Defying the Pimp

[viridian5]

I tried Nikita, but the awesome Maggie Q isn't enough to get me to watch a show that hits my Dollhouse Ick Factor so hard, so soon, and so often.

Comments

[bientot]

Other people were commenting they were reminded of "Pretender" - I'm glad I'm not the only one who was reminded of "Dollhouse". Still - I'm giving it another couple of eps to decide for sure whether or not I want to stay with it.

[viridian5]

For me, the show has a much stronger link to Dollhouse. Pretender rarely exploited and leered at women, plus I enjoyed watching it and its cast. Aside from the ick of so much of Nikita seeming to be about sending women out in tiny outfits and sometimes nearly whoring them, I'm having trouble staying interested in Nikita for more than a few minutes at a time. I keep changing the channel out of boredom.

[ladysunflow]

Is it sending that kind of vibe? I won't be trying it then, as I couldn't stomach even the first episode of Dollhouse. Not a great loss for me though - I wasn't a fan of the 90s TV series, and I only liked he Point of no Return movie.

[viridian5]

In the pilot Nikita wears a teeny swimsuit, partly to help her get close to some guy she wanted to kill, and wanders around her home base in tiny lingerie. In an op in the second ep it really looks like another female agent is sent in under the pretext of her being a high-end prostitute.

The 90s Nikita TV series didn't strike me as this casually exploitative of women.

[the_other_sandy]

Thanks for the warning. I was going to try watching it until I saw the trailers. Maggie Q was in her underwear or a bikini in nearly every frame, and for an action star, her fight scenes weren't very good. Glad to know I haven't missed anything.

[viridian5]

The bus station and subway ads were all of Maggie Q wearing very little while sexily holding a gun or two too. I tried episodes 1 and 2 and just didn't find anything that could hold my attention for long, plus they were exploitative.

[chorus_of_chaos]

just the description of dollhouse revolted me. It just makes me think we are getting that much closer to ...damn, I can't think of the name of the book, it was by margaret atwood...I read it, just can't remember the name...where most of the women in the world become infertile and all women become part of a cast class, and fertile women are basically sex slaves, to a really sick extent.

[viridian5]

The Handmaid's Tale? Never read it but I'm familiar with its concept.

Dollhouse and Nikita want to have it both ways: Look, (sexy sexy!) kickass women fighting opression while wearing very little or being whored out by men into doing it! The beautiful woman who can kick your ass is just another male sex fantasy in works like this.

[chorus_of_chaos]

yep handmaids tale. It is a really good book, if very disconcerting.

I can get behind the idea of women kicking mens' asses, fantasy or no, many of them seriously need it :)

[viridian5]

I love the asskicking, but knowing it's to get some guy off detracts a bit from it for me.

I actually like it

[anonymous]

I saw the original tv series once apon a time on USA. I liked the series, excluding some of the overly angsty eps. What I like about the new Nikita is less angst. I like the idea that Micheal is trying to protect others, the fact that section is corrupt, and all the different interactions. Did I wish they hadn't tried to pimp out one of their actives, yes. But realistically the fact is that it would happen in a corrupt system. So far I have liked it a lot better than Dollhouse. I hated 70% of the first season of dollhouse because it was basically them sexually exploiting their "dolls". Not something that I want to watch. So far with Nikita it has been 1% sexual, exploitation, and by that I mean sending in actives to be raped as a job. I can live/tolerate people in skimpy clothes, not my ideal as a woman, but is it any different from the current content we see on tv?
There that's my rant, by the way I really like your glass houses series. Yohji is my fave, but that's just my bias.

Re: I actually like it

[viridian5]

Nah, that's cool. I've just been exposed to a lot of "kickass" women characters where the importance of the "sexy" is higher in the writers' minds than the importance of the "kickass" lately, and I've hit my threshold. Plus, I watched a lot of Dollhouse hoping it would get better. *g* I might have held out longer on Nikita if they hadn't done the prostitute thing in the second episode.

Thanks so much! You have good taste in bias boys. *g*