Just watched the episode where Division is hired to assassinate the Georgian Prince. Had a couple of observations/critiques.
Spoilers below the fold.
So the episode begins with Alex describing the plan to Nikita, so they can counter the plan. The plan consists of catching the Prince at a museum where he is making a speech. They will send in a strike team dressed as Georgian security to kill him just as he gets on stage.
Flaws in the plan-
First, the team approaches the front door, stages 6 or 7 people, then enters quickly to surprise the two guards near the entrance to the secured area, up a flight of stairs. Only problem, the sightlines from the top of the stairs include looking through the glass front building to see people with automatic weapons approaching the door and collecting near the door. Okay, it’s slightly obstructed, but we get a good view during the scuffle and they should have been seen. Oops.
Second, the team takes out the security cameras, then runs into the main display room where all the guests are milling about and the Prince is just supposed to be taking the stage. Except instead of sweeping in quickly and quietly to surprise everyone (they do use silencers on the door guards and cameras), they start blasting the automatics in the room to scare all the guests and clear their path. Only that action should have been enough to alert the security detail to grab the Prince under cover, instead of leaving him standing at the podium, as their plan requires. Oops.
Of course Nikita was already inside, and had reached the Prince just inside to thwart the plan, so it didn’t matter that the plan was dumb.
I also spotted right up front who was behind the plot. When Alex and Nikita are discussing the “murder for hire” and who could be behind it, we learn that the Prince recently married a woman who we are told also had a claim to the throne, and that the marriage was a political move to unite the country as well as a love story. Well, even though Nikita and Alex spot the chief of security as their suspect, it is immediately obvious to me that the culprit is going to be the princess or at least her family, trying to knock off the prince to conserve the power for their family line.
So Nikita makes her approach to the princess to bypass the security guy, and tells her that the prince’s life is in jeopardy, and the two of them run off to the security office, just in time for Nikita to be zapped by a taser. And of course, true to form, it knocks her unconscious, because apparently in Hollywood that’s what Tasers do.
So even though Nikita was surprised and knocked unconscious, she still manages to recover and escape and thwart the plan, using Alex to help get info.
At one point, she takes out two of the Division agents using a sword. Although for some silly reason she strikes them a couple times each with the sword in the scabbard or the hilt of the sword before she finally pulls it out to slash them. And then they stand there with the wobbly look out of those combat video games, where the loser stands there wobbling until the victor does the power stroke. Um, yeah, because thats reality. And I’m ignoring the fact that it’s obvious when she’s slashing with the sword that she’s far enough forward that the blade doesn’t come within 5 feet of either, and there are no slashes to their clothes or blood anywhere.
Later she surprise attacks three more guards, and even though she’s got an automatic weapon by that time, she jumps down on them from above, and clubs them with her gun instead of shooting anyone. :smack:
Then there’s the part where Nikita has stolen a radio, retuned it to the frequency of the headset that one of the hostages is wearing, and tells her to hand her headset to Alex, “the brunette terrorist”. So “it’s for you” right in front of the other Division agents and stuff. Alex plays it off with remarks about “you’ll never get out of here” and such, but that was still way too risky. And of course it draws Michael’s attention, which we see at the end of the episode where he calls Alex to question her about it, and then finds surveillance video of the incident to study. Hmmm, can Michael read lips?
Finally, the attack goes wrong when Nikita has swept the prince out of the way so the 11 minute attack becomes a hostage situation, and she calls in the NYPD to a standoff. Which is all good, until Michael swoops in pretending to be the FBI, preventing Nikita from coordinating with them to get the prince out safely. So Michael stalls while the assault team is trying to hunt down Nikita and the prince, then finally goes in. But Nikita and Alex manage to get the prince out safely and Nikita escapes. She tells the prince to get to the NYPD, not the FBI, thinking that they will be safe. But why can’t the FBI “take over” and take them into custody? Guess it would be too messy for the prince to accidentally get assassinated after the FBI took over, huh.
Okay, not the best episode. Enjoyable even with all that.