What I'm Watching: Nikita

Nikita: Season 1, Episode 13 "Coup De Grace" (C)

The writing on this show really needs to improve. The storylines themselves aren't always so bad, but the execution of them is hindered considerably by the poor dialogue administered by the actors. The fact that newbie agent Alex has such a prominent role in one of her first missions and an influential say in how things proceed (even if she's not listened to) is absolutely ridiculous. The image of the whole troop of Division operatives preparing to go into the building before they even knew that Nikita was in there is just silly, since this black ops organization has proven to be so entirely hapless and ineffective in all that they do. It seems that they're never prepared for anything to go remotely awry, as evidenced by their extremely unprofessional and outright stupid switch to English after their clear efforts to seem as if they were Georgian revolutionaries or something of the sort. The fact that Nikita is also so completely superior in every way training-wise to any agent that could possibly be sent her way has become beyond frustrating at this point. The one positive development that this episode had came at the very end, with Michael finally showing that he might be smarter than he looks and starting to piece together the fact that Alex might be working with Nikita, as accidentally caught on camera while she was just chatting freely with Nikita as if neither of them was being watched. What I'm most curious about it is how the nicer-than-most guy will go about using his newly gleaned information.