nell65

Well, I finally staggered my way through S5..... and, well, after a multi-year viewing gap?

It's actually not nearly as bad as I remembered.

I mean, yeah the plot holes are still there, as is the total failure to keep track of time passing (or not), but, overall - the 8 episodes are actually a remarkable attempt (for LFN!) to sustain a single story arc that actually focuses on the Section facing an actual (and semi-coherent and not Cold War relic) terrorist group and Section failing to do it's job well -- or even at all - because of all the many, many, many internal problems that have been fully established in earlier seasons.

Section is failing because everyone inside it hates it, and no one trusts the Section or anyone else for anything, not even their dearest friends or their lovers, and everyone schemes and cheats and breaks the rules to protect themselves and those they love, and they have no real purpose in the world other than to run around putting out fires they don't understand.

It's actually an amazingly self-aware set up. Even Jones mocks himself for his faith in a super computer oracle.

They even have Nikita suffering from ongoing effects caused by the Gellman process. Yes - they solve it in a skeevy grave robbing plot solution of great ickinesss - but, they were actually aiming in the direction of acknowledging that fucking with people's body chemistry they way they fucked with Nikita's will have potentially long lasting consequences.

There plot thread that really is the clunkiest is how they deal with Nikita's hopes for a better Section. Particularly her wish for less constant surveillance of operatives and a decrease in abeyance as a strategy. The surveillance thing makes sense, it seems to piss people off without stopping people from spying on Section at the drop of a hat, successfully! But the abeyance thing is particularly bizarre because Nikita herself has personally killed, on screen, at least four-six operatives and watched Michael kill several more, in previous seasons, all without flinching - and through the rest of S5 she staunchly defends what Michael is doing -- laying out Section to be destroyed as a way to take out the Collective -- results in the deaths of scores of operatives.

Her dialogue in that exchange with O'Brien doesn't actually match her actions -- but there is no reason offered for her to be lying/playing a role. I'm not sure what the fix is - but, you know, if we can wish away Halle (I have no idea how to spell the character's name) shooting Paul in the chest - several times - surely I can work out something to get rid of a single incoherent line of dialogue....right? ;-)

Which brings me to Paul - I think he is great in this season. Really awesome and I love him more in this season than I did in, well, any of the earlier seasons. The Section he built is falling down around his ears because of weakness he ignored/encouraged or in some cases actively created and his self-pity and righteous indignation and refusal to take responsibility for any of it and his real, palpable melancholy and grief are wonderful. (And I had never really noticed that Paul's most macho live-action episode ever is the one RD directed. Which has nothing to do with the plot, but was interesting to note all the same.) And EG has some really wonderful scenes - I love him all broken and pissed off, hiding up in the perch and spitting at anyone who comes to try to talk to him.

And all of this leads in an odd way to thinking about the reboot. Sporadically, inconsistently, and without plan or forethought - the Section itself becomes such an important character/setting for what made LFN so intriguing for those (the few, the proud) who stuck out. Such that - it makes total sense that it was Michael who nearly destroyed it, and obviously could have it that was really his goal, and it is Nikita who stays behind to try to resurrect it.

But if the reboot is going to be about Nikita on the run with Michael still on the inside .... well, that's a definite reboot --- but not a very interesting one.

Okay, this is mostly to Jaybee in response to her question about what makes Michael interesting in my last post about LFN.

I'm in about the middle of season three now in my re-watching, just saw the 'slipping into darkness' episode, which is, you know, for LFN a pretty tightly plotted episode that I really like a lot, but I have to say - that in general, here in the middle of season three? Michael is really dull.

He had an obviously interesting opening to the season, what with the whole blood-cover reveal and loss of his mission-family, and at the end of the season he has more interesting issues as well.

But, here, in the middle? I can see, from a character-arc perspective, that Michael, as a character, obviously needs to take some time to process the previous five years, and with actual down time, has the physical and intellectual reserves to be at the top of his game, mission wise. Which, makes him a very dull boy to watch.

The only interesting Michael-related thing is Madeline and Paul's conversation at the end of that episode, about Michael's ambition, or lack thereof.

I happen to agree with Madeline - Michael doesn't have *ambition with regard to the Section,* not in the way Paul thinks he does -- Paul being incapable of imagining a man with the skills and talents Michael obviously has NOT being ambitious-just-like-Paul. But the whole bit is far more revealing of Paul, and Madeline, than it is of Michael.