Karen arrives at the station and with the help of Lacey and Danny, convinces Whitney to go home. There’s nothing more she can do at this point and it’s best that she rest up; when Whitney makes it to the Desai’s accompanied by Lacey, she gives Lacey an extra special goodbye while Lacey pulls Danny aside to tell him that Jack cannot be allowed to take the fall for this. Danny already has it covered, though, by using the life insurance money to hire the best lawyer in the state. Elsewhere, Jo and Charlie wake up in each other’s arms, only to be caught by an ambivalent Tess, more concerned about Jack being arrested for Vikram’s murder. Jo kicks Charlie out, more or less, and sets off to pay Danny a visit.
Kyle takes Karen into his office and asks her questions about the affair with Jack and whether Taylor knew about the life insurance policy prior to Vik’s death. Karen assures Kyle that she only told Jack about it the night her husband’s body turned up, but with Vikram having been killed 48 hours prior, there’s a chance that Jack found out about the policy while working for Vik and knew he could get rid of him for the money. When Kyle asks Karen if Jack would be capable of murder, she honestly doesn’t know. Karen makes it home and for all intents and purposes, seems to believe Kyle; she knows that Jack wasn’t a saint, but Danny reminds her that he was the one who killed his father, not Jack. However, Jo is well aware of Danny killing Vikram and comes to her former friend regarding Jack being in custody and what the plan is now. Danny knowingly tells her that Jack would never say anything and put them in harm’s way before expressing his worry about Charlie and pushing Jo to take the space from him that she was so desperate for last week.
While Charlie sneaks into Jack’s place and plants Vik’s cell phone, Tess confesses to Kyle that she didn’t get a chance to speak to her daughter the night prior, though she left a note for the mother, who wants to come face-to-face in Green Grove. Kyle can’t go due to his big day, however, and won’t go because of how hard the entire situation is to accept, even though the two do agree that they need to tell Jo. Over at Jack’s, Whitney brings Lacey to help pick through her stuff and pack a bag for her stay at the Desai’s. Whitney is worried that her father is slipping away, even with the great lawyer Danny got him, and brings up both the “conspiracy” between Danny, Karen, and Lacey and the connection she thought she shared with the latter after their trip into the city. Before the two can talk, though, the boathouse gets raided by the Green Grove police, who won’t let Whitney take anything with her.
Jo finds out about her sister from Tess, who admits to not wanting to lose Kyle and to feeling her lies getting out of control, and pledges to meet the woman who adopted her half-sister with her, just as Danny, Karen, and Whitney wait outside the courthouse the morning of Jack’s hearing. Whitney doesn’t get why Danny’s as confident as he is, but his self-assurance pays off when the lawyer he hired mentions that Kyle has nothing other than a strangely rolled window, questionable DNA evidence, and his own theories to go on. However, Chief Masterson soon approaches with the news that they found Vik’s cell phone in the boathouse raid, meaning that Jack likely won’t be able to get out on bail. While Karen has started to panic and question whether Jack might have done this, Danny thinks that there’s something not right about the whole situation and pins it on Charlie.
At Tess’ meeting with the woman from New Jersey, she learns that the teenage girl she saw in the window was not, in fact, her first daughter, who was named Samantha. Samantha died when she was two years old in a playground accident and the mother couldn’t reach out due to the adoption being closed, though she does give Tess photos of the little girl to show how happy she was in her short life. Jack gets denied bail, with the likely charge looking to be Murder One, and when he’s brought out of the courtroom, he warns Whitney to find somewhere else to stay, as the Desais broke his heart. Before Whitney tells Danny about the change of plans and finds a new place to stay in Lacey’s, Danny clues Lacey in on his theory regarding Charlie moving the body and how he believes his former roommate wanted to have something to hang over him like he did when they were inside; there, Charlie took the blame for a fight that Danny was in and got a swelled head from the attention he received, which contributed to his love of twisting people and playing puppet master.
