- Title: Nikita – The Complete First Season
- tv.com: link
It’s always interesting going back and start watching a show from the beginning after picking it up sometime during a later season. I decided to give Nikita a chance this year and enjoyed the show enough to pick up the First Season on DVD.
Based on the French film of the same name and the American remake, Nikita stars Maggie Q as government trained assassin on the run from the shadowy organization who trained her. Rather than give us a new take on the character’s origin story the series opens with Nikita reemerging after the events of the films with a plan to take down Division, the agency which trained her, with the help of a new Division recruit (Lyndsy Fonseca).
Most of the first season deals with Nikita staying one-step ahead of Michael (Shane West), the man who trained her, and Division strike teams, as Alex (Fonseca) slowly works her way up in Division feeding Nikita inside information to help destroy the agency that murdered her family years ago.
Highlights of the Season One include Nikita trying to make up for her role in an assassination that left a family without a husband and father, the introduction of Owen (Devon Sawa) and Ryan Fletcher (Noah Bean) – both of who continue to play prominent roles in the show’s Third Season, Michael and Nikita working together to track down the terrorist who murdered his family, preventing a dirty bomb from being smuggled into the United States, the episode which reveals the full truth of Alex’s past, and the two-part conclusion where Division discovers Alex’s true motivations and Percy’s (Xander Berkeley) power play comes to a head.
Maggie Q is well-cast in the title role of the kick-ass assassin with boatloads of personal baggage. Fonseca, who was most recognizable to me from her small role in Kick-Ass and as one of the two children Bob Saget continues to bore on How I Met Your Mother, has the more interesting role of the pair that requires shifting allegiances, constant lies, and keeping more than her fair share of secrets.
On the Division side of things West is fine, if a bit bland, in the role of Michael, but Aaron Stanford as Division’s ace computer hacker and Melinda Clarke as the woman everyone is afraid of both work well. Ashton Holmes and Tiffany Hines have recurring roles as other Division recruits involved in a love triangle with Alex that supplies some drama but doesn’t ever actually go anywhere.
The five-disc set includes all 22 episodes, deleted scenes, commentary for two episodes, and featurettes on the creation of the show, the process of creating an episode, and short featurettes for each of the main characters: Nikita, Alex, Percy, and Michael.
The second season is really good too.