
2 Comments
Great review! I like the alternate re-cap titles. And OMG – yes, that graveyard makeout scene was pretty of hot in a “twisted” way! Btw, Danny wanted to go to Tyler’s party because Lacey would be there (based on advice by Tess to just hang around whatever girl he liked). And yes, I completely agree Lacey killed it in this episode – her character is developing by leaps and bounds.
I think Tara knew that Vik was Jo’s father.