la femme nikita: open heart
2.09 / Original air date 5 April, 1998
Written: Elliot Stern
Directed: René Bonnière
La Femme Nikita was the original TV adaptation of the 1990 Luc Besson film of the same name, masterminded by Joel Surnow (creator of 24). LFN really started the whole female spy formula that was later perfected for Alias.
Along with shows like Roswell (remember the tabasco sauce campaign?) LFN was in the original tranche of shows that had such a rabid online fanbase that when cancelled after the fourth season with no wrap up they revolted. There was such enormous fan pressure, the producers funded an additional 8-episodes, and it was the perfect ending.
From the moment this blonde glamazon debuted, it seemed inevitable that Nikita would get a mission where she had to seduce another woman. The woman in question was perennial scifi/fantasy guest star Gina Torres. Torres is a versatile actor with an indefinable sensuality and a resume of wonderful work in Firefly, Alias, Xena, and Suits to name just a few.
Nikita is one of those tortured TV women with a difficult destiny. Like Buffy, she was made to suffer and suffer some more. Like Buffy, as a rule there is generally comic relief enjoyed by the characters to allow them and the audience a bit of a breather, but not so with LFN. This was week after week of unrelenting darkness, treachery, despair and death.
Nikita clings desperately to her own sense of morality and has no time for fun. She's dangerous, sexy, achingly vulnerable, and every time she lets her guard down even the people who love her make her pay for it.
The only reason Nikita isn't "cancelled" (killed) by her superiors is because everyone recognises her value to them as a survivor. She be impulsive and impertinent, but she gets the job done. Everyone assumes that if they put her in the field often enough one day her luck will run out and the Nikita problem will take care of itself. It never does.
I don't think "Open Heart" is the only indication that Nikita swings both ways, but it’s the most explicit.Nikita infiltrates a women's prison to stage a break with a Red Cell (bad guys) operative named Jenna. A bomb has been implanted into a Red Cell assassin and Jenna is the only one who knows the bomber's identity. Nikita must gain Jenna's trust, all the while intending to betray her.
When Nikita saves Jenna's life in prison a friendship is formed and an attraction grows. The two women kiss briefly, and it’s obvious that whatever darker motives either have, the kiss affects them more deeply than either could have expected.
They make their escape, and Jenna is immediately captured and interrogated, but nobody can make Jenna crack. They send in Nikita to try and distract her, and it seems to work. Jenna asks Nikita if she felt anything for her, and Nikita admits her desire.
The two women play with each other's emotions, but they play with ours as well. It's always intense on LFN when Nikita develops real feelings for someone. In her cocoon-like existence Nikita's emotions are rarely let out to play, and here the experiment has curious results. For the first time in ages she seems shocked by something that she's feeling, that she's experiencing something new.
But the point of LFN is that Nikita is a closed book, to everyone, even us. The whole thing could have been a sham. Jenna might have been in love with Nikita, she might have been acting. Who really took advantage of who? It’s a real mind-bender and each time I see it I change my mind.
Either way Nikita is a sex bomb, and it was lovely to see her mark of the week be a woman to allow a different side of her character to shine through. It unleashed a thousand fanfics, so job well done really.