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STUDIO: Warner Home Video
MSRP: $39.98
RATED: NR
RUNNING TIME: 354 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Canceled scenes from select episodes
• Season 5 Internet teaser with introduction by director Jon Cassar
• "Season 5: Declassified" – a lowdown on Season 5 as the creative minds behind the series and select cast members discuss the show’s last 8 episodes
The Pitch
It’s Alias before Alias was Alias, only not as good as Alias.
The Humans
Peta Wilson, Don Francks, Cindy Dolenc, Eugene Robert Glazer, Roy Dupuis.
The Nutshell
Nikita’s first hit was Michael’s mullet, an assignment she eagerly accepted.
Based off of the Luc Besson picture of the same name, Nikita is about a street urchin who’s wrongly convicted of murder but given a second chance at life by becoming a spy for the covert government agency known as Section One. There she leads the double life of going on secret missions while also trying to find a way out of her situation. Along the way she falls in love with fellow agent Michael Samuelle (Dupuis) and comes to discover that her involuntary enlistment in the agency may have been planned from the start.
"Okay, Michael, we’ll shoot as many terrorists as we can before our ammo runs out, then you let the mullet loose…"
The Lowdown
This Nikita set was kind of doomed from the start when it arrived in my mailbox. I knew of the show but never saw an episode, and the first experience with a show should never be an afterthought of a fifth season with only eight episodes. Invariably when looking at this series, I keep going back to Alias time and time again because of the similar themes of the two shows. Obviously Nikita didn’t rip off the Rambaldi-fest because it came out years before, but it suffers from the comparison. The production value also screams Canada and that’s not always a good thing. If you’ve seen the joke of a last season of Airwolf, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
"Have I mentioned just how utterly ridiculous your hair – "
"Yeah, yeah, yeah…"
Although definitely easy on the eyes, as the lead, at least in this season, Wilson seems to have two ranges: disaffected and disinterested. Her guy Michael and his ridiculous beefcake mullet aren’t around for the majority of the season (i.e. five episodes) and Nikita has a several new characters to bounce off of as her situation with the agency has changed and she’s seeking to find her way and get a few answers. There’s a quickie recap of the previous four seasons in the first episode, but it does little to prepare you for what had happened before and what is yet to come. There’s also plenty of cheap Earth: Final Conflict special effects that tried to elevate the rather boring stories without much success. The show was cancelled after Season Four, but resurrected for a final run. Things may have been popping in the first four seasons, but I suppose I’ll never know, because this show is lower on my list of things to see than The View. Overall, Nikita left me as cold as her demeanor.
Nikita’s most successful assassination method was the ole distract-’em-with-the-crotch-before -offing-them technique…
The Package
There’s a quickie featurette, Season 5: Declassified which details how the show was brought back by fan insistence to wrap things up. There are also deleted scenes for the various episodes and a Season 5 internet teaser. Those didn’t really impress much either.
"Michael, I lied, I do love you…but I’m still leaving you for Billy Ray Cyrus…"