Tuesday 16 January 2018

Nikita, Season 4 (2013)



Nikita got a fourth season of only six episodes, leaving it well short of the  "magic 88" episodes needed for syndication, but allowing the show's storyline to be wrapped up (albeit in an extremely abbreviated form).  Was this a gesture of good will from the network to the show's remaining fanbase?  A ploy to make the program more attractive on Netflix (which was forbes.com's theory), or was it just one of those "who knows how The CW decides what to cut and what to keep?" moments?

At the end of the day, I guess the why of the renewal isn't that important: what really matters is if the episodes of season four actually deliver a satisfying ending.  And on that point, I can honestly say that it does a pretty great job of nailing its last five minutes.  The denouement of the whole series, where we see the characters moving on into the next stages of their lives?  That's pretty great.

The 5.9 episodes leading up to that point, though?  Eesh.  I mean, I know it's got to be hard to compress what was presumably meant to be a full season's arc into roughly one quarter of that length, but you know, maybe take the shorter length as an opportunity to really focus on the core of your program and excise the rest, rather than just trying to jam everything in at four times the usual pace?  Nikita's last season is a succession of blink and you'll miss it plot twists and double-dealings that ignores the show's greatest strength (the chemistry between the "core four" characters) in favour of a murky scripting mess with contrived revelations and coincidences that simply don't hold water.

Those last five minutes really are pretty good, though.


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