Review - The Secret Circle Season 1 Episode 9 Balcoin

By its ninth episode, The Vampire Diaires had turned the corner and departed from the boring teen angst for batshit crazy vampire adventures. The Secret Circle, unfortunately, has not reached that point yet--far from it. The majority of "Balcoin" is spent on Jake and Cassie and their doomed romance. While Jake continues to be suspicious, Cassie remains oblivious and silly. Then, Jake reveals who he is and floats away on the boat at the end of the episode. Great...

Score: 7.6/10

Review - The Secret Circle Season 1 Episode 8 Beneath

"Beneath" lays off on the plot-heavy aspect of the show and allows the characters to be themselves. This leads to one of the most tightly woven episodes so far. It pulls together Henry's death, the theft of Jane's crystal, and the various feelings that have been floating around as Cassie kisses Jake twice.

Faye has been the most exciting character (though the other characters are pretty boring so it's not a huge complement) and she gets more emotional content this week, reminded of her childhood by the girl running around in the darkness. Like in her more playful scenes, Faye expresses more than the other characters and breaks down over the girl--before seeing her grandfather dead.

As far as the overall mystery goes, all the factions are in the same place but missing each other. It's kind of funny, actually. Each faction knows specifically about only one of the other factions. Jake being ordered to kill Cassie should shake things up. My guess is that he'll become a good guy and spill the beans, but the writers could kill off another character.

Score: 9.0/10

Review - The Secret Circle Season 1 Episode 7 Masked

The characters on The Secret Circle seem especially dumb compared to average television characters. Enemies have been in their midsts since the first episode and after 7 episodes they are none the wiser. Cassie even finds Jake's big knife and does nothing. So, while the new witch hunters are cool enemies, the tension is less than it could be because can't figure out anything on their own and are getting by through sheer luck. "Masked" has both stronger villains than usual--far better than Faye and Diana's parents--but it also has a lot of the near-sightedness that plagues all the characters.

Score: 8.6/10

Review - The Secret Circle Season 1 Episode 6 Wake

The aftermath of Nick's death is fairly interesting, as his brother Jake heads into town and we learn later that he's part of a witch hunter group. His arrival stirs up old feelings for Adam, who resents Jake for stealing his father's things, and Faye, who apparently was treated badly by him. These feelings come out in various ways, most notably as Adam reacts to Jake and Cassie being close, which in turn pushes Diana over the edge. I still don't really care about the characters and Thomas Dekker remains as stiff as ever, but the story is beginning to shape up.

Score: 8.5/10

Review - The Secret Circle Season 1 Episode 5 Slither

A lot happened in "Slither," but I still feel like The Secret Circle is missing key ingredients. For one, we never really got to know Nick and Cassie didn't either. His death, while a big event, doesn't carry too much weight because he was just a guy in the circle. We saw some of his personality, but he never did anything of note (and for that matter, none of the other characters have either).

Another problem is that we see all the parties and what they're up to, and there's little mystery in terms of characters. We know exactly what Dawn and Charles are up to, and what the circle is doing. Aside from the twists at the end of each episode, there is little in the middle of the episodes that is actually surprising.

Now that Nick is dead, I hope this is a turning point for the show, to let go of the limitations of the first four episodes and tell a story without getting caught up in exposition about the past, most of which should have been drawn out through the course of the story.

Score: 8.7/10

Review - The Secret Circle Season 1 Episode 4 Heather

The Secret Circle is still in its growing stages, trying to figure out what it wants to be, but "Heather" is a step in the right direction. While the previous episodes looked broadly at magic and the characters, this week's episode gives us a specific reason why the magic they harness is dangerous and some threats out there. It also helps that Heather is a scary adversary, able to jump up staircases.

I'm don't really prefer any combination of characters yet, but Cassie and Faye works well, better than Cassie and Adam at least. They do the spell on Heather to revive her, only for Heather, in demon mode, to go after them. Again, the villain is vanquished by the end of the episode, hit by a car. However, we do get a big plot moving forward, the demon snakes crawling into Melissa.

Interestingly, this was, I believe, the first episode without any of the adults. The show seems to work better without the adults, allowing for a more streamlined, focused plot. But the adults are crucial to the central mystery of the show, so it's doubtful there will be many more episodes like this.

Score: 8.7/10

Review - The Secret Circle Season 1 Episode 3 Loner

I almost didn't want to review "Loner" because I was so bored with the episode, but here a couple thoughts. The relationships--Cassie and Adam, Melissa and Nick--dominated the episode and went nowhere. We get a better idea who both Melissa and Nick are, but that's it. The scenes with Cassie and Adam are still embarrassingly bad, and Cassie and Diana scenes aren't much better. It's so obvious what the writers are going for--the super romantic "they're destined for each other" stuff--but the dialogue and acting is so stiled that it's cringe-worthy.

Score: 7.3/10

Review - The Secret Circle Season 1 Episode 2 Bound

The Secret Circle is off to a better start than The Vampire Diaries, for what it's worth, and the plotting is rather promising. However, it is still in the starting blocks, developing the characters, who are all fairly boring at this point, and trying to put Cassie and Adam together whenever possible.

"Bound" is a pretty boring episodes from a plot perspective since the whole episode is designed so Cassie will be bound in the circle at the end of the episode. There's nothing unexpected about what happens, nor are there any moments that stand out. We get to see more of Dawn and what she's up to, but we don't learn much other than that the magic is contained in a crystal and she's a really bad person who cares about her daughter.

Score: 8.3/10

Review - The Secret Circle Season 1 Episode 1 Pilot

For the CW, picking up The Secret Circle and airing it after The Vampire Diaries is a guaranteed success. It's based off a book series by TVD's author, and has many of the same people working on it. The similarities are so striking that I can't imagine a world where The Secret Circle does not get stellar ratings (for CW standards).

From the pilot alone, it is already off to a better start than TVD, which had an awful pilot and first four/five episodes. The Secret Circle, unlike The Vampire Diaries, doesn't dawdle around at the beginning or wallow too much in the teen angst and drama. It gets straight to the point: this is a show about a witch's circle and the main character Cassie completes it. OK, so nothing revolutionary, but it's at least better than the swirling fog and flirting that inhabited the first episode of TVD. There is definitely forward momentum going into the second episode.

At this point, there isn't much more you can say about TSC. The characters are introduced, the setting is established, and the backstory is ready to be revealed. It all feels very familiar. The question going forward is whether TSC can capture the wild unpredictability of the TVD, the shocking plot twists that keep coming episode after episode. We'll just have to wait and see.

Score: 8.5/10