Episode Report Card Jeff Long: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Spells of the Father
By Jeff Long | Season 1 | Episode 16 | Aired on 03.15.2012
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.John and Cassie have some father/daughter time while the show tries to decide exactly what dark magic is. I wish it would manifest itself in some sort of physical way, like her hair getting darker or more eye makeup, but we just see her melting coffee cups with her mind. Real dark. Faye can’t seem to say a single un-nasty thing, which is welcomed. Jake reminds everyone that Eben will be back to try to kill them, so they should enlist John to give them the 411 on the witch hunters.
Everyone spends the episode getting ready for a casino night fundraiser for the high school. Diana meets this Australian looker named Grant and I say kudooos to the casting director of this show for having his/her finger on the pulse (or something else) of every hot performer under the age of 22 on what appears to be the entire planet. Lee’s girlfriend is awake after an overdose on devil juice and she says she’s never going to leave him, as thanks for taking care of her. Faye invites Lee to casino night, but he says no and she’s pissed.
Cassie sees John searching for something at 7 Briar Hill and Adam decides that he must have been searching for some tool that steals power from witches. She confronts him and he says that the tool actually temporarily transfers power to a mortal. Eben used it the day of the boat fire. He says that a witch had to have given it to him and he wants to know who betrayed them.
Faye meets Lee’s girlfriend, Eva. Uh oh. He doesn’t act like he knows Faye and just tells the girl that she has a crush on him. He’s going to pay for that. Hot Grant shows up for the fundraiser, even though he said he was going to sail away earlier. Later, he and Diana kiss goodnight. Melissa is cocktailing at the party, which must be completely legal. John and Dawn run into each other in the hall and there’s a lot of sexual tension, but he’s not having it. He wants to find Ethan -- you know it’s because Cassie saw him in her vision when she went to the boat fire.
Someone stabs John in the parking lot of the school and Cassie witnesses. She chases the perpetrator through the football field and, in the most impressive piece of witchery that we’ve seen on this show as of yet, makes all of the football field lights turn on and knocks him down with flying pieces of wood from a bleacher. It’s Ethan. She’s about to club him to death when John stops her. And, he really has to convince her to stop.
Later, he tells her that she has to stop practicing magic in order to not be consumed by dark magic. And it turns out that Eva didn’t just have a drug problem, she had a fatal drug problem. Lee brought her back from the dead -- and she has powers, but he sticks to his guns about wanting to be with Faye... so she kills him. John patches himself up and goes to confront Ethan, who confesses to having given Eben the power to kill the witches. He had only intended to kill John, because Amelia apparently wanted him dead. We also find out that the unions between the Blakes and Conants are written in the stars, but as a curse. Meanwhile, Cassie and Adam do it and all of these black birds start flying around her house.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We begin with Faye getting ready for school. Prediction: Something HUGE will happen before the day is over. Off the bat, I have to say I find the episode structure of this show pretty pedestrian. We're talking about freaking WITCHES with ancient bloodlines and shit. Having every episode wrap up in a day just seems to make things simpler than they should feel. Dawn comes in and tells her that she really needs Faye to be on her best behavior for the Casino Night fundraiser that is happening at the school that evening (i.e. the huge event that will be happening in this episode). Faye suggests that she bring a date, so that she can fixate on something besides her. Why doesn't she bring Cassie's dad? "Haven't you heard? He's back from the dead."
Cassie has made coffee and gives up a cup to her dad. Seriously, Blackwell is looking TIGHT. I'm not sure who the personal shopper is but bravo. Everything fits perfectly and I can't say enough about the hair and beard grooming. John says that he thinks he should stay there until her grandmother gets back but she doesn't because she doesn't know him and everyone is terrified of him. He says that he hates that they don't know each other. He's happy to answer any questions she has. First, did he love her mother? He says he loved her more than anyone in the world. He hurt her because of what he'd become -- dark magic changed him. Cassie says that's just an excuse because she's got a ton of dark magic and it hasn't changed her. Not yet, he says. You can't control dark magic. She says that she can. God, is she really that stupid? She obviously can't control it, we've already seen that. It bothers me that so much of the movement of this show is based on people either being stupid or loose-lipped. Cassie melts a coffee cup to show that she's in control and John tells her to stop because the more you use it, the more it takes control. It makes you destructive and vindictive. She tells him that he doesn't know her very well and walks away.
Later, Jake is going for a stroll or whatever it is that he does and John meets him on the sidewalk. He rhetorically asks if he looks after Cassie. Jake nods, then walks the other way on the sidewalk. At the coffee shop, where Cassie is still employed, the Circle has gathered. Faye wonders if John has another family somehwere and suggest that, if there is another Cassie, there could be one for Adam and one for Jake. Yikes. Melissa wonders why John, if he's such a big bad dark magic force, didn't do anything to stop Eben and the witch hunters. She waited until now to ask that? Cassie says that John's powers were stripped, just like the rest of his Circle. Jake says that none of them could have stopped Eben and reminds them that he was mobile after being impale on a tree. Adam asks accusitatively how Eben got that power and Jake says that he didn't have a chance to ask because Eben was too busy trying to kill him. Can't really argue with that. Unless you're Adam.