I'll give Twisted this one: despite all of the extremely predictable drama around the Danny-Lacey-Jo love triange, they have so far spared us the crushing embarrassment of watching Jo actually confess her affections to Danny, who continues to think of her “like a sister.” Instead last night's episode saw him dropping that little phrase in casual conversation and destroying all of her sweet hopes and dreams with it, sending her running into the arms of Tyler, Phoebe's cute but slightly creepy older brother who tried to ask her out last week, too. The real suffering is reserved for Rico, who's absolutely haplessly in love with Jo, and Danny, who's being pranked– and maybe stalked– by someone who thinks it's funny to decorate his front yard with jumpropes, his murder weapon of choice.
Danny and Lacey are keeping their budding romance quiet by going on late-night romantic picnics in public parks– a questionable decision on many levels, and especially when one is interrupted by a horde of boys in Danny masks wearing identical green shirts, red jumpropes draped around their shoulders. (Where someone found an army of teenage boys with long dark hair for this particular display is a question best left uncontemplated, really.) He throws a bottle at them to scare them away and they disappear– only to show up at the house party Danny throws to try to get himself back into his classmates' good graces. This time two of the masked Dannys re-enact the murder on his living room floor– where Tara Desai's actual death took place five years earlier.
It seems that we're meant to understand that the pranks are being engineered by Tyler in an attempt to create drama for his documentary about Danny's return to Green Grove. Is it him, then, who we see in a mask recording Danny and Lacey making out in his living room in the episode's final minutes? (Seriously, these kids are not great at stealth.) Or is it… someone else? Who knows! It was another entertaining hour with almost zero real plot advancement, though Danny's mother does turn herself into the police for Regina's murder at the very end– not that I buy it for a second, but at least it's some kind of progress.
There are three more weeks to go, during which time I'm hoping that all of these secrets unravel themselves and the kids will get it together and the show will convince me that Jo and Rico really do belong together after all. Though it's probably not a great sign that I am sort of starting to hope that Danny's a sociopath? There's a lot of promised creepiness that Twisted has yet to deliver on, and dopplegangers in paper masks who get scared away by a little broken glass just aren't going to cut it for me in that department, I'm afraid.
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