Twisted Episode 9 Recap: The Closeted Father in the Pantry with the Gymnastics Coach

Danny, Lacey, and Jo arrive at the police station, where Karen is being held after confessing to the murder of Regina Crane. As Kyle has 48 hours to confirm her story before he’s legally obligated to charge her, he gets her to tell him about the night of the murder, though there are some holes in her story. While she does have the motive to kill the young girl, after finding out about her cheating with Vik, and knows about the location of the body and the cause of death, she can’t recall the murder weapon and gives conflicting reasons why that is. She requests to talk to Danny and once she’s alone in the interrogation room with him, she urges him to use this opportunity to be a teenager and to experience the life that he was denied while being in juvie.

The problem is Kyle doesn’t believe her story and without any concrete evidence to charge her for the murder (the necklace dumping would only get her an obstruction of justice charge), he’ll have to let her go after the 48 hours are up. Another thing holding up the chances of him buying into Karen’s confession is the text; after receiving no help from Danny in terms of connecting Karen to Regina, Kyle tells the boy that since his mother will be holed up for the next couple of days, he won’t be allowed to stay by himself. Therefore, he’s bunking at the Mastersons for two days. While Danny packs, Lacey tries to get him to think about telling Kyle of the letter and the money as a way of proving that neither he nor Karen could have been the one responsible for Regina’s death. He ultimately agrees to putting all of their cards on the table and while Kyle is a little upset at the kids withholding evidence from him, the crushing blow comes when he reveals that should Karen be formally charged, Danny would have to live with his next of kin in Arizona.

Danny goes back to visit Karen and tells her that he doesn’t want to end up in Arizona, although she would rather him be with his grandmother than in prison for Regina’s murder. Before he can inform his mother of the new evidence that could help the both of them out, Kyle interrupts and does the dirty work for Danny, showing Karen the money/envelope and telling her about the apartment in Connecticut. She claims that Vik never went there, which frustrates Chief Masterson, since he won’t be able to actually solve the case if she doesn’t retract her confession. Meanwhile, across town, Rico and Jo are at the diner, where he’s attempting to convince her that maybe Danny leaving would be a good thing in terms of helping her getting over him; elsewhere, Lacey’s father has arrived in town early from Seattle to celebrate her sister Clara’s 13th birthday and things are already rather tense, as he’s already at odds with her mother over the unscheduled arrival and Clara not being home to welcome him.

Kyle finds out that there’s nothing in any of Vik’s estate records about an apartment in New York and sends Eddie to Bristol to acquire any information he can find, as Chief Masterson has to present his case to the DA soon. He gets a major break, though, when Danny approaches him the following morning and confesses to being the one Karen got the necklace from. Granted, Danny doesn’t come completely clean about the necklace’s origins, only stating that he found it the day after Regina died, but right now, Kyle would rather focus on proving that Karen wasn’t behind Regina’s murder so he can let her go and put his attentions elsewhere. The two come up with the idea for Danny to check his mother’s computer – specifically, her home shopping internet history – in order to place her in the Desai home at the time of the murder.

While in holding and talking to Tess, Karen has a flashback to when the two were hanging out sometime when Danny was 10 and she made a comment about how she wishes she had a daughter due to Danny and Vik’s father-son activities being over her head. At Clara’s party, Jo and Lacey arrive and the former quickly goes to work to soothe the tensions since the morning, using a story about a past Easter get together to draw a laugh from both of Lacey’s parents. Later on, Lacey sends Jo to the pantry for some napkins, where she finds Lacey’s father Samuel making out with Mitch, Clara’s gymnastics teacher. Mitch quickly scuttles away and Jo grills Samuel about whether Judy and Lacey know (they don’t) and why he’s leading double lives in Seattle and Green Grove (it’s easier). She then tells him that no matter what he could say, do, think, or feel, Lacey would love him regardless and that he owes it to his daughter to tell her that the divorce wasn’t her fault like she thinks it was.

Danny finds Karen’s laptop at home and searches through the history with Kyle. Unfortunately, there’s nothing there that could tie her home the night of the murder (the closest is history from 8:00 a.m. that morning), but in her trash folder, she has incriminating pictures of Principal Tang. He gets an idea and calls in the Principal to meet him at the school; he tells Tang that he knows about the photos and won’t leak them/make them known to the public if he provides Karen with an alibi for the time of the murder. Tang’s not one to be pushed around, though, and he reminds Danny that Karen is the only reason he’s still enrolled at Green Grove High. Due to their relationship, the principal went to bat for Danny multiple times with the school board and has fended off increasingly loud rumors that he quit the soccer team due to poisoning a teammate, in addition to looking the other way during the first Archie fight that had nearly everyone calling for an expulsion. As such, Tang says that he’ll keep trying to silence those who insist that Danny left for reasons that weren’t exactly personal as long as the photos themselves don’t see the light of day.

