Twisted - Recap: Different Worlds
Recap and review of Twisted - Episode 14 - Home Is Where the Hurt Is:
This was a curious episode of Twisted. I understand that, in the classic ABC Family tradition, this mystery will be as filled with high school drama as it is with questions of murder and betrayal. But "Home Is Where the Hurt Is" is packed with strange tonal shifts. One moment, it's following Rico's (Ashton Moio) fairly quirky love life; another moment, it's about Danny's (Avan Jogia) immense guilt; and then, later, it's about Kyle (Sam Robards) discovering the truth about Tess (Kimberly Quinn), all before looping right back around to Charlie (Jack Falahee) goofing off for Jo (Maddie Hasson). It's an episode that's all over the map, which makes it difficult for the show to tell a consistently compelling story, since hardly anything is given enough focus to stick, outside of the Kyle/Tess storyline. With that said, it's not like it's a bad episode or anything. Danny's back-and-forth is a bit exhausting, but Avan Jogia does a great job with it, and the blow-up between Kyle and Tess is the highlight of the episode. Twisted has been so frequently satisfying that I have no trouble cutting the show some leeway on an off-week, since so much of the story is still deeply involving, as "Home Is Where the Hurt Is" illustrates in its best moments.
Credit: ABC Family
The most effective narrative thread in the episode is the focus on how poor Kyle is basically being lied to by the two most important women in his life. Granted, both have their reasons for withholding the truth. Or, at the very least, I'm assuming Tess has a valid reason, since we don't really get an explanation beyond "Vikram helped me through a really rough time, so I wanted to help him avoid the people who were trying to have him killed!" And that's a pretty flimsy reason for keeping such a huge secret from someone whom, as Kyle astutely points out, could have helped Vikram far better than she could have. Worse, Tess's reason is not nearly as dramatically substantial as Jo's reason for keeping Vikram's whereabouts a secret: namely, that one could argue she was complicit in his (justifiable) homicide.
But even though we don't really get a very satisfying reason for why Tess lied, everything around it is satisfying. Kyle gets a phone call from his deputy in which he reveals that Tess left a message on Vikram's cellphone. Kyle hears the telltale message while out to dinner with Tess, and it leads to a blow-up of gargantuan proportions, as Kyle derides his wife for choosing Vikram over him. She swears she wasn't having an affair with Vikram, but was simply helping a friend, yet Kyle just doesn't want to be around her at all. It's a fantastic scene that finally gives Sam Robards a scene he can sink his teeth into, but beyond that, it continues the central mystery: someone is not only exposing Vikram's allies, but also revealing his whereabouts, as evidenced by the closing reveal that Vikram's body has been discovered.
Credit: ABC Family
This mystery is great stuff, and helps bolster the episode when it lags a bit. It's the Homecoming Dance, and Lacey (Kylie Bunbury) naturally assumes that Danny is going to take her, but Danny still doesn't feel he deserves a normal life after what he's done. And so he encourages Charlie to ask Lacey out after the new kid inquires if he and Lacey are dating. This is a dynamic that is further complicated by the fact that Charlie and Danny know each other already: they were roommates in juvie. Neither reveals this to Lacey or anyone else, but it's clear their relationship is still fraught around the edges, particularly with Charlie getting passive-aggressive after Danny ends up taking Lacey to Homecoming anyway.
It's hard to tell whether his decision to pursue Jo is a decision he makes of his own accord, or if it's merely a tactic to get back at Danny, but one thing is for certain, Charlie is creepy as hell. He even asks Danny if he misses juvie, and waxes poetic about how much easier life was on the inside, and how difficult it is having so many choices outside prison walls. There's a thin veneer of contempt and sinister intent behind just about everything Charlie does or says, which makes him an exhilarating, and also fear-inducing, presence. This is because he's essentially a human time-bomb that could go off at any time, a total wildcard that can't really be trusted. Not that Charlie is really needed to liven up the Danny-Lacey-Jo dynamic, but I enjoyed his presence anyway.
Credit: ABC Family
On the subject of that love triangle, Danny continues to push Lacey away while blaming Jo for talking him into going along with keeping Vikram's death a secret. While Danny lives as close to a normal life as he's lived since returning -- rejoining the soccer team and even finding a surrogate father figure in the form of Jack (Ivan Sergei), who helps him restore a vintage car in his garage -- it's still not enough but make him forget that, in his eyes, he's exactly the killer people think he is. It all comes to a head when he's voted Homecoming King opposite posthumous Homecoming Queen Regina Crane, as Danny announces in front of the entire school that he doesn't deserve their pity, and that he's earned nothing less than their contempt. He storms out and gets into another argument with Jo, and Lacey recognizes there is a secret between them.
Credit: ABC Family
Lacey isn't exactly wrong when she accuses Danny of having an apparent commitment to being unhappy, yet it's an opinion that isn't rooted in all the right facts. For Danny's part, he realizes he's been unnecessarily harsh on Lacey, and that she means more to him than his guilt. On the advice of Jack, who relates Danny's regret about letting Lacey get away to his own regret about letting Karen (Denise Richards) get away, Danny tracks Lacey down and makes things right. It's a storyline that suffers from tonal whiplash, as Danny doesn't seem to know what he wants any better than Lacey does. But I think that's kind of the point, as Jo is suffering from that same uncertainty. She doesn't want to be with Rico, and sets him up with the nerdy-cute Andie, who's completely starstruck by him. Yet while she knows she doesn't want Rico, I think the jury is still out on whether she's attracted to Charlie, who makes a goof of himself with bad dancing at Homecoming in order to impress her.
Credit: ABC Family
"Home Is Where the Hurt Is" is probably the weakest episode of this half-season so far, but even a weak episode of Twisted is still worth watching, since so much of the series eschews soap opera traditions in favor of a much darker, more complex narrative. I routinely have fun with Twisted, thanks in large part to its own sense of self-awareness. Maybe it's a bit more self-serious than Pretty Little Liars, but it's still an immensely entertaining hour of TV each week. At this stage in the game, I don't need prestige television. I just need entertaining. And that's what I'm getting. In spades. Seriously, any show that uses Jes Hudak's "Different Worlds" is alright by me.