Entertainment

'Twisted' Knows the Recipe for an Awkward Family Dinner

by Molly Fitzpatrick

Oh, Regina, we hardly knew ye. The premiere's ill-fated party girl is already six feet under. The "menacing" newspaper photo of prime suspect Danny Desai looks like he's doomed for a death sentence of his own.

Danny remains reluctant to persuade Lacey to come forward as his alibi, because that would mean acknowledging they (platonically) spent the night together. Really, boo? Is it that hard to choose between a little bit of awkward and a whole lot of prison?

Jo's police chief dad is not super-jazzed about the prospect of his daughter spending time with Desai, who is both a suspected and a convicted murderer (primo son-in-law material). Nevertheless, Jo and her beta-male buddy Rico — whose crush on Angela Lansbury's character from Murder, She Wrote has automatically elevated him to my favorite TV character — are set on proving Danny's innocence.

Jo's plan: curry sympathy for Danny by inviting him to dinner with her mother, Tess. But she thinks twice when she witnesses her friend's disturbing self-destructive streak: Danny starts a fight with Lacey's jock boyfriend, who has kind of a Robert Pattison thing going on with his face. If this guy were 20% less of a meathead, he would've landed a major role in Twilight.

Ultimately, Danny and Karen Desai (who, may I remind you, is played by Denise Richards) host the entire Masterson family, including the police chief, for dinner. Hold up — Danny can cook? Ooh, honey.

The meal quickly escalates into a horrible, long-buried argument. Despite Karen "Denise Richards" Desai's pleading, the Mastersons wouldn't allow 11-year-old Jo to testify as a character witness in her friend's trial.

But don't cry for Danny just yet. In the "fort" that he, Jo and Lacey used as a childhood hideout, we discover that Desai has a distinctive red gemstone necklace in his possession — identical to both the necklace Regina was wearing when she died and the one seen on Danny's late aunt in a family photograph.

What if the necklace is the real killer, you guys?

Classic Denise Richards line of the week: "Say it, Kyle. You think my son's a psychopathic murderer."

Best possible thing to say about a dead girl at her funeral: "She told me once that she wanted to be a weatherperson. Like Al Roker. But, you know, white. And a lady."

Best possible thing to say about a dead girl at a grief support group: "I never got to be her nerd-pet. I never got the chance."

Image via IMDb