Game News Video Games Reviews & News
Related Articles
.
The Secret Circle
Network: The CW
Main showrunners: Andrew Miller, Kevin Williamson ( The Vampire Diaries )
Main stars: Britt Robertson, Ashley Crow, Natasha Henstridge
Script review/analysis: The Secret Circle is one of those shows that feels like it was cynically crafted to appeal to the female-skewing CW demo who love Gossip Girl and The Vampire Diaries . It actually reads like a mash-up of the two, with equal parts bitchy high school clique drama and secret coven mythology.
Cassie Blake is the focal point of the story, a seemingly (always seemingly, right?) average 16-year-old who loses her single mom in a tragic “accidental” house fire. Funny thing is that Cassie wasn’t home for the fire and didn’t see a weird guy standing outside the home spilling water and lighting matches diabolically in concert with what was going on inside with her trapped mom.
Fast-forward a month later and a sad Cassie relocates to New Salem, Maine to live with her caring grandmother, Jane Blake. She’s got to start a new high school with prototypical mean girls, sweet girls that are true friend material and lab specimen perfect hunks appraising her around every corner. Of course, Cassie’s true origins are revealed when she finds a book in her mom’s childhood bedroom – a spell book – that lists an old secret coven with the participating member’s family surnames including Blake and many of her new schoolmates. She starts poking around and is told that yes, the coven continues with the same descendents now and Cassie can be the seventh member if she’s quiet and discreet. Uncertain and on the fence, it takes the man who killed her mom coming to town to push her to complete and join the secret circle.
While Secret Circle screams teen show with all its requisite pop culture speak, sex, drugs and narcissism, Williamson did transform the rocky Vampire Diaries pilot into an addictive guilty pleasure so he might be able to do the same here. Witch mythology is hot right now and it’s certainly fresher than zombies or vampires, but we’d like to see a lot more maturity in the writing before we sign on.
.
