Certainly the long wait dismantles what would like to be twists, and personally I have to say that, as much as I smelt a rat, the twist and Josy and Maya, having played the first season all in one gulp, certainly worked more than the later ones.
DPC does use a trick though, because he always inserts false objective evidence: so at the Preps' party there's a man looking for his daughter, but he's not Sage's father, in Chad's bag there are women's underwear...
for me there's just one problem: these twists don't often work from an emotional point of view, the predominant reaction is almost always a huge WTF!!! and little else