That night, Jo spots Charlie outside her home while she and her parents go through the baby photos of the little girl Tess wanted to call Catherine. While they’re on some type of path to moving on from the situation, Charlie informs Jo that Danny has a plan; she thinks the best thing that could happen is Danny being honest, even if it mean she gets brought down with him. Before leaving, Charlie tells her that Danny is the one who killed Vikram, not her and that Tess and Kyle likely wouldn’t be able to handle losing her after losing Samantha. Danny visits Jack in prison and explains why he thinks Charlie is the one orchestrating this whole thing, while Lacey blows up Whitney’s air mattresses and confesses that the kiss between them really confused her. She liked it way more than she expected to and doesn’t know what this means for her sexual orientation, seeing as how she’s always been into guys. Whitney tells her that while she’s a definite lesbian, she doesn’t always believe in putting labels on things like this and encourages Lacey to take some space and figure things out.
Charlie comes back to the stables and finds Danny in his room; Danny tries to tell him that a good person still exists in there and sending away an innocent man isn’t the right thing to do, but Charlie denies his involvement in everything and gets slammed against the wall for doing so. Once Danny has him, Charlie says that his former friend never saw what he sees in Jo and implies that he read his journal, calling Jo a “sad little puppy dog.” The following day, Jo runs into Lacey and Whitney at the diner, with the former filling her in on Danny’s suspicions of Charlie. Jo tries calling Danny, only to get his voicemail; he’s busy writing out his theories on Charlie, thinking that having that at hand will be the thing that helps him protect both Jo and Lacey. Karen attempts convincing him that maybe Jack going to prison isn’t the worst thing, since it would mean she’d lose him again (and likely for longer this time), but Danny’s made his mind up that he’s going to confess.
He drives over to the Riverside Juvenile Detention Center, where he was housed for five years, and comes at Dr. Berger, the facility’s psychologist, in the parking lot. He asks Dr. Berger about whether Charlie is dangerous and fills him in on him moving to Green Grove after being released. Berger informs Danny that Charlie does indeed have a past, a past that contains more than he knows – and all of it bad. Danny leaves to head back home, just as Charlie moves his dresser and takes out a picture of Jo that he kept behind it. He leaves her a voicemail about Danny beating him up badly and being in a lot of pain before taking the door and slamming it into his head. Elsewhere, Tess goes to visit the mother who adopted her baby and let her know that the baby wasn’t hers; Tess gave birth in a farmhouse upstate, not in the New Jersey hospital that this woman adopted her first baby from.
Jo arrives at Charlie’s to look at his bruises and he tries to persuade her to confess to her father, only pin the entire thing on Danny. However, Jo isn’t comfortable with that and soon enough, Charlie unravels, confessing that he’s dreamed of being with her for years and that everything he’s done has been for her. When he says that he saw what happened that night, Jo leaves and calls Danny, telling him that he was right about Charlie; it’s too late, though, because Danny already went over to Kyle’s and confessed to killing Vikram. While Lacey invites Whitney to sleep up on the bed with her, only to kiss her again and decide that girls just aren’t her thing, Danny gets questioned by Kyle and cops to everything before pointing the finger at Charlie regarding the staged accident. Jo arrives home and gets confronted by Tess about Danny being arrested and she comes clean to being there, as well.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-So, I found this episode really campy, for some reason. Twisted is a show that has always embraced humor, both as a channel prerequisite (e.g. Pretty Little Liars is a funny mystery) and as a way of keeping things from getting too dour, but everything about Charlie’s meltdown was hilarious to me – “screw the truth! just look at my face!,” him slamming the door on his head, the thing about reading Danny’s journal, him lurking outside Jo’s house while she looked at pictures of her dead adopted sister. It was all so bizarrely written/played and took some of the air out of the episode, as I think a scarier proposition would have been for Charlie to not be a psycho and still responsible for everything going on in Green Grove.
