What I’m Watching: Nikita

Nikita: Season 1, Episode 7 “The Recruit” (C-)

Once again, you’d think Division would be prepared for some of the insurgency and potential mental breaks that go on within its walls. After training who knows how many recruits to be assassins, cleaners, and whatever else, shouldn’t they know that promoting someone to security guard might cause some anger or resentment? The fact that he can now be an off-the-books cleaner does not balance out the deaths of a few security guards, at least not numerically, which may be how those who operate Division think. I would also expect that they would give their recruits some credit, and therefore sending the agreed-upon worst recruit into the field on a mission has to appear at least a bit suspicious, and if Alex could figure that one out all by herself, it seems sensible that the girl in question could too. It’s even more appalling that she seemed so dumb when she proved herself to be quite skilled in hand-to-hand combat and trying to evade Nikita, so something definitely doesn’t track. All of these plot holes wouldn’t amount to that much if the show had something else to offer, but with continually worsening dialogue (especially out of Nikita’s mouth, though anything Birkhoff says comes close) and uncreative plotlines that always pit Nikita and Michael against each other, when Michael has clearly shown that his own viewpoints ally more with Nikita’s than with Division’s most of the time. I keep waiting for some big, show-changing twist, and I fear that it’s just not coming.