Danny has been acting strange lately, probably about family stuff, two young girls (Jo and Lacey) in a flashback agree. Danny comes out with a red jump rope, and tells the girls, "I had to, I didn't have a choice. Don't hate me." It was all a dream, but actually a memory. Jo wakes up to a news report that now, five years later, confessed murderer Danny Desai has been released from juvenile detention and will be going back to public school. This piggybacks on top of the news that Danny's father, Vikram Desai got drunk and fell off a cruise ship to his death, and that Denise Richards is Danny's mom.
Jo is angry, and she can't wait to tell Danny she hates him. He ruined her life. We learn that Jo's dad is a cop, and that her family "doesn't have much money." Jo also has a smart, nice guy chump friend named Rico who is not as likable as any of his analogs in teen movies. Jo is no longer friends with Lacey, who was also there when Danny murdered his aunt. Lacey is cool now, and hangs out with this show's version of The Plastics. Their leader is even named Regina.
Everyone is uncomfortable around Danny's return, calling him "socio," a nickname coined by Lacey/the 40-year old writers of this show after a couple boxes of wine and a third viewing of She's All That. Kathy Najimy, who plays the psychology teacher, has the class learn the actual definition of "sociopath." Lacey's boyfriend, who is obviously the murderer/Gossip Girl/"A," keeps the focus on Danny and how weird he is. Seriously, my money is on that guy being the killer.
Regina is not put off by Danny's presence. In fact, she wants to sleep with him. She invites Danny to a house party she's having that night while her parents are away. Danny recognizes the necklace Regina is wearing. She says the necklace is a gift. I hope it is from some old dude boyfriend of hers.
A lot of things are left unexplained. The main question is why did Danny kill his aunt, and why won't he tell anyone? The other questions, with far less interesting or no real answers are why is Denise Richards making Danny stay in Green Grove? Why do Danny and Jo go to Regina's party? Why is Regina so intent on sleeping with a guy who spent puberty in jail so is probably a virgin?
Everyone gets drunk and weird at the party. Jo does a body shot off of some hotbody named Sean. Danny gets into a fight with Sean and whispers something very quickly in his ear that causes him to back down. Regina tries to get into Danny's pants and fails. Danny walks a very drunk Jo home to her parents, then is picked up by Lacey, who hangs out with him and falls asleep in his room eating off-brand Doritos.
Danny gets some sexts from Regina, asking him to come over. The final one says she knows why he killed his aunt. Danny rebuffs her. The next morning, Lacey scurries out of Danny's house, embarrassed, and Regina's body is found by the maid. Yes, all, Regina Crane is dead. We'll have to make peace with it.
Jo decides to defend Danny, who everyone is calling "socio" at a school assembly regarding Regina's death. Everyone thinks he did it, and Jo's father, who is not a detective or anything, takes Danny in for questioning in the middle of the assembly. He asks about the sexts, and about the necklace Regina was wearing. It was the only thing taken from the crime scene. Danny denies knowing about the necklace.
After a worthless and plot-fizzling talk with his mom, Danny opens up an old photo album to refer to a picture of himself and his aunt. Just moments before, he was looking at a picture of himself with his dad. He loves looking at photos. Everyone on this show does, actually. Anyway, his aunt is wearing the necklace that Regina was wearing. The plot gets super thick right then, as Danny pulls out the necklace and displays it flat on top of the photo album, just to look at like a photograph I guess.
Who killed Regina? Why did Danny kill his aunt? Who falls off of a cruise ship to their death? Why do people act like Jo isn't beautiful, smart and trendy? All of these questions and less I expect will be answered on this season of Twisted.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Pilots can be clunky, and I think we're willing to be patient with that, but it has to at least make us buy into the world of the show. I'm not sure Twisted is quite there. From the very first moment, where we see eleven-year old Danny walk toward young Lacey and Jo, having just murdered his aunt, I'm not sold. It's supposed to make us ask, "Why would a kid do that?" and maybe even, "Why would he not show any emotion about it?" but it doesn't seem like the people in this world are asking those questions. They're just like, I guess that kid murdered his aunt with a jump rope.
But we won't analyze that moment too much because it was all a dream! A dream shared by older, much sexier Lacey and Jo. It's five years later and Jo wakes up from her dream to learn that Danny Desai is free from juvenile detention. They just let murderers out after five years. No parole officer or anything. Denise Richards simply picks them up at jail and isn't sad about her husband drowning in a yacht "accident." It totally wasn't an accident, right?
But I'm getting ahead of the show. At breakfast, aside from learning that Jo is mad at Danny for scarring her emotionally and sending her on a one-way train to Ostracize-ville just before puberty, we learn that Jo's dad is a police officer who still has time to drive his daughter to school. Also, Jo's family "doesn't have much money" and suggests perhaps she see a therapist again. At school, we learn that Jo is not cool, even though you could have fooled me. She is pretty and her hair is done and she dresses cool. She hangs out with a smart friend named Rico, who probably has a crush on her but will forever be in the friend zone until he learns to get some game.
Lacey and Jo are not friends anymore. Lacey is even prettier than Jo, and did whatever it took to be popular, probably by making fun of Jo and tweeting that Danny is "the socio." Lacey hangs out with the popular girls, Regina and Serita. No, this show couldn't be bothered to come up with another name for the most popular girl in school. That's what you get for watching Mean Girls while you're writing your pilot to learn what high schoolers talk like.
So as he arrives at his high school, Danny is labeled "the socio." Because sociopaths are so hot right now. I get it; I think everyone is a sociopath. I'd just never thought to shorten it. In spite of this, Regina has decided that Danny is the hot kind of murderer. She's a great role model, this one. She makes it her mission to sleep with Danny. He's got that eleven-year-old murderer hotness.
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