Nikita

Good day my friends,

As many of you know I have always been fascinated by TV shows centered on a strong female character that can really kick butt.  My passion for Buffy the Vampire Slayer still endures as well as Dollhouse and I would certainly enjoy seeing Sydney Bristow kick butt once again.  However, when I saw last summer that there was another attempt at the Nikita story coming to the CW in the fall I was a bit skeptical.  After all, the Nikita story has been told a few times before with mixed results.  I never saw the original French film so I cannot comment on that.  I did enjoy Point of no Return, but was severely disappointed by La Femme Nikita.  That said, I am here to tell you that the new Nikita on the CW is a delight.

I’ll give a little background for those uninitiated in the Nikita legend.  In the show, Nikita (played by the mega-hot Maggie Q) is a trained assassin and spy who has gone rogue and is trying to take down Division.  Now Division is a secret government agency that takes troubled kids, erases their past and trains them to become its next wave of assassins.  Nikita has a mole inside of Division named Alex (played by the deliciously cute Lyndsy Fonseca who may be best known as Ted’s teenage daughter sitting on the couch in the year 2030 on How I met your Mother) who is soon  to be promoted to a field agent due to her quick progression.

Each episode continues the ongoing storyline between Nikita and Division while at the same time having a unique case/crisis to be handled.  There is also an ongoing storyline involving missing black boxes that I will not get into here.  In any case Division is led by the evil Percy (Xander Berkeley) who will not stop at any cost to eliminate Nikita, who will of course stop at no cost to eliminate Percy and all of Division. 

But, as with all good shows with a tough girl doing what needs to be done there is always a man involved.  And in this case the guy is Michael (Shane West).  Now Michael was recruited to Division after the murder of his wife and child and was promised he could get revenge.  Michael also trained Nikita and he is often caught between Scylla and Charybdis in any situation involving Nikita.  We know he likes her but we also know he has loyalty to Division.  Where and how will this end?  That’s the fun part even though since we have all seen a lot of TV and movies we pretty much have an inkling of what may be.

In each episode we are treated to a lot of fights and battles featuring Nikita.  As I understand it, Maggie Q does all of her own stunts and I must say she is quite athletic and she handles herself very well.  If I was one of those guys coming after her I’d just turn and run the other way as soon as I saw her.  Percy must have a lot of goons working for him at division because they seem to come out of nowhere and continually get their butts kicked.  One would think he has an army of Division clones hidden somewhere.

I also must mention that the show also has Melinda Clarke playing Amanda, the psychologist and apparent head of the wardrobe department at Division.  I mention this because she once played one of Jerry’s girlfriends on Seinfeld.  You may remember her as the one who liked things hairless in “The Muffin Tops” episode.  Classic. 

If you are the type that enjoys seeing women beat the crap out of men with big guns then this show is for you.  Sir Griffin is a big fan and perhaps you can be as well.

Before you pull the trigger, you should know my name. - Nikita