Twisted Metal season 1, episode 6 recap: “DRVTHRU”

This episode of Twisted Metal is the tale of two different fast food restaurants.

Twisted Metal season 1, episode 6 recap: First we learn Quiet’s backstory…

The episode starts with a flashback sequence about Quiet and Loud. It turns out that before the events of the show, they lived by the OC community, where Quiet got the two of them contracts inside the city.

In exchange for four years of indentured servitude to the citizens of OC, they would be given a piece of beachfront property within the walls of the city to happily live the rest of their days. Turns out that the deal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The citizens of the OC love to collect body parts from their servants, including fingers, toes, ears, etc. We find out that this is how Quiet ended up losing a finger when she didn’t do her chores fast enough.

The episode takes place inside a fast food restaurant, where Quiet and her master are going for lunch and Loud is working at the restaurant. Quiet and Loud see each other for the first time in three years but can’t say anything as the servants aren’t allowed to speak.

While they’re eating, the restaurant has to go on lockdown because of an active shooter situation, something that apparently happens a lot. But Loud uses the extended stay as a chance to finally get to talk to Quiet.

While the two speak briefly in the back of the storeroom, they are caught by the fast food manager who tries to take Loud’s ear to add to his collection. However, the amputation is interrupted by the active shooter outside.

It turns out the shooter is an indentured servant as well, who is yelling that the four-year deal is a lie. She served her four years and got nothing.

The shooter is taken out by the local law enforcement and the OC citizens are free to go. The manager returns to his earlier task and cuts off Loud’s ear.

He then tries to give Loud to the law enforcement, but they’re unexpectedly dead. Quiet, apparently having run from her master, kills them and kills the fast food manager.

She and Loud escape in the Law’s car in search of a life that isn’t this one.

Twisted Metal season 1, episode 6 recap: John and Quiet are trapped together

Meanwhile, in the present storyline, we pick up from where John rescued Quiet at the end of the last episode. He takes her to an abandoned fast food joint where he treats her wounds.

When she realizes what happened, she yells at John for interfering with her killing Stone. He yells back that Stone would have killed her if he hadn’t shown up.

They yell at each other some more, but it’s that classic kind of TV yelling where it ends with the two characters making out, which is of course what happens, and John and Quiet have sex in the ball pit. Quiet still wants to head back to Topeka to kill Stone, but a storm traps the two of them in the restaurant overnight.

While they are trapped together, John and Quiet continue to bond, opening up to each other about their lives and their hopes. Although John still doesn’t learn Quiet’s real first name.

At one point John askes Quiet to come with him, and deliver the package so that she can start a life with him inside the walls of a city. Quiet refuses, saying she’s never going back inside a city, given her previous experience.

John tells her she has to let go of the guilt that she’s carrying over her brother’s death, and she says she can’t. She breaks down, and John is there for her.

The two of them finally fall asleep, but when John wakes up in the morning, Quiet is nowhere to be seen. He goes outside to the car and finds her loading up supplies for their trip to finish delivering the package together.

They get in and start the drive to New Chicago as the episode comes to an end.

Twisted Metal season 1, episode 6 recap: An (almost) bottle episode for the series

After the car action of the last episode, this one slows the story down a lot, confining almost all of the action to a single location for each story being told. There’s a lot happening in the flashback sequences, but for the main storyline, we functionally get an entire episode being carried by two actors in one location.

The whole thing is set like a stage play and relies very heavily on the actor’s ability to carry a scene. While very little action happens to move the story forward, it is just two people waiting out a storm.

The fact that the show slows down to let the conversations happen in this episode, help to make the moments land right. The actual content of this episode could have been crammed into a five minute conversation between car wrecks, but it wouldn’t have landed the same way.

It helps that by this point it really feels that both Anthony Mackie and Stephanie Beatriz are comfortable in the characters they are playing. Both of them are more well known for different characters from other franchises, but here we get to see them really take some time to define the characters of John and Quiet and what their relationship really is to one another.

It’s something that’s been building since the first episode but giving it some time to really solidify here, makes it feel like we’re going into the back half of these episodes with a well-established relationship that the audience can use as a grounding point for whatever events are about to unfold.

What did you think of Twisted Metal season 1 episode 6? You can watch Twisted Metal season 1 on Peacock TV.