Review: The Secret Circle, “Pilot”
(S0101)The cast of The CW’s new fall series descended on Comic-Con over the weekend to debut the full pilot episode of The Secret Circle and to answer questions. I watched the episode out of necessity since I wanted to ensure my spot at the Nikita panel (Maggie Q!) in the same room immediately following, but since I was there anyway, I’ll give you the scoop on this new show.

Cassie (Brittany Robertson, moving on from CW’s cancelled Life Unexpected) is a teenage orphan who moves from California to live with her grandma in New Salem, a charming little seaside town somewhere in the Pacific Northwest (probably Vancouver). Once there, she meets the local kids and begins discovering that all is not as charming as it appears. See, some of the kids seem to have some deep ties to each other, and Cassie finds out that she’s connected as well since her family originally lived there.

Two girls approach Cassie at her school locker and act more familiar with her than one would expect from total strangers, then she notices that her previously locked locker has miraculously popped open. Hmm. She also meets a nicer girl named Diana (Shelley Hennig) who seems like someone she could befriend. Next she meets a pretty boy named Adam (Thomas Dekker, late of The Sarah Conner Chronicles) at a local diner, as well as his perpetually drunken father. When she leaves the diner and gets in her car, the two girls from school remain in the diner but somehow manage to lock Cassie in her car AND make it burst into flames, all while one of them mutters something about how Cassie can make it stop. Hmmmm. Adam rushes out and thinks the flames out of existence, then carries her out of the car and keeps holding her. Because flames on the hood somehow made her legs useless? That’s a pretty clumsy and forced bonding moment.

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Third in line was The Secret Circle. Fifteen minutes in I wrote in my notes: Harry Potter meets Gossip Girl. Which – though simplistic – gets your head about 75% of the way there. Teenaged girl Cassie is out and about when a mysterious man approaches her home, performing little acts of symbolic magic: pouring a bottle of water out on the street causes the plumbing in the house to go haywire, and lighting matches sets the house ablaze, killing her mother. One month later, we see Cassie moving in with her grandmother (her father died before she was born) in the town her mom grew up in, and – like Harry Potter – everyone seems to know her, even people she’s never met. Turns out: almost everyone in town is a witch, Cassie’s mom was a witch, and Cassie’s a witch too.

I can’t tell if The Secret Circle is about being a girl in high school with a little bit of magic added, or about witches with a little bit of adolescent female drama added – because while often it’s evenly blended, it also spends a lot of time being purely one or the other. When adults are screen without the kids, it feels closer to something like a True Blood (though decidedly less sexy or scary); when it’s just the tykes, it can sometimes feel more like 90210. Likewise, while the show itself looks well-produced and slick, it also felt inconsistent: sometimes interesting with decent acting, other times feeling and sounding like dumb teenaged girl fanfiction. Take my favorite line, spoken of the show’s bitchy girl: “Faye’s always been a bit unpredictable. You never know what she’s going to do next.” But then it will throw in something charming enough that even a grown man – presumably well outside of the show’s target audience – can forgive the clunkiness. I will say this: it’s easy to watch, and while the audience snorted at a few scenes (Cassie’s bedroom window lining up with that of the often-shirtless boy across the way was ripe for mockery), people seemed to enjoy it overall. In short: fun, albeit derivative and shallow.

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Last year, my first official Comic-Con experience was the Preview Night screening of the series premiere of The CW’s Nikita. This year, SDCC topped itself by offering not one, but three series pilots, along with a look at a Japanese animated take on a popular U.S. TV series. While Alcatraz, The Secret Circle, and Supernatural: The Anime Series were all entertaining, CBS’ upcoming procedural Person of Interest won the night.

Based on L. J. Smith’s novels, this new CW drama follows a teen girl named Cassie (Britt Robertson) who goes to live with her grandmother after her mother dies in a mysterious fire. She’s quickly drawn in by a group of witches who believe she’s meant to be a part of their circle. And so begins your typical teen drama with a magical twist. Dangers lurk not far in the distance as these kids begin to dabble in powers that might have them in over their heads very soon.

My guess is that The Vampire Diaries fans are going to be on board with this one. The pilot was a little campy at parts, but it does offer a similar kind of glamorous danger to some of the other supernatural-themed TV dramas out there. Fans of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles may recognize Thomas Dekker, playing one of the teens that befriends Cassie.

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