Twisted 1.14 “Home Is Where the Hurt Is” Recap

Danny returns to school for the first time since Marilyn was arrested and he receives a string of apologies from his Green Grove peers, repentant over how they treated him since Regina died. He runs into Cole, who tosses him a soccer ball and fills him in on Scott’s confession to the poisoning and subsequent expulsion, before laying eyes on Charlie, his former roommate at juvie, when Lacey comes over to give a hug. Later that day, a giddy Lacey goes on and on about Danny getting the do over that he deserves and how she wants to go to Homecoming with him, but seeing Charlie has thrown Danny off even more and he blows Lacey off, leaving her to deal with a still bitter Sarita.

Danny pulls Charlie into an empty classroom and the latter mentions that when he was released for good behavior, he came to Green Grove due to what Danny said about it when they lived together, how he made Jo and Lacey sound like great people. All Charlie is looking for, he says, is a fresh start, which Danny can relate to and causes him to back off from being accusatory on why his former roommate came to town. Meanwhile, Lacey isn’t sure why Danny is being so strange and distant toward her, a problem since she’s become more confident about their relationship and now wants to date him out in the open; Jo assures her that she should go to Homecoming with Danny, just as Rico practices asking Jo out to Homecoming. Danny overhears and gives Rico words of encouragement, how Jo deserves something good and that might be him, but things get more complicated when Rico’s fellow Mathlete Andie tries to flirt with him right before he was to go over and ask Jo. He’s, of course, oblivious to female attention and when he finds Jo, he learns that she signed them up for all night Homecoming committee, where they’ll be responsible for everything from clean up to decorations.

That afternoon, an interview where Kyle names Vik as a person of interest gets played on the news and Tess, becoming more paranoid about the secrets that she’s keeping, takes the vase in the living room with Vik’s number on the bottom and smashes it into pieces. Danny and Jo convene right before he’s to go to soccer practice and they exchange notes about possible Homecoming dates, with the former mentioning how much Rico likes her and the latter encouraging him to ask out Lacey. However, Danny doesn’t think that he can have a normal relationship with Lacey with the secret he’s carrying, while Jo just doesn’t feel the same way about Rico that he does about her. While Kyle and Eddie find security footage that shows Vik in town two days ago, Danny works his way into the starting lineup of the soccer team with a strong performance at practice. Though he still won’t let himself feel good due to what happened in the woods, his mood is dampened even more by Charlie inquiring about Lacey’s Homecoming status; he ends up telling his friend to go for it, even though he wants to go. He just won’t let himself.

Jo and the rest of the Homecoming committee meet to discuss theme (A Night to Remember) and the decorative scheme, which looks to be Titanic/nautically inspired. Andie brings recycled paper streamers, an idea that Jo rejects, and suggests bringing organic potted plants, as her mother runs the town flower shop. Jo likes that idea more and Andie mentions to Rico how she’s always been environmentally conscious, causing him to make a bad global warming joke and flee the scene. Jo notices that Andie likes Rico and learns that she only signed up for the Homecoming committee when she saw Rico’s name on the list. While Danny walks into his house and finds Jack and Karen kissing, Charlie and Lacey run into each other at the stables; when she brings up Regina, he quickly asks her to Homecoming to avoid the mood becoming anymore sad and she rejects him, citing that she’s already going to Homecoming with somebody else. However, Charlie mentions that he got the okay from Danny to ask her to Homecoming, hurting Lacey’s feelings in the process since Danny has seemingly given up on them.

Danny brings up Karen’s rekindling of her friendship with Jack at dinner and she dismisses the reunion as something that resulted from her desperation to find him, nothing more. He then assures her that she deserves to be happy, especially after what happened with Vik. Elsewhere, Andie goes to the ship yard and brings back a recycled rope, something that could be used for the photos that evening. When she leaves, Jo asks Rico what he thinks about Andie as a girl and encourages him to go ask her to Homecoming. Despite what she said in the diner the other night, Jo knows that Rico deserves an amazing girl and right now, Andie is more amazing than she is. Danny goes to Jack’s boatyard and asks why Karen came there in the first place and what happened to cause the end of his friendship with Vik. Jack’s evasive, though, and talk turns to what Danny will be driving now that he’s out of juvie and free from the suspicions of the Green Grove populace. Danny invites Jack to come fix up the old Porsche in his garage, the same car that he was going to work on with his father one day.

Afterwards, Danny gets a text from Lacey and meets her at her house. She wonders why everything she did to prove his innocence and the apologies she made for how she handled her friends aren’t enough for him; why doesn’t he want to be with her anymore? He claims that he still does want to be with her, yet he explains that he thinks they would have a better shot without the baggage from earlier in their friendship. There’s no way for them to get a fresh start, but when Lacey tries to storm inside, Danny asks her to Homecoming and she gives a reluctant yes. The following day, Lacey goes to Jo’s so the two can get ready for Homecoming and they realize that this is what their friendship would have been like had it not been interrupted following Tara’s murder.

At Homecoming, Danny and Lacey come across Charlie, who wishes them well, while Rico realizes just how much Andie likes him when she compares him to Leonardo DiCaprio during their photo shoot, which included feather boas, mustaches, and nautical hats. He finally lets himself relax around her, just as Charlie goes to introduce himself to Jo at the punch bowl. Things are a bit awkward, of course, and he gets away quickly but not before mentioning that Danny said a lot of nice things about her. Back at home, Karen joins Jack as he continues working on the car, picking up where he and Danny left off before the latter had to leave, and she mentions how much she appreciates him being there for her. She also brings up the fact that she wishes Vik would have been declared dead so that she would be able to claim the $10 million life insurance policy that he had. Elsewhere, Kyle gets a call from Eddie while out to dinner with Tess and makes his deputy send the MP3 file he isolated from Vik’s voicemail. It turns out to be the last call Tess made, where she encouraged him to turn himself in.

