NIKITA “Guardians” Review

NIKITA “Guardians” Season 2 Episode 10 – It’s the midseason finale for Nikita and we have to wait a whole month to see the fallout of the huge, game changer revealed at the end of the episode. That Alex’s mother was still alive has been a theory long put forward by fans, though that hardly lessens the impact of actually seeing her. While Alex has constantly mourned her father, not much attention had been given to her mother’s demise and that has not gone without notice. Alex’s story strongly parallels Hamlet: young heiress loses her father; her mother marries her father’s killer (or so I assume); she sees visions of her father; she’s hellbent on revenge but up until now she’s been incapable of it. I wonder is Sean her Ophelia?

I’m not sure if the parallels were intentional, but they work well and it’s no wonder that the Alex side of the show is often more intriguing than Nikita’s. This season Nikita had to deal with Michael’s illegitimate child and no matter how you spin that, it just screams boring.

Unfortunately, the set up to the revelation was not nearly as interesting as the revelation itself. The writers could have had a lot more fun with Alex breaking back into her family home-or, at least the home built on top of the remains of her old one-but they resorted to a lot of cringey scenes in bad Russian accents. At one point, to evade the guards, Alex climbs up a tree. When she comes back down, she falls and hits her head on a rock. That’s probably the most exciting moment in the entire show and it just falls flat. I get that having her fight a guard would have been stupid, but why did she have to fall? Surely someone in her physical shape can climb out of a tree. There was a great opportunity to inject a lot of MacGuyver-level cleverness and resourcefulness on Alex’s behalf, as well as suspense, but it was all missing, which is a pity.

Owen returned and immediately made me forget that Michael ever existed. He’s not half as dour has Michael and he and Nikita have nice rapport. Maggie Q made the best of the episode. The scene when she tells Owen that she wants to stop was quite good, but it was undercut by his lame speech which included the line “it’s the right thing to do” said in all earnestness, which is a line which should be stricken from all of literature and tv and movies.

Michael did return at the end of this episode. The first thing I thought when I saw him was “why is he wearing a V-neck?” which should never be the first thing you think about anyone, least of all a supposedly deadly spy and the male lead of the show.

Despite the small payoff at the end of the episode, which will get even more time next month, this was a pretty disappointing way to end what’s been a relatively solid second season for Nikita.

What did you think of this episode? Sound off in the comments below.