What I’m Watching: Nikita

Nikita: Season 2, Episode 17 “Arising” (B-)

For a show that has twenty-three episodes this season, an awful lot happened very quickly in just an hour. The revelation at the end of last week that Cassandra is working for Ari was almos inconsequential, as it served merely to confuse MI-6 and to help drive the plot forward, which was already firing on multiple cylinders. Nikita’s lack of enthusiasm for Michael’s plan to raise Max with her is understandable since her mothering abilities are more attuned to teenage drug addicts, and Michael himself seems a bit too prone to angry revenge missions to settle down with a kid. That’s the moral of this episode, that no one can be happy together until Division is taken down, since Alex succeeded in freeing her mother from Semak’s grip but sent her away to a remote location with Sean rather than go with her. Semak’s dead, Amanda knows everything, Cassandra’s cover is blown and she is presumed dead, and Percy decided to take the hour off since he’s been dominating much of recent episodes. When there are too many operations and shadow organizations at play at one point, both characters and audiences get confused, and I think this show needs to narrow its focus again, utilizing characters like the newly rescued Ryan to positive effect, exiting the Russian arena to pay attention to what really matters: both Percy and Amanda are incredibly evil people, and it’s about time someone took them down a peg, or even took them out for good.