the enemy of my enemy? is just another man standing in my way.
I just finished catching up on S1-2 of Nikita. OMG IT'S SO GOOD. I intended to post my thoughts a little more regularly as I was watching, but then I, you know, didn't. But I couldn't resist entirely hearing myself yap! TALK TO ME ABOUT THIS SHOW.
I love, so much, that this is a show that can let things be complicated, and have enough faith in the emotional power of the characters and the fun of the stories that it doesn’t have to push us in one direction or the other philosophically. The best example of this is Carla’s death. On the one hand, I was gutted, because Carla had become very sympathetic very easily, and because Nikita was gutted. And intellectually, I admired the development of this character, in that you could see how hard she was working not just to defend her program as a harm reductionist thing, but to actually cling to some idea of its goodness in the face of all the evidence. I know it can be good, because it made you. It’s her using the last few minutes of her life to pass on a message of love, and think that her life’s work had something of value to it. And it’s a rationalization for which you’re not supposed to judge her, it just makes sense. But - it’s also kind of true, in a way? Because without Division, Nikita would be dead, and their world would be a slightly poorer, less loving place without her in it. I don’t agree with Carla that that necessarily makes Division good, but at the same time, I can’t say it’s entirely bad either. Nikita herself is a walking, breathing contradiction against her own absolutism. I’m kind of marveling at how this show makes that level of complexity feel like no big deal.
Nikita, in some ways, has so far had the philosophical easy job in being a reactionary. I don’t mean that she has to make morally easy calls, so much as, she has an important role to play in this giant game of geopolitical whack-a-mole, and it comports fairly straightforwardly with the philosophy she embraces. The degrees to which Carla, Michael, and Percy are right and wrong about the potential in a Division-like program are not particularly relevant to Nikita, because once Division went rogue it needed a heavy counterweight. Her decision to take over is a really beautiful one, in which she accepts that she is not all bad, and that she can be entrusted with the power to make proactive moral decisions. But I think that means she has the hardest calls she’s had to make yet in her future, and I’m really excited to catch up on S3 for that alone.
I like how even-handedly Nikitia’s and Alex’s motivations are handled. I don’t feel like we’re supposed to admire them for taking on vengeance as a mission, but I don’t think we’re beat over the head with AND THAT’S TERRIBLE, either. It’s just complicated.
I think Alex is a phenomenal character. I love a lot that she gets caught fairly frequently throughout the first season. It’s not like she tripped and fell into being a super-flawless double agent, which is what makes her success earned. She shows enough of her very real anger at Division to get their attention, and to divert them from figuring out why she acts out. Because being there means you’re deeply under suspicion anyway; being able to deflect is pretty masterful. She’s the only person at Division who joined with her eyes as wide open as they could be, and so she does have some responsibility for whatever they coerce her into doing. Still not nearly as much as Percy & co, of course, but some. And I think that’s what made the first kill mission so hard for her to carry out, was that she knew she was choosing it.
I really enjoy Nikita’s ambition and ego, and that the moment she takes over Division isn’t about these things at all. SHE’s going to take Division down and THEY’RE GOING TO KNOW IT. And I love that being Big Damn Heroes doesn’t let either of them off the hook tactically. When Nikita shifts from “the last thing they say will be my name” to “I will protect the innocents they target,” it’s the first time she really loses, and she reacts by shifting back to her own personal mission in the next episode. Alex not being able to go through with her first hit isn’t exactly what causes Thom’s death, but it is part of that whole sequence of events. Nikita’s unwillingness to work with Gogol is a combination of tactics, principle, and pride, and that’s all okay, especially since it’s pretty consistently borne out as being the right decision.
When I started this show I expected to have a lot more to say about gender performance, but…I kind of don’t, and I love that? I mean, it’s one of the key things that make the show work as well as it does, that the characters are, you know, like real people in that they don’t fit into silly Man/Woman boxes. But I feel like it’s done in a matter-of-fact way where I’m not having my gendered trope alert pinged one way or the other every five minutes. That should be the norm, of course, but it really isn’t, and so I am super impressed with the show achieving that so consistently.
A couple of things that did stand out to me though: Nikita is a badass while she cries. I was struck by that, not so much because it’s necessarily a surprising thing to happen, but because it’s a very surprising thing to show. We’re weird about tears generally as a culture, but especially for women, oddly. Because tears connote vulnerability, and “vulnerable” is still cast as a necessary component of the passive precious flower type of femininity, a crying woman is usually conforming and submitting to something or someone. Nikita rips the freaking ceiling apart with a tear still running down her cheek. Experiencing strong emotion doesn’t make her not strong.
Another is that it shows women having a lot of interesting, layered relationships with each other. I found Nikita’s relationship with Carla especially poignant, but it’s also one of those things that shouldn’t be remarkable that two WOC have this rich, complicated dynamic on-screen.
Michael is fascinating to me. I found myself really interested in his S1 arc. Michael is the character who really struggles with his doubts about what he’s doing, and his doubts about what it would mean to stop what he’s doing, and with the sneakiness he employs to handle his doubts as much as possible without cost to himself or the overall mission. I enjoyed how the only central male character is the one that has a poignant “work-life balance” storyline throughout S2, where he has to decide if and how to react to his discovery that he’s a father. LIKE REAL MEN DO ALL THE TIME, OMG. And Nikita/Michael is one of the sweetest, realest ships on anything I’m watching right now. I love when narratives acknowledge that a couple trying to make it work is way more interesting than the will-they-won’t-they.
I can’t deal with how much I love Amanda and Percy. Hannibal Percy makes my heart sing. He’s so fabulously, deliciously horrible. Like watching Moriarty, without all the pesky being on Sherlock nonsense. And I loved that Nikita went through with killing him, and I love even more that Amanda is now on the outside. I was kind of worried that she was going to end up biting the dust, but she makes such a fantastic antagonist and I think that potential role-reversal will go to some very fun places.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/278988.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.
