Twisted - Recap: Words With Frenemies

People act differently within the context of a team sport than they would act, say, alone at a diner with a friend. By the same token, four teenage girls at a sleepover have a different way of communicating with one another than four middle-aged women at a social mixer. Interactions are colored by age, experience and gender, and the episode is simply terrific for how it compares and contrasts the ways in which different people navigate the social spectrum. But beyond the general implications of this approach, the episode also allows us to better understand why these characters are behaving the way they are. Jo (Maddie Hasson), for instance, is putting all her faith in Danny (Avan Jogia) because this is the closest she's come to having her old life back in five years. "I can't lose that," she tells Lacey (Kylie Bunbury), and the desperation is clearly apparent in her eyes. Even if she has doubts about Danny's innocence, Jo has to keep the faith if she's ever going to get back to normal. It's a clear-cut, poignant motivation that links well with the reveal, last week, that Danny simply wants to return to his own semblance of normalcy. Of course, for that to happen, he has to overcome being the prime suspect in Regina's murder first.

Credit: ABC Family

After joining the soccer team last week, Danny had hoped his social prospects would be on the upswing, but Archie (Grey Damon) has no intention of letting the whole "Freak" moniker go. But this is one situation where Danny actually gets the solid upper hand on Archie: Danny is an amazing soccer player and quickly wins over one of his fellow teammates, a down-to-Earth kid named Farrell. Once Archie recognizes the threat Danny presents to his standing as team captain (after only just coping, last week, with the potential threat the "Psycho" presented to his relationship with Lacey), he handles it like any testosterone-fueled athlete would: He attempts to best Danny on the soccer field. However, his ball-hogging ends up costing the team a high-profile match against a team they could have beaten. With the team deriding their captain for his selfishness, Danny chooses this moment to bring up Archie's suspicious alibi, in which he claimed to have been at home asleep despite having borrowed his friend's car for the entire night. Confronted with the truth, Archie has no choice but to admit to his team that he was using Scott's car on the night of Regina's murder in order to meet with a scout from a rival school. Completely frozen out by the team, Archie snidely tells Danny, "I hope you're happy." He smiles to himself as Archie sulks away, and for once, it genuinely looks as if Danny really is.

Unfortunately, things don't go nearly as well for Jo. After running into Lacey, she gets inadvertently invited to a girls' slumber party by Lacey's recently-divorced mother (Robin Givens). What follows is an incredibly awkward night in which Jo hangs out with Lacey, the super-bubbly Phoebe (Brittany Curran), and the insufferably "over it" Sarita (Jamila Velazquez), who continues to be the most obnoxious character on the show simply by virtue of her permanent, miserable scowl. Jo tries desperately to blend in, and it's initially jarring to see Jo acting so overtly girlish in an attempt to fit in. She often comes across as someone who is above conformity, yet this opens up a new side to her character as she keeps chipping away at Lacey's defenses. By the end of the night, Jo and Lacey are bonding over a bowl of candy corn while Phoebe snores loudly beside them, in one of the funnier moments of the episode. However, whatever goodwill Jo has built up in her appearance is tossed away when she steals a DVD of Archie from a box of Regina's things that the late girl's mother had dropped off. Though Jo suspected that the glowing DVD profile is evidence that Archie and Regina were messing around, Archie reveals to Lacey that it was part of his recruitment video for the rival school. Lacey confronts Jo about her theft, which she learns about from Sarita, who saw Jo taking the DVD. When faced with losing Lacey again, Jo admits that she was wrong to take the DVD, but she intends to do everything in her power to vindicate Danny's name. She believes in him -- in many ways, she has to. The last five years have been incredibly difficult for her, and Danny is the way back to a sense of normalcy for her. Though Jo and Lacey aren't exactly back to being pals or anything, Lacey seems to have a tacit understanding of where Jo is coming from, even if she doesn't agree with her methods.

Credit: ABC Family

The compare and contrast between the ways teenage girls and guys handle their problems wouldn't be as effective if we didn't also get a similar display of how adults in similar situations handle social pressures. In this sense, the arc with Karen (Denise Richards) and Jo's mother, Tess (Kimberly Quinn), is among the best of the episode. Tess badly wants to make peace with Karen and reintegrate her into Green Grove society, yet Mrs. Desai is a social pariah through and through. Complicating matters is Sheriff Kyle's (Sam Robards) continued investigation into Danny, as he's able to obtain a warrant to search the Desai residence and practically turns the place upside down. It's hard not to sympathize with Karen this week, as she reminisces about her late husband and the afternoons he'd spend in his custom recliner, watching soccer on the flatscreen with Danny. Her approach to the entire social game has been simply not to play it. If she removes herself from the equation, she can't be hurt. Yet Tess, despite her good intentions, insists it'll be good for Karen to attend the annual town charity brunch.

Credit: ABC Family

However, Regina's mother (Jessica Tuck) happens to be there, and though she puts on a false face of acceptance to Karen, she's quick to tear Mrs. Desai down, stating that Regina would still be here if it weren't for Karen's "deranged monster of a son." She then tells Karen that she intends to have Danny kicked out of Green Grove High and confined to prison for the rest of his natural life. Eerily, she does this with a full smile on her face, further emphasizing the false niceties of adult social life, as these are people savvy enough to fake it, most of the time. Yet the venom always lurks beneath the surface. Tess, for her part, offers her friendship to Karen in the aftermath of the brunch, which was quickly followed by Kyle's invasive search (which turned up nothing). Tess remains one of the sweetest characters on the show, and I feel as though part of Karen's initial reluctance to return her friendship is motivated by her wish not to drag anyone down with her, by association. No matter the motive, however, these interactions are well-written, and offer some of the more incisive elements of the episode.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention how funny this show often is. Jo inadvertently implying that Lacey's mother is a "slut" is hilarious, thanks in large part to Maddie Hasson's performance. You can see that she realizes just how bad this all sounds while she's saying it, yet she's already started and can't seem to stop. It's such a terrific bit of physical comedy in which the laughs don't come from the content, but how it's delivered. The same could be said for my favorite scene in the episode, in which Danny and Rico (Ashton Moio) bond over onion rings at the diner, and Rico admits he's never fist-bumped before. Credit to the writers if this was scripted, since this feels like pure improv all the way through. Regardless of whether it was written or improvised, Moio and Jogia are hilarious here, with Rico discovering just how much he enjoys fist-bumping, and Danny getting steadily weirded out by Rico's desire to keep doing it. These are the kinds of interactions that imbue the three-person dynamic between Danny, Rico and Jo with a greater dramatic weight, as they genuinely feel like real friends. Of course, even friends keep secrets from one another, as we see in the conclusion. Sure, Danny admits that Regina's necklace belonged to his late Aunt Tara. But he conveniently leaves out that he's currently in possession of the necklace (hidden in the cupholder of his father's old recliner, as Karen discovers at the end of the episode). "Whoever has it now," Jo says of the necklace, "might be the person that killed her." I wonder how Danny is going to explain his way out of this one. Hell, I wonder how the show will explain Danny having the necklace if he didn't kill Regina. But hey, I love a good mystery.

Credit: ABC Family

"Sleeping With the Frenemy" is, in many respects, the best episode of Twisted yet. There's a confidence to the storytelling that's better than most teen dramas of a similar ilk, and the cast is uniformly talented. Hopefully, the streak of solid episodes continues.