We must celebrate any modest success over the rampant technology 😄
I'm not quite sure I read the bit about search and clicking correctly. Whether you had VLC already open for that. Have you tried clicking on a file in Search without VLC open just to see what happens? I have no idea if anything will be different but it might be worth a try. Not sure where it takes you after that.
Click/double-click, entirely a matter of personal choice. I choose single click because I am very lazy.
You will have to explore the mTorrent jungle without me 😞 I don't understand torrents, except to upload and download them (and getting them deleted), mostly without bother. And I only ever use uTorrent 3.0 these days.
Good luck 🙂