I love, so much, that this is a show that can let things be complicated, and have enough faith in the emotional power of the characters and the fun of the stories that it doesn’t have to push us in one direction or the other philosophically. The best example of this is Carla’s death. On the one hand, I was gutted, because Carla had become very sympathetic very easily, and because Nikita was gutted. And intellectually, I admired the development of this character, in that you could see how hard she was working not just to defend her program as a harm reductionist thing, but to actually cling to some idea of its goodness in the face of all the evidence. I know it can be good, because it made you. It’s her using the last few minutes of her life to pass on a message of love, and think that her life’s work had something of value to it. And it’s a rationalization for which you’re not supposed to judge her, it just makes sense. But - it’s also kind of true, in a way? Because without Division, Nikita would be dead, and their world would be a slightly poorer, less loving place without her in it. I don’t agree with Carla that that necessarily makes Division good, but at the same time, I can’t say it’s entirely bad either. Nikita herself is a walking, breathing contradiction against her own absolutism. I’m kind of marveling at how this show makes that level of complexity feel like no big deal.
Nikita, in some ways, has so far had the philosophical easy job in being a reactionary. I don’t mean that she has to make morally easy calls, so much as, she has an important role to play in this giant game of geopolitical whack-a-mole, and it comports fairly straightforwardly with the philosophy she embraces. The degrees to which Carla, Michael, and Percy are right and wrong about the potential in a Division-like program are not particularly relevant to Nikita, because once Division went rogue it needed a heavy counterweight. Her decision to take over is a really beautiful one, in which she accepts that she is not all bad, and that she can be entrusted with the power to make proactive moral decisions. But I think that means she has the hardest calls she’s had to make yet in her future, and I’m really excited to catch up on S3 for that alone.
I like how even-handedly Nikitia’s and Alex’s motivations are handled. I don’t feel like we’re supposed to admire them for taking on vengeance as a mission, but I don’t think we’re beat over the head with AND THAT’S TERRIBLE, either. It’s just complicated.
I think Alex is a phenomenal character. I love a lot that she gets caught fairly frequently throughout the first season. It’s not like she tripped and fell into being a super-flawless double agent, which is what makes her success earned. She shows enough of her very real anger at Division to get their attention, and to divert them from figuring out why she acts out. Because being there means you’re deeply under suspicion anyway; being able to deflect is pretty masterful. She’s the only person at Division who joined with her eyes as wide open as they could be, and so she does have some responsibility for whatever they coerce her into doing. Still not nearly as much as Percy & co, of course, but some. And I think that’s what made the first kill mission so hard for her to carry out, was that she knew she was choosing it.
I really enjoy Nikita’s ambition and ego, and that the moment she takes over Division isn’t about these things at all. SHE’s going to take Division down and THEY’RE GOING TO KNOW IT. And I love that being Big Damn Heroes doesn’t let either of them off the hook tactically. When Nikita shifts from “the last thing they say will be my name” to “I will protect the innocents they target,” it’s the first time she really loses, and she reacts by shifting back to her own personal mission in the next episode. Alex not being able to go through with her first hit isn’t exactly what causes Thom’s death, but it is part of that whole sequence of events. Nikita’s unwillingness to work with Gogol is a combination of tactics, principle, and pride, and that’s all okay, especially since it’s pretty consistently borne out as being the right decision.
When I started this show I expected to have a lot more to say about gender performance, but…I kind of don’t, and I love that? I mean, it’s one of the key things that make the show work as well as it does, that the characters are, you know, like real people in that they don’t fit into silly Man/Woman boxes. But I feel like it’s done in a matter-of-fact way where I’m not having my gendered trope alert pinged one way or the other every five minutes. That should be the norm, of course, but it really isn’t, and so I am super impressed with the show achieving that so consistently.
A couple of things that did stand out to me though: Nikita is a badass while she cries. I was struck by that, not so much because it’s necessarily a surprising thing to happen, but because it’s a very surprising thing to show. We’re weird about tears generally as a culture, but especially for women, oddly. Because tears connote vulnerability, and “vulnerable” is still cast as a necessary component of the passive precious flower type of femininity, a crying woman is usually conforming and submitting to something or someone. Nikita rips the freaking ceiling apart with a tear still running down her cheek. Experiencing strong emotion doesn’t make her not strong.
Another is that it shows women having a lot of interesting, layered relationships with each other. I found Nikita’s relationship with Carla especially poignant, but it’s also one of those things that shouldn’t be remarkable that two WOC have this rich, complicated dynamic on-screen.
Michael is fascinating to me. I found myself really interested in his S1 arc. Michael is the character who really struggles with his doubts about what he’s doing, and his doubts about what it would mean to stop what he’s doing, and with the sneakiness he employs to handle his doubts as much as possible without cost to himself or the overall mission. I enjoyed how the only central male character is the one that has a poignant “work-life balance” storyline throughout S2, where he has to decide if and how to react to his discovery that he’s a father. LIKE REAL MEN DO ALL THE TIME, OMG. And Nikita/Michael is one of the sweetest, realest ships on anything I’m watching right now. I love when narratives acknowledge that a couple trying to make it work is way more interesting than the will-they-won’t-they.
I can’t deal with how much I love Amanda and Percy. Hannibal Percy makes my heart sing. He’s so fabulously, deliciously horrible. Like watching Moriarty, without all the pesky being on Sherlock nonsense. And I loved that Nikita went through with killing him, and I love even more that Amanda is now on the outside. I was kind of worried that she was going to end up biting the dust, but she makes such a fantastic antagonist and I think that potential role-reversal will go to some very fun places.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/278988.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.