2012: A Year in Review

2012 was an odd one. Quite a bit happened in TV land, yet not a lot at all in some ways. We saw a heap of shows really hitting the ground running and churning out some seriously great material (see Once Upon a Time, and The Vampire Diaries' third season), the birth of some promising newbies (Arrow), the death of potentially amazing ones (The Secret Circle :( ) and naturally, some shows have run themselves into the ground entirely. Some things didn’t change at all, though, like Ringer’s sucky second half and the Walking Dead’s proclivity for the disgusting and gory. I guess all this is pretty standard every calendar year in television. So, here are my thoughts on 2012, and what 2013 needs to bring.

The Secret Circle 1.22 'Family'

This episode had to be amazing, didn’t it? Just to make it even more awful for me to say goodbye. Ugh. Family wasn’t altogether shocking; in fact everything that happened was kind of to be expected. Predictable doesn’t adequately describe it though, because it was all stuff that had to happen. The Secret Circle was headed in the right direction, characters were even more appealing than they were before and the future looked bright. One thing’s for certain: season two would have been amazing.

The Secret Circle 1.21 'Prom'

School dances always end in tears. These guys should know; they’ve had two of them already! Alongside some very predictable chaos, Prom was the culmination of a season long worth of mysteries and build-up, and set the stage for a total blowout next week. It utilized all of the greatest strengths this show has displayed since the start, and reached so many levels of awesomness, it’s hard to pick just one reason why this was the greatest episode The Secret Circle has ever produced.

The Secret Circle 1.20 'Traitor'

The shock factor is something that can go either way. In a show that knows what its doing and where it’s going, it can work as great mechanism for enticing viewers into returning, on one that’s messy and disjointed, it’ll just come off as cheap and forced. The former applies in the Secret Circle’s case, but without that sense of impending battle and culmination, Traitor’s twist could have so easily become the latter.

The Secret Circle 1.19 'Crystal'

With a clear end-game in sight, and after last week’s declaration of war on the witch hunters, this episode marked the beginning of what is clearly the show’s final march towards the season finale. Momentum throttled this episode forward at a seriously rapid pace, bringing new revelations into the fold, and changing the circle irreversibly.

The Secret Circle 1.18 'Sacrifice'

As 'The Secret Circle' starts to fight its way to the finish line, it’s taking a lot to get the over arcing stories off the ground. Notwithstanding a few meagre plot devices, I think that fact that the show has finally found its feet with regards the bigger picture could mean that we’re about to enter the all-important make-or-break zone. Succeed, and we could be looking at a long-running drama that could easily run 'The Vampire Diaries' off track, fail and it’ll join the likes of 'Point Pleasant' and 'Tru Calling' in the “sc-fi’s that had so much freaking potential” graveyard.

The Secret Circle 1.17 'Curse'

This episode was clearly the show’s attempt at putting an end to the never-ending chit-chat about prophesised events, and actually exploring them, and in some cases changing their meaning completely. As a single entity, the episode was definitely one of the more successful ones, but the implications that some of this week's events could have on the series makes me wonder where The Secret Circle is actually heading.

The Secret Circle 1.16 'Lucky'

This episode was a little strange. One could argue that it got basically nowhere, and pretty much everything that happened had very little impact, but as far as I’m concerned this was all about set-up. From the bubbling love triangle, to Cassie’s struggle with her dark side, it all seemed to promise that the journey was about to reach a major turning point, but how soon that point will arrive remains to be seen.

The Secret Circle 1.15 'Return'

After almost half a season of build up, countless vaguely threatening references, it figures that John Blackwell's arrival in Chance Harbour would be kind of an anti-climax. Though its events were some bit disappointing, the direction and tone of ‘Return’ seems to have finally solidified the series into something wholly appealing and definitive in its own right.

The Secret Circle 1.14 'Valentine'

One of the biggest issues 'The Secret Circle' has been facing lately is how hard it’s been trying to create a respectable amount of mystery to keep us all interested, and that’s come at the expense of certain characters likeability and appeal. While its usual stuff kept things from getting soft, the writers' decision to give the girls some room to breathe meant that ‘Valentine’ was the best episode the series has had since its hiatus.

The Secret Circle 1.13 'Medallion'

With such a juicy amount of mythology, and a great cast, I was really expecting the series to have blossomed at this late stage in the game. Instead, it’s ended up going around in circles, with a lot of the forward momentum getting lost along the way.

The Secret Circle 1.12 'Witness'

Obviously, the big mystery surrounding what happened the night of the fire 16 years ago is being kept under wraps, probably until the season reaches its climax in May, but I think this idea of leaving bits of info out in drips and drabs will get tedious after a while, especially considering this is the first time we’ve learned anything truly concrete since early in the season.

The Secret Circle 1.11 'Fire/Ice'

After the slight disappointment of ‘Darkness’, I approached ‘Fire/Ice’ with some disdain, and majorly adjusted my expectations versus what they were this time last week. Thankfully, the forward momentum that was lost has in some ways been regained, if only the series could be given a push in the right direction.

The Secret Circle 1.10 'Darkness'

Welcome back Chance Harbour! ‘Darkness’ was a typical back to business winter premiere, with things picking up right where we left off in ‘Balcoin’. As far as episodes go, this was pretty great but one thing that it didn’t do was give us much new information, or make any reference to the big revelation that we ended on last November.

Top 11 of 2011: The Biggest Moments

As we prepare to usher in a new year of television, I have compiled a list of my favourite TV moments and highlights of 2011. It's been a while since I was this excited about television again, considering that past few years haven't yielded much in the way of quality entertainment, but 2011 has been a rather great year.

Mid-Season Assessment 2011: Vol. 1

As the long, cold winter hiatus sinks in, this 'Mid Season Assessment' is my attempt at stepping back and taking a look at where all my favourite shows have ended up so far this season. Vol. 1 includes: 'The Vampire Diaries', 'The Secret Circle' and 'Pretty Little Liars'.

The Secret Circle 1.09 'Balcoin'

What a great way to end the first part of the series. This episode saw the resolution of one of ‘The Secret Circle’s biggest plotlines so far, and also dropped one huge bombshell on us in the final moments. Among other things, ‘Balcoin’ ensured that I will be enduring an agonizing wait until January.

The Secret Circle 1.08 'Beneath'

There are a lot of different forces at work in ‘The Secret Circle’, most of which are against our core group of teens. In ‘Beneath’ they all came out to play, and while there are a few inconsistencies presented in this week’s outing it’s still quite obvious that the series is headed in an ambitious direction.

The Secret Circle 1.07 'Masked'

It’s hard to fault an episode that has somebody randomly burst into flames. A Halloween themed episode was inevitable for a series based on a group of witches (though it took 'Charmed' nearly 3 seasons to do one) but one thing I was curious about was how they would handle the obvious connotations. Thankfully the Secret Circle made allusions to it, filled the episode with fun spells while also making things even darker than they have gotten in the past few episodes. Oh, and they’ve also started to master the art of the ‘amaze-balls cliffhanger’. Not bad for 42 minutes.

The Secret Circle 1.06 'Wake'

A lot of people are ragging on this series and I’m a little baffled as to why that is. I’m not sure if it’s because it doesn’t feature as much smack-in-the-face twists as its sister series, or if they just think it’s badly written. Honestly I’m enamoured with it, and it's a lot cleverer than people like to think. ‘Wake’ is another example of just how great this series is and though not as exciting as last week’s episode, it raised some new questions and made the kids' quest for answers even more urgent than before while hinting at even more craziness to come.