Thursday, May 16, 2013

Nikita

Nikita
Episode 21: Invisible Hand
By: Carlos Uribe

Nikita is a show about a female spy who does missions for a secret, undercover government agency.

Spoilers Ahoy!

Division is dead. The President is signing pardons for the group for any laws they might have broken. The Black Box has been destroyed. The former Division agents won't be causing problems. The ones that do will be taken care off by the government. There is no reason for Nikita or her group to go on any missions. Nobody is telling them to go and there is nothing for them to rebel against. It's very tempting to simply retire from the spy business and buy a nice house along the beach. Enjoy the rest of your life. That's what Michael and most of the characters want to do but there is one enemy that they have to defeat first. Amanda might not officially be their problem anymore but Nikita is right. There is no way that Amanda would actually leave them alone. She would hunt them just so that she can keep teaching them lessons or whatever. Amanda took Nikita's betrayal personally and wants her to suffer. She's seeking revenge and running away won't stop that. Nikita is able to convince the group to go on one final mission. It's technically two missions but she basically considers them both to be two halves of one larger one. She's going to find Amanda by using the Shop's technology in order to stop her. The first half of the mission basically involves stopping an assassination attempt on a lady who opposes human trafficking. Since the Shop likes to test on human test subjects against their will, she's impeding their research. It's a basic weekly mission that could have easily fit on any other episode except the writers are pretending that this is the final one. This will be the last assassination they stop and it'll hopefully expose Amanda so they can take her out. This doesn't happen but they do get a lead on Amanda's location. They stop the assassination, Amanda is able to take out one of the Shop's assassins, and she's able to use his cell phone to her advantage.


They go to the location only to discover Amanda isn't there. They do retrieve a scientist and one of his experiments. He's basically come up with a way to make the kill chip obsolete. He's engineered nanobites that go into the blood stream and cause every cell to explode. The death is painful but short. These nanobites can be injected into the human system and are only activated when a microwave is aimed at them. This basically means that anyone who is injected with these nanobites can easily be killed at a later time. There is no need for surgery or even a shot as they can be planted using a knife. We do get to see what this experiment is capable of doing when the scientist is killed before they can give him the one antidote they have. They suddenly realize that the person they had saved might be injected with these nanobites. They worry that this high-profile target will be killed while she's giving a speech in front of the world. The team splits up. Michael has to go meet up with Alex so that the lady can be given the antidote while Nikita goes after Amanda. This is because Amanda can press the button that kills the target. She can take out Amanda before the target is given the antidote which guarantees her safety. She does promise to wait for backup if the mission succeeds before she can get to Amanda but she's not able to fulfill this promise because communications break up between her and Birkoff. She's left alone so she proceeds with the mission. It's pretty exciting up to this point but it really picks up.

This is because Amanda had allowed Nikita to get to her. She laid the necessary breadcrumbs to get Nikita to show up. She reveals that Amanda doesn't need to worry about anything because she took her shot months ago. Nikita at first assumes that Amanda had injected her with the nanobites while she was under the Chair but Amanda claims that was mostly for theatrics. Amanda was talking about Micheal. The shop had given him a fake hand and with that came the nanobites. They could chose to end his life at any time. Since the group is giving the antidote to the woman at the time, they won't have any way to stop him from dying. Amanda was smart because she realized that Nikita wouldn't act if she had been the one infected. Nikita would rather die than fulfill Amanda's orders. Put the life of someone Nikita loves on the line and she'll change her tune. She'll do anything to keep the people closest to her safe. Heck, Nikita agreed to take over Division to save a whole organization that had been bent on killing her. So Amanda forces Nikita to go on one final mission. This mission is to assassinate the President of the United States. She can't tell anyone or Michael will be dead. Amanda makes sure that Nikita behaves by implementing a chip that allows her to hear and see what Nikita is doing. Nikita is given no choice but to go on her mission. It looks like Nikita's final mission will be the end of her life. She'll get arrested or die trying. She won't be with Michael as this assassination will forever separate them. They won't even be able to get closure because they won't be able to say goodbye. She's sacrificing a life with him so he can continue to live. It's a pretty tragic move for Nikita and I wonder how she'll be able to get out of this. If she even can. Percy had his ultimate victory (leaving Division after making the President his puppet and joining another group, probably the Shop) before he lost to Nikita. Amanda has her final victory (making Nikita sacrifice everything to save Michael). The question is whether she'll be defeated or not.

There is a lot to love in Invisible Hand. The “final” missions are all pretty thrilling and they all serve to build up to a great cliff-hanger that manages to be tragic and exciting at the same time. It's so sad to see Nikita realize that there's nothing she can do but follow along with Amanda's plan. It's so tragic to see her sacrifice everything and not be able to say a word. It's heartbreaking understanding Nikita's life at this point. At the same time-it's an ending that promises an action-packed finale that might just leave me breathless. I don't want this season of Nikita to end but I'm counting down to the finale. Overall, a pretty great penultimate episode that builds up to the season finale.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please be respectful of people's opinions. Remember these reviews are MY opinion and you may disagree with them. These are just TV shows.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.