-Lacey thought about being a lesbian for a solid two or three hours before deciding that she was, indeed, straight. Listen, I’m all about coming out stories if they’re done properly and I think that a character like Lacey would make for an especially powerful coming out on the right show; this, though, felt really silly and as if it belonged on a completely different show. And Lacey has been on a completely different show for much of the winter season, as Twisted has her to the point of lunacy. This was a narrative cul-de-sac that ate up screen time and didn’t make the best use of how good Kylie Bunbury is, a way to keep her on screen without giving her anything of consequence to do. I do like the idea of the show expanding beyond the central friendship and giving the central three characters identities and connections away from that, since the powers that be don’t want the show to be too insular. However, even if Whitney turns out to be something that she’s not, it just feels like a waste of time that will have Lacey looking stupid in the end.
-Why won’t Kyle even consider the possibility that the DNA evidence that linked Jack to the car was forged? Didn’t we just have forged DNA evidence against Danny? I understand that he’s desperate to close the case and all that, but am I a better police officer than Kyle Masterson?
-Eddie’s face after Karen grabbed his arm was my favorite part of the episode and, perhaps, the entire winter season. If this show comes back for another season, I demand more Eddie Reacting to Things.
-Second favorite thing of this episode: Danny telling Jo that she wanted some space and that he was going to give it to her. Good for him, because Jo can’t keep pushing him away only to return to his life to wag her finger at him. Either she’s in or she’s out and somebody needed to check her on how she’s been lately.
-That being said, this Danny/Jo thing is coming from absolutely nowhere. From watching this show for 18 episodes, I believe that he loves her without being in love with her and that the tragedy that the two went through caused some wires to be crossed; there’s an extra layer of experience that the two went through that he doesn’t share with anyone else, so I suppose I can buy his feeling that way, but that the show running with it and writing Danny/Jo as this epic love for the ages rather than “Danny is so emotionally mixed up right now, you guys” is dumb.
-I like how Tess gave birth in a farmhouse, of all places. Are we sure she didn’t give birth to Jesus (and Mariana) Foster? Is this a crossover nobody told me about?
-#SurpriseSister – best suggested trending topic or best suggested trending topic?
-Has Robin Givens fallen down a well or something? Why are we not getting the slightest whiff of Lacey’s family? Even if it was a quick cameo in this episode when Whitney came to stay, you’d think they’d have her around at least once during the winter season. Granted, Lacey has mentioned her dad and sister a couple of times, but we’ve had appearances from Sarita and Cole and they’re floating in the wind, so why not give Lacey more of a presence in the narrative and somewhat include her family?
-One thing I do like is when the show uses the news/media in an active way. This is a small town and stuff will get around, so it’d be nice to see more about how the outside public is viewing this mess and how it’s being presented through the local news.
-I like how Jo was like “Charlie would never do that!” when she’s known him for 13 seconds. If she hadn’t come around when Charlie was having his meltdown, this entire section would have been me ranting about what an imbecile Jo is and how embarrassing it’s going to be for her when she finds out she bet on the wrong pony. Get it? Because Charlie works at the stables?
-Danny drives all the way to the detention center, gets confirmation that Charlie is indeed crazypants, and then immediately rushes home? Doesn’t stay for a minute to see if he can’t wring any specifics out of Dr. Berger? Or see if he can’t get Dr. Berger to act as some type of witness for him? I buy that Danny wasn’t thinking clearly and all that, but c’mon.
-I genuinely did enjoy Danny and Karen’s little blowup, though. Less Danny turning into Jack Torrance and more her line about “I’ll be all alone” and how much that said about their parent-child dynamic, much more than any other scene/monologue/moment they’ve had this winter.
-Finale predictions? Without going into what happened in the preview, I think Whitney gets revealed as Tess’ daughter; Charlie gets arrested and/or killed, the latter possibly by Danny and potentially acting as a last minute twist; Jo and Danny make up; Lacey and Danny make up; and someone we’re not thinking is involved in Vik’s death is revealed as being a major player.
-Next week on Twisted: It’s the season (and possibly series) finale and while Kyle’s investigation takes a turn, Whitney’s mom arrives in Green Grove and additional secrets of Vikram’s are unearthed.
