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Nikita: "Pilot" - Sept. 9 on The CW - Grading & Discussion

Grading

  • Excellent

    Votes: 3 15.0%

  • Above average

    Votes: 12 60.0%

  • Average

    Votes: 4 20.0%

  • Below average

    Votes: 1 5.0%

  • Poor

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    20
Aragorn

Aragorn

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maggieqnikita3.jpg


Starring Maggie Q, Lyndsy Fonseca, Shane West, Aaron Stanford, Ashton Holmes, Tiffany Hines, Melinda Clarke and Xander Berkeley.

As a troubled teen, Nikita was rescued from death row by Division, a secret U.S. agency that trained her as an assassin and spy. After the agency betrayed her, Nikita spent three years in hiding. Now she is seeking revenge, stopping at nothing to shut down and expose the operation, her former boss, Percy, and her former friends at Division. Meanwhile, the agency continues to recruit and train new members, bringing in young people, erasing their pasts, and turning them into cold and efficient killers.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoTz17GWxjs[/yt]

I'm making this thread to notify anyone who is interested that this new show on The CW makes its debut tonight. I'm not really interested in this show, so if this thread is popular, someone who will be watching might want to keep it going.
 
I am not really interested in Nikita...may watch it online at a later date...I will be watching the season premiere of The Vampire Diaries tonight before Nikita comes on. :D
 
I'll check it out. Maggie Q looks a bit weird in the posters, but hopefully that is an anomaly :lol:
 
I'm leery of any show starring an actress with a letter instead of a last name.

She's not related to McG by any chance, is she?
 
scotpens said:
I'm leery of any show starring an actress with a letter instead of a last name.
Click to expand...

Her last name is Quigley, if it makes you feel any better. She's a Hawaiian-born actress/model who became a major star in Hong Kong martial arts films after being discovered and trained by Jackie Chan himself. According to her Wikipedia page, "The Hong Kong newspaper, Apple Daily, dubbed her Maggie Q and she decided to keep the name for easier pronunciation by Chinese audiences." Here's a nice article about her from a couple of weeks ago:

http://nymag.com/guides/fallpreview/2010/tv/67614/


I am not a fan of stories involving assassins, and I never had an interest in the prior incarnations of the Nikita concept. But I watched this for Maggie Q, who is a striking and captivating woman. And this show certainly plays that up. Between this and Mission: Impossible III, it's clear that Ms. Q has a very beneficial relationship with the color red.

A lot of striking women on this show, in fact. Lyndsy Fonseca is rather lovely too, as was the actress playing Jaden, the other female trainee.

Story-wise, I like the idea that the protagonist is out of the organization and working to bring it down, and is trying to save lives and minimize her use of deadly force, at least. Still, she inflicted too many casualties for my taste, even if it was in self-defense. Too much killing overall for my taste, so I don't know if the lovely ladies will be enough incentive to keep watching.

I didn't see the final twist coming; I probably read about it online but forgot it. I remembered that Nikita would have some kind of relationship with the young recruit, but I figured it would form afterward; I didn't anticipate that Alex was a mole she planted deliberately.
 
I saw this other girl in the previews, and thought... Who's that? But never bothered to look her up until today. I was surprised to see that it was Lyndsy Fonseca. She grew up pretty nice. She was one of Ted's future kids on How I Met Your Mother, for anyone who cares but didn't know.

As for the show, I wasn't blown away, but it held my attention. I liked Nikita's story, but I especially loved the side story about Fonseca's character, this younger assassin in training. Not sure how I feel about the twist at the end though. I think I would have preferred it if she was just another young trainee who would eventually cross paths with Nikita rather than being a mole who's already working for her. What else... I wasn't too impressed with this organization called "Division". They don't come off as menacing enough with the way Nikita could just chit-chat with these people at a party. I did however like that one assassin at the hotel. He's got that calculating, menecing coldness that I expect from the enemy. Sweating bullets when faced with trouble? Not him. I also liked Melinda Clarke and I'm a bit curious about who's helping Nikita.

In the end though, this isn't must see TV, but I might hang in for a little bit. Oh yeah, this thing reminds me of Bionic Woman. Had to mention that. Will it suffer the same fate? Maybe. I can see that happening. It's got the same "network action show that won't last" vibe.
 
Hubby wanted to see it, so I figured I'd watch. I knew the first episode would have problems just because it was the first episode--so many things to lay out that it could only be rough. The roughness was most evident in the horribly-written exposition. I know it was necessary, but way too obvious. A montage would've been better...but that likely wouldn't've worked either. The exposition with the African peacemaker also badly written, just awkward.

Loved the cleaner--same as the "assassin in the hallway" is a post above? Didn't like "Michael." Too young, unless it ends up he's a former recruit. Loved the twist at the end, made it interesting.

Looks like "Percy" is alienating a lot of people inside the Division with his "no way out" ways. Could be almost anyone helping her.
 
I like that they're doing something a little different here instead of completely rehashing the Peta Wilson version.
 
