Only Adam, Diana, and a bottle of whipped cream had any fun this week....

The Secret Circle - "Slither"

Kudos to the young actress who plays Melissa. She does a really good demon impression. From the morning she woke up, through her day at school, and into her first demon-possessed night, Melissa was cranky, clearly in pain, and really weird. This was probably the best thing they could do for a character who was pretty pathetic and bland in the last couple of episodes.

Cassie’s grandmother tries to get Cassie to open up, because Heather never did, and Grandma could have helped her. Cassie considers it, but Diana reminds her that Grandma and her generation were probably responsible for shutting down their parents’ powers. If Grandma found out about Cassie’s circle, she might take their powers from them too.

At school, Demon Melissa tells Nick that she knows the location of her mother’s Book of Shadows. She takes him to the woods and makes him dig a very large and wide hole. Inside, they find a dirty suitcase and they take it back to the abandoned house where they do all of their witchcraft. Demon Melissa calls all of the other witches, and they trickle in, slowly.

Dawn comes to Charles’ boat, and he offers her wine. In what universe, dude? Her facial expressions make it very clear that she is not into Charles. It doesn’t help that Diana told Faye that Dawn was dating him. The two fail at using their crystal. They waited too long to do whatever it was they were trying to do, and their crystal is out of juice.

Meanwhile, Demon Melissa tries to get the circle to use their powers to open the suitcase. Since she’s acting insane and the worm thing crawls across her forehead, they catch onto the situation pretty quickly. Nick knocks Demon Melissa out, and the gang ties her up. The suitcase is moving. Clearly, there is something alive in there. Cassie runs to get help from her witch grandmother, rather than her local Catholic priest like ANYONE who has seen any movie.

We shouldn’t have doubted Grandma though, because she could be Dumbledore’s twin sister. She gets everything under control and kills the suitcase full of demon snakes. But the demon crawls out of Melissa and into Nick before the exorcism is complete. Demon Nick escapes before they burn the snakes. He calls and threatens to kill Adam’s dad if they don’t bring the suitcase to him. He finds Dawn, the person who summoned him years ago. He threatens her too, and they leave together. Dawn calls Charles on her cell phone and he hears what’s going on between her and “Abbadon.” Is that the only hellish name TV writers know?

Charles shows up, knocks Demon Nick out, and drowns Nick, because the only way to kill a demon is to burn or drown it. We figured Nick would survive this, but he did not. Dawn and Charles flee the scene. Charles feels great remorse for killing an innocent boy, which surprised us, because he seemed to have a truly wonderful time burning Cassie’s mom alive. Cassie and Grandma find the body. Melissa and Faye are crushed that Nick is dead. Cassie looks out her window, tears streaming down her face, as she realizes that her morning eye candy is gone.

We can’t believe that one of the circle died in the fifth episode. We kind of liked Nick as a character, and we definitely liked that he was hot. What does that mean for the circle? Don’t they need a sixth member to kick ass? Can they graft someone from another family in? This was one time when we wanted the death to be a fake-out and for the guy to come back to life. Still, we are impressed at the show’s moxie, and happy that it seems to be following in the footsteps of The Vampire Diaries, pacing-wise. We’re glad the demons seem to be gone, for now. Enough with the demons, already.

Episode grade: A-