Nikita and The Undercovers
Oct. 2nd, 2010 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreBetween these two shows, it’s like someone reached into my psyche, pulled out all my kinks, and made a couple shows out of them.
The Undercovers is about Samantha and Steven Bloom, a pair of retired CIA agents who now run a catering business who are reactivated when an old friend goes missing, and then are kept in reserve for special missions. It’s rather absurdly enjoyable. I adore the leads and really like their boss, The Hotel Guy (as I shall call him until I learn his name), but am quite annoyed by their sidekick. Sam’s sister, who works in their catering business, and Leo, the old friend, I’m not sure about yet.
The first two episodes are fairly standalone, though the groundwork is set for a larger plotarc to develop. (Apparently revolving around Steven’s secrets and angst. It’s a good thing I like Steven.) It seems to be built largely around classic comedies and the “adventuring/crime solving couple” shows of the 70s and 80s, with some modern sexing it up. So far, it’s almost as willing to have Steven wandering around without his shirt or with his shirt open as it is to have Sam in skimpy little outfits.
Preview:
My only exposure to the Nikita franchise prior to this show is the least known incarnation: the American movie with Bridget Fonda, so I’m not going into it with any previous attachment to the more popular incarnations.
The show is fairly evenly split between Nikita, a rogue agent of a black ops group called The Division who’s now trying to bring them down, and Alex, a new recruit in The Division. I have a lot of criticisms of the show (like how, aside from an Asian heroine with tons of agency, the show completely fails with race) and yet, as I’m watching, I just don’t care. Lots of women with agency! And guns! And relationships with each other! Women plotting to bring down evil organizations!
The show passes the Bechdel test on multiple fronts every episode. And I don’t mean two women having several scenes together, but I mean Alex/Amanda, Alex/Jaden, Nikita/Important-to-the-episode’s-plot Guest Star, and Nikita/*spoiler*. Though, as you may have noticed from that list, the setup has Nikita fairly isolated from the other characters, and Alex the one in the center, forming many of the import relationships that we’ll care about. At the same time, Alex’s relationships are also deliberately set up to mirror Nikita’s own relationships from when she was still an agent, which I absolutely adore.
I’m sad, though, that so far, I’m rather mehed by the inevitable Nikita/Michael pairing, and Michael himself? I think that it’s partly because the show relies at least a bit on carryover from Le Femme Nikita, but also, the actors don’t have much chemistry. (Based on Nikita’s interactions with other characters, they must have tried really hard to find an actor Maggie Q didn’t have chemistry with to play her love interest. I‘m just saying.) I suspect both will grow on me, though.
Also, I’m kind of amused by the naming? I’ve never really been particularly impressed with the “give the girl a typically male name to show she’s the cool girl/action girl,” but in this case, “Nikita” is actually a man’s name that usually gets mistaken as a woman’s name, because that’s how it sounds to English speakers, so I wonder if it’s coincidence, or another deliberate mirroring.
Preview:
I’m current with the aired episodes of both shows (two for The Undercovers and four for Nikita). Spoilers for both welcome in comments.
The Undercovers is about Samantha and Steven Bloom, a pair of retired CIA agents who now run a catering business who are reactivated when an old friend goes missing, and then are kept in reserve for special missions. It’s rather absurdly enjoyable. I adore the leads and really like their boss, The Hotel Guy (as I shall call him until I learn his name), but am quite annoyed by their sidekick. Sam’s sister, who works in their catering business, and Leo, the old friend, I’m not sure about yet.
The first two episodes are fairly standalone, though the groundwork is set for a larger plotarc to develop. (Apparently revolving around Steven’s secrets and angst. It’s a good thing I like Steven.) It seems to be built largely around classic comedies and the “adventuring/crime solving couple” shows of the 70s and 80s, with some modern sexing it up. So far, it’s almost as willing to have Steven wandering around without his shirt or with his shirt open as it is to have Sam in skimpy little outfits.
Preview:
My only exposure to the Nikita franchise prior to this show is the least known incarnation: the American movie with Bridget Fonda, so I’m not going into it with any previous attachment to the more popular incarnations.
The show is fairly evenly split between Nikita, a rogue agent of a black ops group called The Division who’s now trying to bring them down, and Alex, a new recruit in The Division. I have a lot of criticisms of the show (like how, aside from an Asian heroine with tons of agency, the show completely fails with race) and yet, as I’m watching, I just don’t care. Lots of women with agency! And guns! And relationships with each other! Women plotting to bring down evil organizations!
The show passes the Bechdel test on multiple fronts every episode. And I don’t mean two women having several scenes together, but I mean Alex/Amanda, Alex/Jaden, Nikita/Important-to-the-episode’s-plot Guest Star, and Nikita/*spoiler*. Though, as you may have noticed from that list, the setup has Nikita fairly isolated from the other characters, and Alex the one in the center, forming many of the import relationships that we’ll care about. At the same time, Alex’s relationships are also deliberately set up to mirror Nikita’s own relationships from when she was still an agent, which I absolutely adore.
I’m sad, though, that so far, I’m rather mehed by the inevitable Nikita/Michael pairing, and Michael himself? I think that it’s partly because the show relies at least a bit on carryover from Le Femme Nikita, but also, the actors don’t have much chemistry. (Based on Nikita’s interactions with other characters, they must have tried really hard to find an actor Maggie Q didn’t have chemistry with to play her love interest. I‘m just saying.) I suspect both will grow on me, though.
Also, I’m kind of amused by the naming? I’ve never really been particularly impressed with the “give the girl a typically male name to show she’s the cool girl/action girl,” but in this case, “Nikita” is actually a man’s name that usually gets mistaken as a woman’s name, because that’s how it sounds to English speakers, so I wonder if it’s coincidence, or another deliberate mirroring.
Preview:
I’m current with the aired episodes of both shows (two for The Undercovers and four for Nikita). Spoilers for both welcome in comments.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-03 02:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-03 02:29 am (UTC)