Twisted - Series Premiere - Recap: Persona Non Grata
Recap video and review of Twisted - Series Premiere - Pilot:
The friendship you have as a little kid are the kinds of friendships you only have once in your life, and then never again. The world turns on a day at the park, or an afternoon in the sunshine, playing any number of made-up games and getting into any number of made-up adventures. There's a purity and simplicity to those childhood relationships that vanish once a person grows older, and it's an innocence that can never really be reclaimed. Sometimes it's teenage cynicism that takes over. But other times, such as in ABC Family's latest damaged-teens mystery series, something much darker compromises that innocence. Twisted follows in the footsteps of other Tuesday night ABC Family mystery series Pretty Little Liars and The Lying Game, and in many ways, it does right by the tone and atmosphere those series have cultivated. But beyond that, Twisted digs deeper into that formula by painting a darker, moodier picture from the get-go. It's not just a story of teenage ostracization but of a kid shunned by an entire community. Danny Desai (Avan Jogia) is persona non grata in his community following a five-year stint in juvenile detention for murdering his aunt. This is dark enough, yet, most curiously of all, we're never exactly told he didn't do it. In fact, he admits to his former best friend that while he's killed someone before, he'd never lie to her. And we believe him, because genre conventions expect us to. But there's a lot of ambiguity here, and it's this murkiness that drives the narrative and makes Twisted such a genuinely intriguing series.
Credit: ABC Family
The story centers on the release of Danny Desai from juvenile detention. He's spent five years locked up, and for good reason: at the age of 11, he murdered his aunt with a jump rope, and his best friends, Jo (Maddie Hasson) and Lacey (Kylie Bunbury), were the ones to discover the crime scene. This act informs these characters' personalities, as their lives have taken markedly different paths in the wake of that tragedy. Traumatized by the incident, Jo entered therapy and became an introverted outcast, while Lacey joined up with the popular girls clique and began dating the captain of the soccer team. Danny's return, however, throws everything into chaos, as he challenges their set identities.
What elevates this show is the cast, particularly Avan Jogia, who plays Danny as a wise-cracking tortured soul. His portrayal gets a little getting used to, but it's among the most fascinating performances in the ABC Family lineup, as Danny has to embody a host of different qualities: he has to convey warmth and friendship, yet also remain mysterious enough to arouse suspicion; he needs to be light-hearted, yet also unmistakably dark; he needs to have a swaggering bravado and a sense of danger, yet also an aura of ambiguity about what's going on in his head. It's a fine line to walk, yet Jogia makes it look easy, which is all the more impressive when you consider the fact that he doesn't exactly have the most expressive face in the world. Yet the same can't be said about the faces of Maddie Hasson and Kylie Bunbury. The actresses bring a lot to the table, as they wear much of the pain of their past with Danny on their faces. I love the natural, organic chemistry between this cast, as it's easy to believe they all shared not only a childhood together, but a dark past. That pain is written in the DNA of every interaction, and it makes the story remarkably compelling to watch unfold.
Credit: ABC Family
Danny is ostracized by the community, nicknamed "Socio" by his classmates and generally shunned altogether, even by Jo and Lacey, who want nothing to do with him. Yet acceptance comes from, of all people, the queen bee of the popular girls clique: Regina (Karynn Moore), Lacey's current best friend, has the hots for Danny and spends much of the episode trying to get him into bed. When Jo asks Regina why she's pursuing Danny, even knowing what he did, Regina's response is fairly poignant, despite being played for laughs: "He's here now. What are we gonna do? Hate him forever?" However, while Danny shows an "over it" sense of humor about his reception by the community, he doesn't exactly help matters by being as sketchy as he is. When Jo gets drunk at a house party Regina throws, one of Regina's bullheaded friends, Scott (Todd Julian), tries to get her to take her shirt off, prompting Danny to step in and defend her. Yet he doesn't defend her with fists: he simply grabs Scott by the head and whispers something into his ear -- something that prompts Scott to back off. The mystery continues to surround Danny, despite his reconnection with Jo, who is initially dead-set against giving him a second chance. Not only is she resentful of Danny for stealing her childhood from her, but she's also frustrated by his refusal to tell anyone why he killed his aunt. He simply insists that it's for everyone's own safety that she doesn't know. For his part, Danny doesn't really want to be in this town, given that everyone has already made up their minds about him. To make matters worse, his beloved father has gone missing and is presumed dead. So why, exactly, did he return to this town once he was released? As his mother (Denise Richards) explains, their money is tied up in the family home, which she was unable to sell due to the stigma surrounding Danny's crime.
