Time for another adventure with the Scoobies! More love triangles, moooore teen angst, moooore Melissa scrambling after the others holding their coats and a plot line that takes us as many new and exciting places as a ride on a Merry-go-Round.
Cassie and Faye are in Wilson's Antiquities shop, buying Hallowe'en décor (Naturally you go to an antiquities shop for all your Hallowe'en needs. You could go to a costume shop but then there's much less chance of you picking up an actual magical/possessed book/artefact/doll which summons demons/explodes/kills you at the party. C'mon, got to follow the Hallowe'en horror script!) And they're going to have a Hallowe'en party (Mean Girl Faye is already in the spirit – wearing a scarf rather than an actual top. Of course this is totally not coding for revealing clothes = evil/nasty woman, right? Oh nooo) since Cassie's grandmother is away. Yes, that's right, several inexperienced teenaged witches together, unsupervised, in a house on hallowe'en. What could possibly go wrong? (For the answer, please check the Horror section of your local Blockbusters and rent... everything). For some reason Cassie and Faye are shopping together. Why? They don't even like each other very much – why would they do this?
The owner of the shop, Calvin Wilson, recognises Cassie's name! How spooky (or, y'know, small town) and when she hands him her credit card the mirror behind him shatters – damn Cassie, that's a seriously awful credit rating right there. Lay off the QVC girl. Calvin is Asian so lets take bets on the fate of this Man of Colour: A) he gets killed (preferably protecting Cassie & Co) or B) a villain. Cassie's grandmother confirms that he's a witch – another witch family. How many witch families are there in this place?
Cassie finds a shard of the blade used to attack her back in Episode 6. She decides to hold on to it and show Grandma – hah! No, of course she doesn't, that would be sensible! After all, she's just found out that complete stranger Calvin Wilson is a witch – she'll go show it to him instead! Evil!Jake (Nick's long lost evil brother who, we found out last episode, is a witch working with witch-hunters to kill witches, because his witchy family used magic that killed them just like witch-hunters do – yeah, it didn't make sense back then either) turns up and she tells him her plan.
Evil!Jake rushes ahead and threatens Wilson with magical death via a witch killing jar if he helps Cassie (oooh, option C – victim!). Shockingly, he fails to recognise his role in life and doesn't sacrifice himself to help her (hey, there's a whole series left, I'm sure he'll get round to it). But Cassie see's a blade like the shard and destroys some of his merchandise so she can take pictures for her own research (was that really necessary? What, there's a no camera rule in the shop?)
Meanwhile Adam is angry at his dad Ethan for telling Diana that Adam and Cassie were written in the stars. Of course, it's all Ethan's fault, not in any way because Adam gives Cassie the longing Puppy Eyes whenever she appears. Melodrama is set to full, whining to max and pouting is reaching extreme levels. He does make a point of the fact that while Ethan can whine (yes it runs in the family) endlessly about Amelia (Cassie's mother) he never even mentions Adam's mother. Uh-huh. Alas, the boat does not sink and take the Moping family to the bottom of the ocean.
Cassie is feeling guilty about breaking up Adam and Diana (Chief Scooby) when I think the main reason they broke up was because Diana and Adam kept sending them off to lonely places together and Adam kept doing that weepy/creepy puppy dog stare whenever she was around (or it could have been because Diana treated Adam like a servant, y'know). Anyway, Faye's (Mean Girl) solution is for her to bring Luke to the party -show you're not after your best friends Kicked Puppy Dog boyfriend by getting one of your own! Of course, this would involve using the guy who's into you even though you don't really reciprocate because he's a useful tool – and after already doing that one time before! But who cares about his emotions – at least you'll show Diana you're not after her puppy, err, man.
Of course if these 2 want to convince everyone they're not in dating, they could cut out the study/research dates together. But no, Cassie takes her pic to Adam and they spend some time alone “researching”. And by researching I mean moping, googly eyes and sad sad emotional stories. Anyway, in between puppy eyes and hormones they discover that dagger belonged to an organisation of witch hunters (totally guys, the dagger used by a woman who was trying to kill a witch belonged to a person who tries to kill witches. I am shocked at this revelation).
Speaking of Evil!Jake and the witch-hunters – Jake provides some of the witch killing jars to the witch hunters. These jars need a spell, a special plant thing, blood from the witch you're trying to kill, a personal object from the witch and then set them on fire. Why these are more efficient than, say, a .45 magnum bullet to the chest or a heftily applied blunt object to the head, I'm not sure. But we learn that *gasp* Luke is a hunter!!! (who? Y'know, Luke. The guy Cassie uses as a fallback date, the guy she avoided at the dance? You know! The guy who was clumsily written in at the beginning of the episode because you've all forgot about him! If they wanted this to be more impactful they could have given him a role in the last 6 episodes).
We have a party. Adam and Diana mope. Faye makes out with Jake (who steals some of Cassie's jewellery for her witch killer jar) so Cassie can search his house – she finds hunter blades and Jake claims they were Nick's. Uh-huh. If you buy that Cassie I have a big bridge to sell you. It's red and in San Francisco.
Wilson goes to see Ethan to let him know Amelia was asking about hunters – and we learn that Cassie's dad was apparently big!bad!evil!wrong! And that Ethan should tell Cassie. Yeah because Ethan is so good at imparting information – it's a shame there isn't an older witch who Cassie trusts who could be persueded to fill her in instead... right, Jane (Cassie's grandma)? Apparently Cassie has dark magic inside her – which makes her a super witch
And the whole Scooby gang get kidnapped at the party using cholorform to knock them unconscious. After all it's not like they know there's witch hunters around and have decided to be careful (my brain weeps). They end up tied together on chairs in a shack somewhere so personal items, blood etc can be collected for the witch kill jars.
Ok, no I can't stand it. This is so utterly stupid that my brain screamed. You had them unconscious, you could have stabbed them. You could have just kept the chloroform in front of their faces, that stuff kills. But no, you have to kidnap them all, tie them to chairs and not even gag them so you can use your witch kill jars. Aren't you lucky that they can't cast spells just by speaking and that they don't get more powerful when you bring them together. Oh, wait. It's a good thing you leave a good guard and not just one teenager... oh you're going to just leave Luke on guard alone? Rrrright. Excuse me while I get a cushion for my desk, my head impacting it repeatedly is giving me a headache.
Cassie uses her super-special-witchy powers and Luke is toasted, Adam breaks free (course it has to be the guy not the 4 women with the conveniently placed nail by their bonds). Yay, all is well. Yay.
Oh, and Jake kills Wilson before he can warn Cassie about her special magic (yes he quickly got back into the role). Ok, who voted A? Who voted for “gets killed preferably protecting Cassie”? I'm depressed at how predictable that was. Y'know, when I'm an utter cynical bastard I really do prefer to be wrong, I really do.
Oh and Melissa got like 2 lines the entire episode. Back to supporting cast Melissa. People might start thinking you're a real character
Oh and let me present a direct quote from Cassie:
“How can there be people out there who hate us so much. We haven't done anything. We didn't chose this, we were born this way.”
Dear whoever is behind that line – do not go there. Stop right now. It's bad enough True Blood has God Hates Fangs and Vampire Diaries had Caroline virtually singing “Born This Way” in her avsersion therapy chair. We don't need to go down this road. We really do not.
All in all it was so typically Secret Circle.
