The Secret Circle- Curse

What Happened- 

Cassie and Adam wake up in bed together and then got outside to find Cassie’s yard full of dead blackbirds. John appears and tells them that they unleashed a curse set against the Blake-Conant family. John takes Cassie to Jane for more information, and she tells them that a witch cursed the lines years ago, to keep them apart. If they don’t break the curse, someone in Cassie’s circle will die. Cassie quickly attempts to make sure that everyone is ok and finds Jake sick in his bed. There is a cure: an herb that can be mixed into an elixir to save Jake. Most of the ingredients can be bought at Calvin’s shop from his niece who runs the store in Calvin’s absence.

Cassie and Adam go to the woods to search for it, bringing Jake along. Jake acts like a jerk, hallucinates, and then reveals that he killed Calvin. Thinking Adam is Calvin’s ghost looking for revenge, Jake starts to strangle Adam. Cassie throws Jake off of Adam, using her dark magic. The only reason she does not hurt him more is that Adam is making eye contact with her and screaming, “No dark magic!” They find the root and make it back to Cassie’s house. John Blackwell tells them that the elixir will make them forget their love. Sadly, the elixir isn’t strong enough to work on Cassie. It only works on Adam, and Cassie is left devastated.

Dawn confronts John and tells him a) that she knows he still has power and b) she knows there is no such thing as the Blake-Conant curse. John fesses up to this. He faked everything, even Jake’s sickness, using magic. John reveals that Ethan and Amelia wanted to run away together when they fell in love, and their abandonment resulted in the boat fire and all the deaths on it. John also tells Dawn that witch hunters are still after their town’s witches and that there is a witch working with them. Charlie pays a late-night visit to Jane in order to use the crystal to fix her. Their goal once Jane gets her mind back? Destroying John.

In B plot, Faye goes looking for Lee and nearly gets Melissa and Diana arrested for helping to break into Lee’s car, searching for clues. Faye realizes that Eva has some of her powers. Faye breaks the totem under Eva’s bed, taking away Eva’s power. Faye tells Eva that she can’t bring the corpsicled Lee back to life and leaves.

Comments- Y’all, Ern is rethinking her Team Adam stance. Even though you can’t fight what’s written in the stars, everyone loves an underdog, right? Everyone loves a redemption story too, and we may get to see that with Jake, eventually. You know what’s sad about the CW? How the sex scenes have to be nudeless and tame. We got to see Adam and Cassie jumping on each other through a window last week, and we saw nothing this week. Still, Cassie and Adam had sex. We felt so bad for Diana when we saw her face after she heard the news. We guess the 17^th episode is long enough to wait? Cassie wakes up with perfect eye makeup like every girl on the CW.

At first we were like, “We’re really glad the loss of our virginities doesn’t hit our fathers’ radar with a lawn full of dead blackbirds. News bulletin! Your daughter just slept with the wrong person. Awkward.” However, things are even weirder now that we know John was probably watching them do it, keeping too close of an eye on Cassie, or having magic alert him to the possibility of sex. He knew right when to make it rain dead birds. If only every father had that method of ensuring abstinence in their daughters! You wanna have sex? Well, it’s going to kill things. Birds and friends. It’s in the Bible, look it up.

Ern thinks Faye is the prettiest girl she’s ever seen, but Leeard disagrees. We also have a contender for ugliest thing we’ve ever seen: Lee’s desiccated corpse. We could have used a better look at the thing in order to tell for sure though. Poor Mummy Lee. Is he really gone for good? We finally got to see Cassie’s grandmother! It’s been too long and we’re sick of adults getting sidelined or shipped off. In general, this channel needs to figure out what to do with parents and authority figures. Most teen shows do, actually. The biggest culprits are Gossip Girl and Glee. You need to make the adults just as human, complex, and likable as the kids.

The thing that did it best? Harry Potter. The supporting adults were the most beloved and most interesting characters. Making them mysterious, giving them shades of grey, and having them nurture protect Harry at times gave them shape and a role to play. This show seems to be following Harry Potter’s ways by bringing on John Blackwell. The more we see of Cassie’s dad, the more we like him and enjoy having him around. He’s not a villain, but we can’t fully trust him either.

We liked Faye’s determination to find Lee. For once, her stubbornness led her to do the right thing. We were annoyed that Adam had to lose his love for Cassie in order to save Jake. You know that means the love will either come back or they will just fall in love again after a while. We feel bad for Jake and were glad that John Blackwell gave him a self-worth pep talk. We knew right away that the elixir only worked on Adam and not Cassie. Poor girl. At least she has good taste in TV to keep her warm at night (Game of Thrones).

The twist where there was no curse and John still had power was sweet. We’re still not fully sure why he wanted to fake the curse. Is being afraid of the Blake/Conant love or his grudge against Ethan enough of a reason? Or is John just really that committed to Team Jake? If this show actually killed another circle member, it should either be Melissa (because she’s the least interesting), Diana (because it would be the saddest), or Adam (because that would be the most shocking). This show is good and we are seeing potential for it to be great. Six seasons and a movie!

Episode Grade: A