Credit: ABC Family
So Danny, stuck in his hometown and faced with an increasingly hostile community, reaches out to the only people who've ever meant anything to him in his life. Jo gives him a second chance, and their friendship feels genuine, and is one of the best parts of the pilot. However, Danny also gets the chance to reconnect with Lacey, who gives him a ride home after they drop a drunk Jo off at her house following Regina's party. They reminisce about the past, and Danny conveys his regret that he lost the chance to grow up with her and Jo. It's a moment of honesty, played straight, and it works as a dramatic point around which to develop Danny's character. Yet there's also the mystery to define him by. Lacey falls asleep and Danny gets a text from Regina pleading with him to come over. When Danny refuses, Regina tries to coax him by saying she knows why he killed his aunt. We cut away before we see what Danny decides to do, and the deliberate editing choice is to preserve the suspicion surrounding Danny, as a housecleaner discovers Regina's body the next morning, beaten to death amidst all the refuse of the party. Curiously of all, her distinctive necklace is the only thing missing.
Credit: ABC Family
The school is obviously in a catatonic state after news of Regina's death breaks out. In an amusing moment of dark comedy, Scott laments that he didn't offer to have sex with Regina the night before, rationalizing that if he'd offered, maybe she wouldn't have had to invite Danny over to satisfy her, and she'd still be alive today. Much like the rest of the community, Scott is convinced that Danny murdered Regina, and he reveals to Lacey and the others that what Danny whispered into his ear the night before was a threat, with Danny saying that he would have no problems committing murder like "last time." This contradicts what Danny told Jo he'd said, namely a threat to sue Scott for physical assault.
Credit: ABC Family
Things grow only more complicated, as Jo's father, a cop, takes Danny in for questioning during a school assembly, in front of the entire student body. Jo stands up for Danny, insisting that he deserves a chance, and Jo's best friend, Rico, tries to get a slow clap going for her speech, in one of my favorite bits of the episode. However, the student body doesn't really want to hear a defense of the kid everyone calls "Socio." Naturally, Danny denies involvement in Regina's death, but he doesn't offer Lacey's name when asked if there's anyone who can verify that he was home after 12:30 the night before. And Lacey, for her part, has no intention of offering up that information to police either, despite Jo's attempts to convince her that Danny is innocent. Lacey states that she fell asleep and has no idea what Danny might have done between 12:30 and the next morning. All she knows is that the best friend she ever had is dead (words that cut through Jo like a knife, though really, both girls have bigger fish to fry than the implication that their childhood friendship wasn't the be all, end all of friendships). This all comes to a head, as Danny tells Jo about the text he received from Regina, but swears that he didn't kill her. Jo demands that Danny stop being so secretive, asking to know why he really killed his aunt. Though he continues to insist that nobody can ever know why, he also swears that he's never lied to Jo before, so he needs her to just trust him on this. Jo takes Danny's pleas in good faith, yet we discover that Danny actually has possession of Regina's necklace, which once belonged to his late aunt. This comes not long after Danny swore to the police that he'd never seen the necklace before in his life. And like that, we're sent spiralling down the rabbit hole.
Credit: ABC Family
So what's Danny's angle? Could he actually have killed Regina? And why did he kill his aunt (or, at the very least, take the blame for it)? These are all compelling mysteries in and of themselves, and they're rooted in some fascinating character dynamics. Thus, Twisted is definitely a summer series that's worth a look.
