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'The Secret Circle' recap: What's Your Damage, Heather?

07 October 2011
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Cassie and Faye learn the true reason behind Heather's unique condition. It involves snakes.

Oh dear. Things aren't looking good for sweet Melissa right now, are they? This week's installment of The Secret Circle dove right into the cliffhanger mystery we were left with at the end of last week -- what did Amelia do to Heather the night of the infamously fatal fire? Well, we were given our answer (sort of), but the members of the Circle are still as lost and confused as ever. More than anything, this week's episode dealt with the hellish emotional aftermath of the painful event that took out most of their parents. Yes, we also had a Cassie/Faye Hardy Boys style mystery, and a new demonic plot to boot. But when you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, these kids are nothing but a group of sad quasi-orphans trying to fill some sort of emotional void, be it with sex or magic or some good old-fashioned mystery-solvin'. As Faye put it, they're "a boat full of sad witches."

Last night, Cassie and Faye tried their best to fill the void with answers. Cassie still couldn't believe that her sweet-as-pie mother, her life-long support and constant companion, was capable of doing the things she (maybe?) did. And even though I'm getting a bit tired of Cassie's "you knew my mother?" wide-eyed shock face, it's hard to blame her for that. Picture your mother for a second. She's great, right? Now try to picture how you would react if you found out she had a super-shady past filled with fire and magic and murder and a catatonic friend named Heather. Yeah, you might develop a permanent Britt Robertson-style shock face, too. Is anyone else starting to think that she only has three faces? There's the shock face, the normal face, and the dramatic eye-roll face. This third face is most commonly seen in interactions with Faye, and any time the Adam love triangle situation is mentioned. But I digress. Read More >>

Written By Shaunna Murphy | Published Oct 7, 2011 for EW.com

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'The Secret Circle' recap: Zach Attack. Friends Forever?

03 October 2011
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Image credit: Sergei Bachlakov
The CW WHAT LIES BENEATH Poor Diana (Shelley Hennig) has to face a knife-wielding manic and a skinny blonde girl who wants her boyfriendA stranger with a deadly agenda finally brings the feuding Circle together

Tonight's Secret Circle left me feeling torn. Torn to pieces, I tell you -- absolute pieces! On the one hand, we saw the ever-feuding Circle finally realize that they will need each other to face the growing threats popping up all over Chance Harbor. It's not like they're going to hug it out and start doing that 'we're walking down the hallway arm-in-arm in unison because we're BEST FRIENDS' thing. There are deep-seated, multi-generational rivalries here, and the show certainly needs that dynamic. But tonight's events made it necessary for the gang to put aside their egos and their self-made loner identities to fight for a common purpose, and this new group dynamic should be a fun adventure in the coming weeks.

But on the other hand (probably the left one), I'm a bit frustrated with the pacing. Zachary's arrival and his shocking revelation planted the seeds for what looks to be a really fun episode next week, but how long did it take for us to get there? Don't get me wrong -- I'm a huge fan of a good old-fashioned set-up episode. I'm just hoping for fewer Lost-esque cryptic conversations with little payoff next week. That's all. Let's get to it.

First and foremost -- it's time for a school dance! Fans of paranormal television programs that are marketed to teens know that this will inevitably result in a supernatural showdown that nobody will notice except for the lead characters involved. Like the fate of Cassie and Adam, it was written in the stars. But in the midst of all of the streamer-hanging and punch-mixing, our witches had to deal with the fact that after last week's binding spell, their powers were no longer their own. Faye in particular had a hard time with hers. The poor girl couldn't even open her locker without having to put the combination in! "Imagine me realizing the only way to get something to move is with my actual hands," she said. Ugh, I know the feeling. Read More.

Article by Shaunna Murphy for EW.com

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'The Secret Circle's' Phoebe Jane Tonkin: Just how bad is Faye?

03 October 2011
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If two-plus seasons of "The Vampire Diaries" have proven anything, it's that it's good to be bad. Phoebe Jane Tonkin is "The Secret Circle's" answer to Ian Somerhalder, and we're already girl-crushing.

Her character, Faye, is our resident Regina George in the Chance Harbor coven. In last week's episode, when her attitude got out of hand, she nearly killed a classmate and finally caved to binding the circle -- but needing permission from the other witches isn't going to keep Faye down for long.

We spoke with Tonkin about how far Faye might go, Faye's relationship with her diabolical mom, and what it's like rooming with co-star Britt Robertson. Read on!

Zap2it: Okay, so we're all calling Faye the bad girl and the mean girl. How bad is Faye, really? Are we talking obnoxious high-school girl bad, or is she seriously dangerous?

Tonkin: The thing about Faye is that she does things without considering consequences. She's never looking to hurt anyone or to cause any kind of mass destruction, she just doesn't know what the line is that she can't cross. What I think brings her down to a human level is that when she does do these bad things, when things get out of control, she genuinely does feel awful about it. I think that's what's going to be interesting for the viewers is that she's not just a two-dimensional bad character. She just makes a lot of mistakes. She's learning, though, and she's either got to lose the guilty conscience or she's got to stop acting this way and start pulling it back. Read More.

Written by By Carina Adly MacKenzie September 29, 2011 7:10 PM ET

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'Secret Circle' Recap: 'Bound'

23 September 2011
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Plenty of teenage girls would love to discover a bunch of magical powers lying dormant within. But not Cassie on "The Secret Circle." She wants nothing to do with the guys and gals who've explained to her that she's the missing link to their magic carpet ride around the boat town of Chance Harbor, where generations of witches have been up to tricks of the sometimes-lethal variety for years.

The second episode of the series from the producers of "The Vampire Diaries" (based, like that CW show, on young adult novels by L.J. Smith) finds newcomer Cassie still rejecting what everyone was telling her last week was her destiny "written in the stars," including a forbidden romance with Adam. The dude has a girlfriend, yet he and Cassie keep ending up in some electric situations—including some magical moments that involve, you know, light bulbs and actual electricity.

Adam's girlfriend, Diana, is the de facto leader of the small-town circle. This week, she's increasingly concerned about the newfound power they've all been dealing with since Cassie's arrival (as she should be after Faye's chemistry class prank). She wants to "bind" the circle (hence the episode's title which apparently isn't a reference to the 1996 movie), which would essentially limit all of the explosive craziness Faye is hellbent on exploring. You see, the resident bad-girl doesn't see a need for limits, rules or "binding" of any kind. Read More.

Aricle written by Ryan J. Downey for MTV.com

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