Season Analysis: For the past few years, The Vampire Diaries has made the portrayal of high school life in a small town with a significant supernatural population seem so natural, but then The Secret Circle comes along and makes it seem oh so confused. Still, TSC was occasionally entertaining during its only season, mostly thanks to Australian firecracker Phoebe Tonkin.
“Masked”
The biggest reason I started watching The Secret Circle and just about the only reason I continued to watch despite considering giving up on it several times was Phoebe Tonkin. With her saucy line readings and suggestive facial expressions, she was clearly having the most fun of all the cast members. And a show about witches ought to be fun! There is plenty for high schoolers to be sad about, and that is truer for the kids of TSC than it is for most, but as Faye Chamberlain, Phoebe Tonkin lived by the dual mottos of, “We’re witches, let’s have fun with our powers” and “We’re kids – we’re supposed to have fun!” At no other point in the season was this fun more evident than in “Masked,” the Halloween episode, particularly the scene of Faye and Cassie shopping together, during which Faye spent much of the time walking around basically topless. Faye and Cassie began the series at odds with each other, but they eventually developed into a classic odd couple pairing and the most entertaining pairing of characters that the show had. When Faye brought up the classic maxim that Halloween is the time for being a slutty version of someone else, it was just the right amount of wrong. If some readers think that with this post I have abandoned my journalistic integrity by writing a love letter to Phoebe Tonkin instead of an actual critical analysis, well, then I must repeat that Phoebe Tonkin was by far the main reason I watched The Secret Circle, so any critical analysis I would write about this show was always going to revolve around her.
Jmunney's Blog 