Now that the tape of her and Danny together has spread throughout Green Grove High, Lacey is the pariah that she worked so hard to avoid becoming, drawing stares and laughs wherever she goes. Her friends have begun to freeze her out and with Danny expelled and Jo taking the day off of school to process everything that happened, as well as her complicated emotions in the matter, she’s as alone as she’s ever been. Danny’s not doing much better; due to not being allowed to attend Green Grove anymore, he’s got to find another school in order to abide by his probation and avoid going back to juvie. However, the only other schools in the city are private and since his family isn’t exactly rolling in the dough at the moment, it will be a tough stretch to scrounge up the money to keep himself from being incarcerated.
He texts Lacey to see how she’s doing – she’s still reeling from being on the outside looking in and flashes back to a time when she was on the inside and kept Phoebe from infiltrating the inner circle while Regina was alive. Lacey tries to go up to Archie and be friendly with him, congratulating him on the soccer team advancing to regionals, but he’s cold toward her and makes a point to say that the celebration they’re having that night at the diner is private. While Rico shows up with Jo’s homework after school and hears about how exhausted she is from everything that’s been going on and how she doesn’t want anymore secrets, Danny meets Lacey in the school parking lot and convinces her to go with him to Jo’s to see if things can’t be made right between the three of them.
Lacey’s doubts about Jo’s willingness to listen and need for space prove to be correct, since things quickly get loud once the three are in front of each other at Jo’s house. Jo calls Lacey a hypocrite for coming down so hard on Danny’s lying when she lied just as bad and tells Danny that she’s tired of the constant excuses and apologies that she’s had to deal with since he came back to town. Further, she exclaims that she’s over people feeling as if they have to protect her once Lacey exposes Rico’s role in the video and kicks the three of them out, not allowing Rico time to gather his belongings. Upset at what just happened, Rico runs home, while Jo gets invited to a movie by her parents to make her feel better. Once in the lobby, she runs into Tyler, who turns on his best Eddie Haskell and tries to impress her parents while inviting her to a film club discussion he’s having after seeing a previous showing of the movie. Initially, Jo declines the offer, but once he’s out of sight, she asks Tess and Kyle if she can go. Tess gives the okay; Kyle, who is having a rough time adjusting to the new investigator and her focus on bringing Danny to justice, has his doubts about Tyler, but he relents nonetheless.
As Karen makes a move at her realty job to get more hours, a way to begin saving money for Danny’s private school, her son is planning something with Lacey. The two decide to stage something at the soccer party that Lacey was barred from as a way to get her back into the good graces of her friends. She arrives at the diner to offer another congratulations to the team for making it to regionals and both Sarita and Phoebe make a point to come up to her and say how it was too soon for her to do what she did and that Lacey had a lot of nerve in hooking up with the boy who could have killed their friend. However, Lacey decided to stand her ground and sets up shop at a table in the corner, where she waits for Danny to arrive. He does and walks in the door congratulating the team, though claiming that he has a right to be there as he helped them win a few games. While Archie threatens to remove Danny from the diner, reminding him of what he can do when pissed off, Danny mentions the video and says that “beefy meatheads” must not be Lacey’s type anymore. At that moment, Lacey stands up and begins berating Danny, telling him to get out of the diner, that she regrets ever hooking up with him, and that she wishes she never knew him to begin with, which earns her some trust back with those at the diner.
Rico arrives at Jo’s to get his backpack and Tess encourages him to stick around and wait for her to come home. But Jo isn’t in a hurry to leave; even though she’s dealing with pretentious film fans who are trying to find meaning in screwball comedies from the 1950s, she’s having a nice time with Tyler, who knows how bad she’s been feeling since the tape leaked and only wants to see her smile. He asks if she still has a thing for Danny, which she denies, and the two end up in his room watching movies on his laptop. Things get tense quickly, though, and they find themselves kissing on his bed, clothes gradually beginning to come off. Jo stops things from going further and makes a quick exit, texting Danny to meet her at McNally Park in 20 minutes. However, he’s busy at the moment, as he texted Cole after leaving the dinner. The reason? He wants to point out that Archie all but admitted to the poisoning and ask Cole whether this is the guy that you want to put this amount of trust in.
Cole goes back to the diner, furious over the poisoning and confronting Archie about it. He gets some major backup from Lacey, who used the moments immediately after throwing Danny out to get Archie to admit to the poisoning, which he said he and Scott did to get Danny off the team. Cole quits on the spot and leaves the diner abruptly, while Lacey tells Sarita that the Regina comment she made was a low blow and urges Archie to confess if he has any modicum of self-respect remaining before leaving herself. Meanwhile, Karen is continuing the extra work that she was given by her boss and brings to his attention financial irregularities she noticed when looking through some records. Apparently, he represented both the buyer and the seller in one instance and yet only claimed commission on one; it’s not an isolated incident of clerical error, though, as she found instances that dated back more than seven years and threatens to expose him to the IRS – if he continues to give her enough money to support herself and send Danny to private school.
