When Nikita premiered on the CW in 2010, I watched the first few episodes, but, for reasons I can't remember today, stopped thereafter. It wasn't because I didn't like it. While it was too early to tell whether or not I was going to love it, I liked it fine. I really liked model turned actress Maggie Q in the titular role. While she may be petite in stature, but she's absurdly fit and performs many of her own stunts with a powerful blend of power and elegance. She kicks copious amounts of male ass in this series, too, and there's something to be said for watching a woman lay waste to one hulking male aggressor after another.
So, who knows why I dropped the show back in 2010. All I do know is I've always considered going back and binging it. Well, last night I started doing just that for two good enough reasons: it's on Netflix, and it's Maggie Q. Only a handful of episodes in, but so far so good. The second television remake of Luc Besson's Nikita (1990), after the 1990s USA channel series La Femme Nikita, this version of the story of a trained assassin turning the tables on the government agency that made her into a hyper-efficient killing machine is for me notable, so far at least, thanks to Maggie Q's grounded lead performance. As a woman gone rogue, she deftly handles the action scenes, and while she's not quite as strong in dramatic moments yet, I can already see her gaining confidence in that department after just a handful of episodes. She's quite good as conveying sly humor through a head tilt or impish smile. She's exactly what you want out of the Nikita character.
One thing that became glaringly obvious after just a few minutes of viewing the pilot is that the CW wasn't even hiding its objectification of Maggie Q's body. It'll be interesting to see if the show tones this down over the course of its run, as most shows do blatantly use sex to sell the early episodes, cravenly tempting viewers to watch with a parade of half-naked bodies. In Nikita's cases, that means lots of leering camera work exploiting its star's body, like this shot below. Subtle!
There are, of course, other characters in Nikita (although, so far none of them come anywhere near Maggie Q's charisma, for me). The secret US government-funded organization Division trains and employs its recruits in missions of espionage, sabotage, and assassination. These "recruits" are young, troubled, and often convicted criminals that Division molds into expert spies and assassins who execute top-secret black-ops missions across the globe. In the early episodes we meet the main players at Division. There's founder and director Percy Rose (Xander Berkeley), whose cold efficiency when dealing with recruits and agents is often at odds with high-ranking agent Michael Bishop's (Shane West) more humane approach. Michael and Nikita have some chemistry, and there's a history there, so I expect plenty of overwrought and conflicted romance to play out between them.
Lindsay Fonseca plays Alex Udinov, a character who is clearly going to play a large role in the series. Alex's past is a litany of horrors, from seeing her family killed to then being sold into sex slavery by a family friend. In order to keep her in line so they could sell her out for sex, her slavers kept her continuously high on drugs, thus resulting in serious chemical dependency. Eventually Nikita becomes her savior, helping her get off drugs and training her in the badass ways of Nikita. Their complicated relationship—Nikita is definitely filling a surrogate mother role for Alex—forms a large component of these early episodes. Fonseca is compelling in the part—her big expressive eyes sell a lot of Alex's inner turmoil, plus she's quite good at hysterical screaming. There's room for improvement, though. Let's see what develops.
In these early episodes, Maggie Q is called on to do difficult stunts, fire weapons, run, jump, dive, and engage in hand to hand combat, all while wearing high heels, extremely tight dresses, or even just a barely-there bikini. She handles it all with aplomb, and she's the highlight of the series—watching Maggie Q in action, laying waste to one angry man wearing a suit after another is, simply, sublime. It's enough to keep me watching, even though the rest of the show is clearly still finding itself, which is common in the early going for most shows. The drama and intrigue in the series are nice, but sometimes you just need to watch someone kicking people's asses. Call it vicarious stress relief.
The plan is to come back every so often with further comments and thoughts about Nikita as my binge watch continues. Keep in mind, I don't have much free time these days, so this will most definitely be a long, drawn-out binge-watch. There are over seventy episodes across four seasons. With work, family, writing, and a whole bunch of movies to also watch, that's gonna take me a while. In the meantime, any fans of Nikita out there? Thoughts on the series, overall? Which season(s) are your favorite? Isn't Maggie Q awesome? I know the answer to that last one.
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