Back in holding, Karen has another memory, this time of trying to apologize to Danny after he heard her mention wanting a daughter. However, he’s very angry about hearing that and basically tells her that she doesn’t love him and she never has; she only loves her friends and the parties she goes to. At Clara’s, Jo lets it slip that Samuel is gay, causing Lacey to confront her father and force her mother into talking to him about the revelation. However, Lacey’s not upset at Jo telling the secret; she’s mostly grateful that her former friend showed up, unlike Phoebe or Sarita, and hopeful that having everything out in the open could cause him to visit more than twice a year.

While sulking in the hallway, Danny runs into Rico, who is at school for mathlete practice. Danny tries to tell him that it’s okay that he went to Chief Masterson when Rico enlightens him on just what Karen has sacrificed for her son, wondering aloud about whether his own mother would do the same for him. He then goes to the police station and talks his mother into retracting her confession, citing the fact that he needs her now more than ever and telling her that he considers her to be a good mother to him. The two embrace and Karen makes it home, where she has one final flashback – this time of Vik arriving home while she was drinking and informing her that he would be away in Connecticut for a couple of days. And that she was to lie and tell people that he was in Manhattan. Meanwhile, Kyle has his second big break of the episode when he finds out that the rent on the Connecticut apartment wasn’t paid from a personal bank account; it was paid from a business account registered to Marna, Inc., the same account that had two grand taken out two days before Regina’s murder. But who could have access to the account itself? Vik?

Later, Kyle’s trying to research Marna and finds a realty company with that name and an interesting logo – that looks exactly like the necklace that Tara was killed wearing. Taking Chief’s advice about owing his friends honesty, Danny texts Lacey and Jo and gets them to meet him, where he informs them that Karen got the necklace from him rather than Regina. Lacey ends their relationship then and there, while a stunned Jo walks away silently. At the diner, Rico receives an anonymous e-mail that has a single attachment.

The video that was taken of Danny and Lacey the night Karen confessed.

Additional thoughts and observations:
–So, Karen didn’t kill Regina (not a surprise) but knew about Vik being in Connecticut (hey now). Could it be possible that Vik was indeed cheating on her in Connecticut but that she knew about it and was okay as long as he kept her in the lifestyle she had become accustomed to? For that matter, is there a chance that maybe the Desais weren’t as well off as they claimed to be and that Vik was running Marna from Connecticut in order to keep up appearances and provide a secondary income? The first wouldn’t necessarily knock down my personal #TwistedTheory (that Tara found out Vik was cheating and was going to tell Karen, only Danny got to her before she could destroy his family), so I’m kind of hoping that it’s the real direction the story goes.
-I think we got a brief shot of Lacey’s (previously unmentioned) sister at her party? What do you bet that we won’t see (or hear from/about) her again?
-I was a little surprised that Kyle wasn’t as upset when he found out about the letter and money, but perhaps he was more focused on proving Karen wasn’t responsible for the murder and providing the mayor with evidence of progress in the case than he was in the goings-on of Jo, Lacey, and Danny.
-Kudos to the show for going a whole other direction than what I was expecting for Lacey’s storyline. I assumed that her mother and the gymnastics coach were getting it on and that would cause further tension with Samuel, but apparently, that wasn’t in the cards. And honestly, I thought that the show handled that gay angle (Lacey wanting her dad to be happy, hoping that this means she can see him more) pretty well, especially for a show that hasn’t touched on the subject before. Trust me, it could have been a whole lot more awful and offensive, so good first crack, Twisted.
-I will say that this was a good Jo/Lacey episode and a really good Karen episode. You got to see a little more of what the former’s friendship looked like before Danny killed Tara, as well as how their time apart had changed their dynamic, while the latter’s flashbacks helped give an interesting wrinkle to the case and insight into who she was as a mother prior to losing her son, particularly how the incident with the daughter comment impacted her mothering going forward. I buy that she still carries some guilt about saying that around with her and that combining that with Danny’s juvie stay has made her go into overboard trying to protect him now that he’s free and she can have a ”do-over” at being a mom.
-Although the whole “Principal Tang takes naughty photos” thing was bizarre, especially tonally, the scene in his office more than made up for it, especially when it showed that he was no shrinking violet. Plus, it let Danny be proactive about his case rather than leaning on Jo to do the heavy lifting, which was appreciated. The main positive this show has over its lead-in is that Danny is a very smart main character and someone who can obviously take care of himself; too often, teenage shows tend to write down their main characters, to the point of being insulting to the audience, so it’s refreshing to have someone that knows what he’s doing without being infallible. (Side bar: it also gives further credence to the idea of him being a sociopath, that ease in which he slips into manipulative mode.)
-Also helping the idea that Danny is indeed a socio was his final scene with Karen, where they hug and he tells her that she’s a good mother. I think it’s a sign of good writing where I instantly doubted his sincerity in telling her what he told her. While he probably does love her on some level and appreciate everything she was willing to do for him, that felt like he knew what he had to do and say in order to get her to retract her confession.
-Next week on Twisted: Regina’s mother targets Danny for expulsion, while Kyle finds a troubling connection between the Desais and Green Grove City Hall and Rico scrambles to stop the spread of the video.