Girl With The Phoenix Tattoo: The Racialicious Roundtable For Nikita 1.1

Hosted by Arturo R. García

We’re baaaaack! And kicking off our look at the season’s new TV offerings – well, the ones that at least promise to highlight POC – with the CW’s Nikita, the latest iteration of Luc Besson’s femme-fatale franchise. In talking about this show awhile back, I expressed some weariness over the backstory for Lyndsy Fonseca’s character, Alex, being recruited specifically for being a pretty white girl. But as you’ll see below, what we’ve gotten so far actually has some more layers than that.

The story plays out more like an update of the Nikita mythos than a straight-up reboot: there’s still the requisite morally-ambiguous Covert Government Agency, and the Conflicted Spy-Runner (Shane West). But the most pleasant surprise of the first episode was seeing that Nikita (Maggie Q) wasn’t around just to give the show a pretty poster, but will actually be treated like an integral part of the story. Indeed, the show makes good use of Q’s Hong Kong action-flick sensibilities, and gives us just enough of her back-story to lend the character some depth. But Nikita’s debut hour actually delivers some more nice touches besides that.

SPOILERS AHEAD

As noted above, while Nikita keeps the familiar trappings from both the original movie and the USA Network show from the late ’90s, giving us two protagonists in Nikita and Alex actually speeds up the story a bit: we get to see both Alex’s welcome to Division’s school of hard knocks and the basics behind Nikita’s going rogue: she’s out for revenge on the program for killing her (apparently really really romantic) fiancee.

For her part, Alex is, as Michael notes in the episode, tailor-made to become her successor: she’s pretty (and, yes, white), has no social ties, and without any real alternatives, after getting nicked during a med heist gone bad. One nice touch was the show actually pacing her transition into Division’s life believably; it’s nice to see a show where the new person isn’t immediately a) the best person in the room or b) getting harangued all over the place. This key detail lets Fonseca play up Alex’s initial confusion and curiosity more ably, and maximizes the first episode’s big reveal, with which the Table and myself kick off our discussion.

NO REALLY, SPOILERS ARE COMING

Best part of the episode for me: the reveal that Alex and Nikita are actually working together. I did not think this show would have the chutzpah to go down that route. That said, how long ‘til they have to shoot at one another?

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