What you should watch this fall: Nikita

Last Updated on Tuesday, 07 June 2011 00:24 Written by Samantha Tuesday, 07 June 2011 00:18

I had the pleasure of discovering Nikita this past 2010-2011 TV season. It happened to be on while I was channel surfing and it caught my attention. I DVR’ed the first 3 episodes and was hooked once I caught up by Episode 4. I spent my TV time watching Nikita live instead of CSI this season. (Sorry, but Nikita was new! CSI is the same thing every week: dead person, forensics, resolution.)

Nikita is a remake of the French film, Nikita and a play off La Femme Nikita from the 1990’s. The writers on Nikita however are brilliant.

As a Freshman series, Nikita did start off slow. It seemed like it would be the same situation every week. Nikita (Maggie Q) was a Division agent gone rogue and Alex (Lyndsy Fonseca) was her mole on the inside at Division. Michael (The very sexy Shane West) and Nikita have a bit of a history, which always makes their interactions…. Tense. Michael has taken quite a liking to Alex as Alex reminds him of Nikita. (Hmm, wonder why that is Michael? Guess you all will have to watch to find out what happens with Nikita, Alex and Michael!)

Division? Yes! Division! Division is a black-ops agency funded by the US government to do all the governments dirty work.  They recruit “Agents” by taking in what seems to be troubled youth with no real connection to society. The leader of Division, Percy (Xander Berkley) had gone a tad crazy with the power he is given, and has taken “side” jobs that the government turns its head to because Percy has hidden all of Divisions secrets in “little black boxes” all over the world. Percy can not be killed as if he is, there is a trigger which will tell the black boxes to upload all the governments secrets to various media organizations. Michael is Percy’s second hand man and goes out into the field to take care of all the dirty work with the other Agents making sure that everything goes as planned.

Black boxes. Agents. Conspiracy. Women fighting in tight clothing and carrying guns. Have I gained your attention yet?

In addition to the above listed, there is the ever so beautiful Melinda Clarke who plays “Amanda” (You might remember her as Lady Heather on CSI). Amanda is Division’s very powerful master manipulator/wannabe Psychologist.  Keep “master manipulator” in mind when watching the 2-part season finale.  She played a small part during Season 1, however the fans have cried more Amanda and the writers have listened.  She is going to be a main character for Season 2.

As well as Amanda, there is Berkoff played by Aaron Stanford and he works in Operations. His job is to keep Division’s computer network secure and up and running, in addition to being a master hacker, he can hack into any computer system (even the Pentagon).  Don’t miss what he does during the season finale.

The CW network told the writers to step it up a bit after the back 9 episodes were ordered, and oh boy. They got the message. They stepped it up A LOT. By Episode 9, they finally found the niche that the fans were looking for. Drama. Love. Sex. And guns. Everything after Episode 9, just was the icing on the cake for the fans.

As the season continued, we were in for quite a few twists and turns. 2 characters that were thought to be important were killed and fans were stunned. However, these deaths were needed as they continued the storyline exactly as needed. We even got introduced to Owen (Played by Devon Sawa, whom you might remember if you are my age from Final Destination, Casper, Night of the Twisters, and all your Teen Beat magazines) whom was carrying a black box as a Division Agent, however he too eventually went rogue, and Nikita destroyed his black box. We are looking forward to his return in Season 2 (HINT HINT WRITERS. MORE DEVON PLEASE!)

The writers of Nikita (Especially Albert Kim) are very good at leaving the fans hanging every week. Mr. Kim totally handed the fans what they wanted by the end of Season 1. Mr. Kim, we are waiting for season 2 eagerly this I can assure you!

By the end of the season, even though viewership only averaged 2 million per week, Nikita is managing a 2nd season which is sure to turn out more exciting than the first.

I cannot stress how much you guys need to head to the CW’s website and start watching this summer. Or if you are on the go, you can purchase the Episodes on ITunes for 1.99 each (or in HD for 2.99 each). I promise you, you will not be disappointed. And yes, you need to watch from the Pilot Episode or else you will miss the references back to it in future episodes. (The writers seem to LOVE to reference previous episodes and story lines all the time).

What I have enjoyed about watching the evolution of Nikita this past year, was how much the writers are listening to the fans. It is rare that the writers actually take the time to listen to what the fans wants to see, and the writers of Nikita take to their Twitter accounts and have listened.

Nikita is also a very social network friendly show! The main characters (Maggie, Lyndsey, Shane and Melinda) all have twitter accounts in which they connect with their fans. They also arrange unofficial live tweeting during certain episodes. The behind the scenes people (director, writers, etc) also have twitter accounts and tweet to the fans as well.

It’s on the CW network? Yup. Awesome show. Wrong network. Completely wrong network for the viewers who do watch (Not your teenie boppers who are into Vampires, more like your 21-35 crowd). So, this is my call to arms to get over to the CW and watch this amazing show so we can keep it going for a while.

Catch Nikita starting in September, CW Network. It is moving to Friday at 8:00pm.