Sunday, September 18, 2011

Fall TV: The Secret Circle

So I don't know what happened to Kevin Williamson in the 5 or so years in between Dawson's Creek ending and The Vampire Diaries starting, but whatever it is, I'm really glad. TVD has been firing on all cylinders for two seasons (no sophomore slump for them) and now he's adapted another L.J. Smith young adult book series, The Secret Circle. Witches!

Predictably, I really enjoyed this. Life Unexpected went downhill FAST but Britt Robertson was definitely a find and it's no surprise that the CW immediately gave her another star vehicle. The series starts off with a bang: Cassie's single mom is killed in a house fire started magically by a man who never sets foot inside the house. Cassie has to move to Washington state to live with her grandmother where her mother grew up and of course, things start happening.

It turns out that the teens in this town have magical powers handed down through the generations and Cassie completes the "circle." Something bad happened with their parents' generation though, and there's plenty of secrets and hidden motivationss to uncover. The current circle includes Adam, whose father was in love with Cassie's mom and is convinced that history is set to repeat itself; his girlfriend Diana (ruh oh), unofficial leader of the circle whose father set the fire that killed Cassie's mom; Nick, Cassie's brooding neighbor; Faye, mean girl daughter of the high school principal; and Melissa, Faye's best friend. The younger cast is mostly unknowns but they're building up a nice dynamic among the 6 of them.

I really didn't like the Vampire Diaries pilot (I actually gave it up for a few weeks before trying again) but the producers have clearly learned a lot in the past two years. This pilot is tight. The music, the pacing, the effects, the lighting...it's all very slick. This show will probably skew a little younger than TVD but I think it's a great pairing and I'm looking forward too see how it progresses!

Odds and ends:
- I like that there will be lots of town history and mythology, like on TVD.
- Faye's bitchy but kind of awesome.
- We're clearly supposed to be shipping Cassie and Adam but I'm probably going to be feeling sorry for Diana.
- No eye candy on the level of Ian Somerhalder or Paul Wesley, but I've always liked Thomas Dekker, who plays Adam, back from his days on Heroes and The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

2 comments:

mira said...

yay! i'm glad you blogged about this cuz after watching the premier i couldn't stop thinking about how i liked it, too! vd is a bad abbreviation for vampire diaries, though, cuz i keep thinking "venereal disease." sigh, the result of having tons of pre-med/then med school/then doctor friends.

some thoughts i had:
- it seems like cassie's mom had her really young, but all the other kids are all exactly the same age. so all the parents had their kids in exactly the same year at a young time?
- the 6 alluded to in the previous generation secret circle seem to have ended up dead including cassie's dad and adam's mom... yet, the ones who were part of the circle also seem to be faye's mom and diana's dad (who seem evil), adam's dad and cassie's mom (now dead). were there two circles of 6??
- i really hope that the success of vampire diaries is a good indicator for success with the secret circle, too!! :)

Jennifer said...

I updated the abbreviation to be TVD =)