Dang. I fell asleep midway through it (not because I though it was boring BTW). I think I would've liked the twist, because I was having an issue with the pilot episode spending so much time with Alex. The twist might have changed the impression that I was getting that the show was going to be about Alex, more than Nikita. I was thinking the pilot might have been better if they had just followed Nikita from being arrested, recruited, and so on instead of Alex. But the twist changes that perception that Nikita will be second banana on her own show, or so I hope. I was getting a Blade the Series vibe where Blade took a backseat to the Krista character, and I didn't like that at all.

I mainly watched this for Maggie Q. I thought she was mesmerizing in MI3 and she still is in Nikita. I've never been a fan of the Nikita stories. Never saw the original film, thought the Bridget Fonda film was boring, and never watched the Peta Wilson show. However I've always liked the concept, but haven't cared enough about the execution.

From what I saw last night, I thought the action was pretty good. I didn't mind that Division looked so ordinary. In a way I like that. They didn't come off as central casting bad guys. I also liked the little bit of Melinda Clarke I saw, very polished and refined.

All the actors were okay. Maggie Q was tough and sexy, as was Alex, Melinda Clarke, and Jaden, played by Tiffany Hines. I got a feeling with the twist that Jaden will become more than a rival to Alex, but perhaps one of the chief people who's going to either expose her or be in on hunting her and/or Nikita down if the series progresses.

Nikita reminds me of Alias. However its not as stylish or as fluid as that show. The striking colors and outfits they had Jennifer Garner wearing really stood out and made an impression. So far Nikita's start wasn't as kickass as Alias, but I'll stick around for a while.
 
Enjoyed the pilot well enough.

But I think the show is going to have a real problem sustaining a credible threat from the Division. Nikita knows too much about them, including seemingly all the bigwigs and their operational doctrines for it to take longer than one season for her to bring the Division down. Especially considering she has perhaps two moles inside it.

If Nikita knows who the leader of the Division is why doesn't she kill him? It is the same problem that Sidney faced in Alias, and which that show wisely ended early by bringing SD-6 down midway through season 2.
 
Enjoyed it. Kind of a sideways sequel to the Peta Wilson series - some of the same characters, but lots of differences. One being, of course, hot Asian chick instead of hot Nordic-looking Aussie chick. Enough action and hot chicks to keep me entertained. My wife indicated a total lack of desire to keep watching it, though, which means we'll be watching CSI and taping Bones in that time slot, and I'll be catching Nikita on DVD later.
 
I haven't seen the pilot, but that trailer makes it look stylistically far too much like Alias for my taste (and with an even cheesier soundtrack) and far too little like the Canadian series La Femme Nikita with Peta Wilson, which I really loved. (Not that I dislike Alias, but I could never help comparing it with LFN, what with so many similarities in the concept and characters - and that makes it suffer in my eyes; style, music, and the overall feeling was what made me love LFN, in addition to the actors. Alias's style felt a bit too... mainstream US TV, or like Felicity with spies.)

Also, the "Michael" character is acting far too emotional to be in any way similar to the previous versions of the character. (I'm also not too happy with the casting of Shane West, who is a bit too baby-faced).
 
I don't know, didn't really hold my interest, I watch way too much TV these days so I don't know if I'll be coming back for this one.
 
I enjoyed it, but I'm hoping the dialogue gets a little less expository and on-the-nose. Was it just me or did they explain the basic premise at least four times last night? It was like the network was terrified that some poor viewer might find the show too confusing, so every plot point was explained very, very carefully . . . .

But I'll admit the final twist caught me by surprise. I didn't see that coming.
 
Yeah, Nikita giving exposition to her foster father was very stilted. And the opening narration was just too much all at once. I guess I can understand why they did it that way; this was sort of a loose continuation of the premise of an earlier series, almost a sequel though not really, and they were assuming that most viewers would be familiar with the earlier series, the Luc Besson movie, or the remake Point of No Return, and thus wouldn't need much exposition of the backstory. The problem there is that it makes the series less accessible to totally new viewers. As someone only indirectly familiar with earlier incarnations, evaluating this as a standalone work, I felt it needed more showing and less telling of Nikita's backstory.

Alternatively, the way to make it work better as a standalone piece would've been to start with Alex and follow her primarily, then have her begin to learn about a legendary predecessor named Nikita. It's always a good idea to give the audience a viewpoint figure, someone who's learning the ropes while the audience watches through their eyes, so that it doesn't just feel like an info dump. Of course, that would've made Nikita a less central figure, and I wouldn't want that, because I want to spend a lot of time looking at Maggie Q and her legs which somehow manage to be longer than her whole height. But it would've been better structurally. It would've made it feel more like the beginning of a story than a pseudo-sequel. (Like the original Star Wars film. It didn't open with Obi-Wan Kenobi giving a voiceover about his days as a Jedi with Vader as his apprentice who betrayed him. First we met Luke, got to know him, then through him we learned about this mysterious figure and the complex backstory he was part of.)
 
^
So, this Nikita is supposed to be a follow on of sorts to the other Nikita movies/shows?

Also, I see what Christopher is saying about having a point of view character, though I would rather that character be Nikita herself. Perhaps the pilot could be the story of her recruitment and her eventual turning against the Division.

Though it would be interesting to see Alex being schooled about Nikita, who I guess might be a legend among the other assassins.
 
No, in the Bridget Fonda remake, she blew away someone in cold blood who tried to help her.
 
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