Danny meets with Jo in the park and she brings up her feelings for him, citing the need to say this to his face and get proper closure if he doesn’t think that he could ever feel the same about her. He tries to remind her about how much her friendship means to him and about how things are different with Lacey, but he doesn’t need to say the exact words for her to know that he doesn’t feel the same way about her, something that she knew but wouldn’t let herself believe until she heard from him. She ignores his pleas about how the three of them are the most important thing and goes straight to Tyler’s house, where she kisses him as soon as he opens the door. The two end up having sex – Jo’s first time. Well, her first kiss, her first hook up, her first sexual intercourse, etc. Tyler says that he’s honored to be the one she chose to be her first, but she makes him close his eyes when she gets dressed and leaves to make sure her parents aren’t freaking out.
Danny arrives home to find his mother panicking and urging him to pack a bag. She heard from someone that the police found a murder weapon after searching the pond again at the new investigator’s urging – a lead pipe with blood and hair that matches Regina’s and Danny’s fingerprints all over it. Now that she has money coming in from her boss, there’s nothing tying them to Green Grove and they have to leave before he can be thrown back in juvie or, worse, arrested and put in an adult prison. Jo makes it home and talks with Rico, telling him that he’s this amazing constant in her chaotic life and that she needs him to be upfront with her more, that there’s no way she could hate him. Overcome with relief, he hugs Jo and says that he loves her and that she’s his dream girl before planting a(n awkward) kiss on her. She’s absolutely speechless and sensing that he messed up, he gathers his things and leaves the house.
Phoebe goes to Lacey’s and finds her friend looking through old pictures, including one where Regina has her arm bandaged up. Their former friend had said that it was Phoebe’s doing after the two had a physical fight in school over Craig, but Phoebe doesn’t scratch – she may pull hair, but she doesn’t scratch, so why would Regina tell everyone that it was her? It turns out that right before the fight, Phoebe saw Regina getting out of a black car with tinted windows and a Connecticut license plate (777 R2F), her arm already bloody from a long scratch down her forearm. The driver? The new investigator, who has brought Kyle and an arrest warrant to the Desai home in hopes of bringing Danny in. But he’s already fled out his bedroom window to parts unknown.
Tess grabs a piece of art from her living room and calls the phone number on the bottom. It’s Vik.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-I like how the show brought Lacey back down the popularity ladder after five years of never being the outsider. It’s not that she ever forgot what it was like to be who she was – it’s the feeling of having something and losing it, especially when she didn’t have either Danny or Jo to back her up. Even though the experience did manage to make her a more active character (the plan to trap Archie was really well done), I still wonder why she wants to be friends with these people. Phoebe, I get, but Scott, Jana, Sarita, and Archie are just awful people. She was content with being friends with just Jo and Danny before, so why not be content with it now? I know why she insisted on becoming the popular girl in the first place, but why continue to have that attitude now?
-Even though the show has made it obvious that Vik was alive, I did like the twist involving the new investigator being the one to scratch Regina – is this how she got the blood that ended up on the pipe? (Because there’s a 99% chance that the pipe was planted in the lake, considering how adamant she was about dredging it a second time.) What connection do you think she has to Regina?
-Poor Rico? I think? Forcing himself on Jo was obviously inappropriate and the wrong move at the wrong time, but I can’t help but feel for him. He just seems like a lonely guy who is feeling closed out by his best friend and has watched her pine over someone else for the entirety of the summer season, so I get hearing what he means to her pushing him to just let everything out. Still incredibly awkward, though. I think I’m still cringing.
-Props to Cole for not falling in line with everything Archie says and does. Him coming back to the diner to confront the captain and quit was awesome. Also, it’s pretty much apparent that Scott wouldn’t be involved in this thing if Archie wasn’t, so if they can tie Archie to Regina’s murder, don’t be shocked if Scott’s there, too. He doesn’t question anything from Archie and seems like the type that would literally jump off a bridge if Archie did, too – no questions asked.
-So, are we going to act like Lacey didn’t lie to Jo about attempting to stop the video? She did, but she didn’t do it immediately like she said, since she thought her friends would understand.
-Tyler – good guy? Bad guy? I just can’t shake the memory of what he did at the party from my mom and think that, considering his love of film, he’s just playing the part that he thinks would get Jo back into his life. Ulterior motive? I’m not sure, but as the saying goes, something in the milk ain’t clean. Especially since this show is built on everybody having a secret.
-What are we expecting to happen during the second half of the season? Do you think we’ll find out who killed Regina? Where did Danny run off to? Will Jo come to regret losing her virginity to Tyler? Why has Tess kept Vik faking his death a secret for this long?
-Thank you guys for reading and commenting on my Twisted recaps this summer. I’ve enjoyed the show a good amount thus far and think that it has the ingredients to really breakthrough during the winter season, which begins this January. Hopefully it does well enough in the ratings to buy itself some time to fix the kinks and delve even further into the mystery, because I think this has the potential to be the dark, morally gray thriller that ABC Family needs and an important show in terms of television diversity.