Furious, Kyle storms out of the restaurant and the two make a scene on the street, him wondering why she would lie to him and why she withheld the fact that she knew how to get in touch with Vik. She claims that he was there for her during a difficult time and she was scared since he claimed people were trying to kill him, but since Kyle is the chief of police in Green Grove, he doesn’t know why Tess didn’t come to him. Back at the dance, Danny confides in Jo that he doesn’t know how long he can continue faking normalcy before running into Charlie, who asks him if he ever misses the ease of juvie, a decidedly less overwhelming place than civilization at large. During a slow dance, Lacey claims that this night is what she dreamed about as a little girl and now that Danny was cleared from a crime he obviously wasn’t capable of committing, the two can enjoy themselves. Before Danny can respond, it’s time for the crowning of the king and queen; while Regina is posthumously awarded Homecoming queen, Danny wins king and chooses to use his moment in the spotlight to harangue his peers for pitying him. He suggests that maybe he deserved the poor treatment he received from them and rejects the crown, causing Lacey and Jo to follow him outside. Danny thinks he never should have went to Homecoming, while Lacey doesn’t know why he won’t let himself be happy.

Danny returns home and tells Jack about what happened at Homecoming. He responds by assuring Danny that you have to use your past as a road map to who you don’t want to be as much as who you want to be, something that Vik had a difficult time in doing, before giving him the keys to the Porsche and encouraging him to go find Lacey. While Charlie stays behind at the dance and makes Jo laugh as she cleans up, Danny goes to Lacey’s and apologizes before kissing her and reintroducing himself to her. Jo returns home to find his father admonishing her mother and mentioning bringing her to the station, just as he receives a call that Vik’s body has been found.

Additional thoughts and observations:
-While this was decidedly my least favorite of the first three winter episodes, I do understand why the show took its foot off the gas pedal a bit. It doesn’t want to burn through plot too fast, a mistake that has haunted shows like Homeland and Scandal, and it hit on some interesting territory with Danny becoming the monster that he was always told he was and having to attempt a normal life after what happened in the woods. Those are the type of issues that only something like Twisted can explore and I understand wanting to let that breathe.
-Good for Twisted for giving us a (plausible) explanation for Archie and Scott disappearing off the face of the Earth. And for showing that Cole and Sarita are still lingering around the edges of its universe, still in play for future plotlines. All I need to know is where Phoebe is and the hanging threads for season one will all be tied up.
-What do you think is Charlie’s secret, the one that Danny promised to keep? Could it relate to the reason he was in juvie in the first place? Or did something happen while they were locked away that he doesn’t want getting out? He’s still giving me Creepy Creeperson vibes, this time for his “you don’t smile enough” to Jo, so I don’t know what his deal is just yet. It seems fairly obvious that there’s a piece missing from his characterization that should be revealed in the coming weeks. My guess? Either something bad happened between him and Danny and he’s going to exact revenge through Jo and Lacey or the crime he was arrested for was sexual in nature and he’s a predator.
-One issue that I had with the episode, though, was that it hit the same beats multiple times, i.e. Lacey asking several times if Jo were really okay with her dating Danny, Danny being extremely vague when Lacey presses him on why he’s so distant, etc. It got a little wheel spin-y, disappointing after the fast start to the winter season, but I think there were enough good twists in the episode to make up for any slowness to the narrative.
-Speaking of Danny’s evasiveness, I think it’s funny that the show managed to wriggle free of the I-killed-Tara-but-I-can’t-tell-you-why trap laid in the summer season, only to fall into a similar one with I-killed-my-father-and-I-can’t-tell-you. I can fanwank reasons why Danny wouldn’t tell Lacey what happened (he didn’t want her to get involved with something like this again, he was ashamed of what he did), but it’s not especially compelling to watch people go in circles like that. Either tell her or have her find out – the narrative dead space will get old quickly.
-Best moment of the episode: The moment when you realized that Tess’ cover was about to be blown. Her knowledge of Vik was something I thought the show would keep in its pocket for the final episodes of the season, so I appreciate the show getting it out of the way so we can get a full view of the fallout. Also, Kyle’s “I’M THE CHIEF OF POLICE!” was hilarious.
-I got my college degree in criminology, so the conversation about how things were easier in juvie and the world being too overwhelming were especially interesting to me. The problem with the criminal justice system is that it’s incredibly easy to fall into it without any hope of fully clawing your way out, with businesses refusing to hire those with a record and jails/juvenile halls being unwilling to teach the life skills and coping mechanisms necessary to survive in the outside world.
-Jo’s homecoming outfit would best be described as Wicca chic. Very her. but she looked like she smelled of incense and wanted to talk about Triple Goddesses.
-The revelation of the life insurance policy is interesting because you have to wonder if some part of Danny was motivated to hit Vik hard enough to knock him off the cliff to get the $10 million. Assuming that he knew about the policy, of course.
-Andie was adorable and good for Rico for putting aside his feelings for Jo and enjoying himself at homecoming. Although, when Rico went to ask Andie out, Jo’s face read a little sad. Is it because she wanted to go to homecoming with a boy? Or because she wanted to go with Rico specifically?
-What better way to communicate the joy and whimsy that is youth than with a dance dedicated to a disaster? Good thinking, Jo.
-Next week on Twisted: Danny comes into a sizeable amount of money that brings tension between him and Karen, while Tess drops another huge revelation on Kyle and a massive cover-up brings out the paranoia in Jo.