The Vampire Diaries 3.1, The Secret Circle 1.1

[meganbmoore]

TVD: This show watches pretty fast when anything involving Damon, Klaus, women being abused, or men bonding over dead women was watched in a fastforward mode that was just slow enough to be followed. Though, this week, that basically left Caroline's scenes, which is quite a change from the beginning of the series. What I did watch at regular speed, I liked, barring the lack of Bonnie.

TSC: FYI, if you watched the show and haven't read the books, most of Cassie and Adam's conversations were between Cassie and Diana in the book, and I do not like how we seem to be headed to "female rivalry over boys" territory. And then there was the bonus of basically opening the show with a woman slowly burning to death. And the reveal about Natassja Henstridge's character at the end. Notably the only living mother of the teens that we know about. But there were lots of girls talking and the gothic and supernatural bits were mostly fun, so I''ll stick with it for a bit and see how it goes.

Feel free to ask me about specific plot points for either in comments.

Comments

[shewhohashope]

I agree with you about TVD, so I'm really hopeful that The Secret Circle will be good. There almost certainly will not be as much violence and misogyny. Certainly not by our heroes, anyway.

[meganbmoore]

TVD is one of the few things where I actively wish I was less attached to some of the women (primarily Bonnie and Caroline at this point) so that I wouldn'r feel compelled to watch it.

I admit, as soon as I learned Kevin Williamson was involved in Secret Circle, I started bracing myself. I'm suprised we didn't see Nick using magic to get dates. (I'll be happy if they skip the Adam/Cassie/Nick triangle altogether, TBH. It was non-intrusive in the books, but I don't trust the show with it. They can have him pine after Diana instead.) I think the fact that it isn't a vampire show will help us at least as far as rape and direct violence towards women goes, but now it's a subgenre with a tendency to punish women for wanting/using/having power, and we're already having bits about Faye being "wrong" to want to use what she has, so we'll see.

Still, even with basically opening the episode with a man toying with a woman before lighting her on fire and watching her and her house burn down, we still have a thousand times less violence towards women than TVD's pilot, and without the "he is funny and sex-ay though, isn't he?" approach to the perpetrator.

[shewhohashope]

I just hope they don't have Adam take Diana's place entirely. And they are bound to go there with Nick and Cassie, there is only so much relationship drama to be had from one love triangle. I love the books so much more than The Vampire Diaries (only one decent book in a series of seven so far!) I probably won't be as happy about the plot and character changes as I was with TVD. I'm still mad about the witches not being a dozen cousins, and not just because I found their incestuous attitudes (in a literal sense, even) amusing.

[meganbmoore]

Yeah, I missed the "dozen+1 incestuous cousins" bit too. Though, in practical terms, that would make the main teen cast be 13 people already,so we'dd likely end up with a main cast of about 20 characters once we included a few parents.

And ditto to loving these way more than Vampire Diaries.

[shewhohashope]

But the +1 dies off early. at least go with 9 for your magical number, and mostly ignore the adults, like the books did. Three times three makes more sense than six. Or at the very very least have Deborah or Suzan instead of Melissa.

[meganbmoore]

6 as the magic number makes no sense to me. There's also always 7, which is also small and carries significance.