Heh, certainly, you can dislike them as much as you want, as long as you accept that the central character *will* to get more screentime/attention than the other characters.
It's not the screentime I mind. It's the fact that, often, the show's creators feel they don't need to bother working very hard to convince me that the main character is right about things, because I'm supposed to like him or her automatically by virtue of things being in his/her POV. But...I don't.
Oh yes! You've been watching Alias, haven't you? You should love Irina. *g*
...
Aww, why do you dislike my boy? *pets Harry*
A big yes to the Irina love -- she pretty much hits all my OTC buttons. (I'm *so* predictable, I know.) But Harry? Uh, I don't dislike him as much as, say, Jack or Nikita, but he's irksome. Part of it is just him being *literally* immature, which I can rationalize although the rationalization doesn't make me want to read about him. But I suspect he'll have a hard time seeing other people's POVs even when he grows up. Hermione, too.
The problem with most of S3, and S4 is that the focus almost shifts entirely on Michael/Nikita, and InlovewithNikita!Michael and InlovewithMichael!Nikita, almost wholly ignoring the other aspects of their personality. And then suddenly in FLYF you come back to Nikita and Section, and it doesn't make much sense.
That's a good way of putting it. You put your finger on the main issue, I think.
I'm particularly annoyed by her conversation with Paul in FLYF, where she is quite unprofessional in her treatment of him (in the sense that she's dealing with him as Nikita who hates Operations' guts, and not as one professional to another) for all her talk, and therefore somewhat hypocritical. And how dumb is the implication that *George* somehow managed to learn 'compassion' (hah!) during his tenure at Oversight?
Well, to be fair to Nikita (*gasp* yes, that's me defending her!), I suspect the "unprofessional tone" was quite deliberate. His "punishment" was meant to be humiliation, after all. However, she undermined the strength of that humiliation by the George/compassion remark, because it was so very obviously FALSE. Paul could then justifiabily ignore every single other thing that she said, because if she thought *George* had learned compassion, her judgment wasn't exactly very discerning.
However, much as I despise S5, there's some important development in Nikita's character in this period – all that talk about 'my daddy wouldn't have sent me to death' and 'I will be Nice to my operatives' comes crashing when she meets Daddy. I wouldn't call her survival a reward, really – Paul and Madeline are dead and gone, and Michael is free and redeemed, but Nikita has to live with herself every day in Section One.
I disagree that she never paid, though. I think you could read Nikita's journey from 'Nikita' to ATFEP as one of the end of innocence, and that didn't come without prices.
I wouldn't call her survival a *reward*, but I do think it indicates she got away without having to pay much of a price. To me, "paying" would have meant that either (1) she learned, even in retrospect, that other POVs could be legitimate even if they differed from her own, or (2) her failure to learn that lesson caused her downfall. She certainly didn't experience #2. And while she *did* learn that things didn't always *work* according to her ideals, I don't think she ever accepted the idea that those people who didn't subscribe to her concept of what was ideal could have any sort of moral justification in their position.
The rest of your points are really, really interesting, but I'd like to come back to them later. I'd LOVE for you to write that Walter meta, btw.
Re: P.S
It's not the screentime I mind. It's the fact that, often, the show's creators feel they don't need to bother working very hard to convince me that the main character is right about things, because I'm supposed to like him or her automatically by virtue of things being in his/her POV. But...I don't.
Oh yes! You've been watching Alias, haven't you? You should love Irina. *g*
...
Aww, why do you dislike my boy? *pets Harry*
A big yes to the Irina love -- she pretty much hits all my OTC buttons. (I'm *so* predictable, I know.) But Harry? Uh, I don't dislike him as much as, say, Jack or Nikita, but he's irksome. Part of it is just him being *literally* immature, which I can rationalize although the rationalization doesn't make me want to read about him. But I suspect he'll have a hard time seeing other people's POVs even when he grows up. Hermione, too.
The problem with most of S3, and S4 is that the focus almost shifts entirely on Michael/Nikita, and InlovewithNikita!Michael and InlovewithMichael!Nikita, almost wholly ignoring the other aspects of their personality. And then suddenly in FLYF you come back to Nikita and Section, and it doesn't make much sense.
That's a good way of putting it. You put your finger on the main issue, I think.
I'm particularly annoyed by her conversation with Paul in FLYF, where she is quite unprofessional in her treatment of him (in the sense that she's dealing with him as Nikita who hates Operations' guts, and not as one professional to another) for all her talk, and therefore somewhat hypocritical. And how dumb is the implication that *George* somehow managed to learn 'compassion' (hah!) during his tenure at Oversight?
Well, to be fair to Nikita (*gasp* yes, that's me defending her!), I suspect the "unprofessional tone" was quite deliberate. His "punishment" was meant to be humiliation, after all. However, she undermined the strength of that humiliation by the George/compassion remark, because it was so very obviously FALSE. Paul could then justifiabily ignore every single other thing that she said, because if she thought *George* had learned compassion, her judgment wasn't exactly very discerning.
However, much as I despise S5, there's some important development in Nikita's character in this period – all that talk about 'my daddy wouldn't have sent me to death' and 'I will be Nice to my operatives' comes crashing when she meets Daddy. I wouldn't call her survival a reward, really – Paul and Madeline are dead and gone, and Michael is free and redeemed, but Nikita has to live with herself every day in Section One.
I disagree that she never paid, though. I think you could read Nikita's journey from 'Nikita' to ATFEP as one of the end of innocence, and that didn't come without prices.
I wouldn't call her survival a *reward*, but I do think it indicates she got away without having to pay much of a price. To me, "paying" would have meant that either (1) she learned, even in retrospect, that other POVs could be legitimate even if they differed from her own, or (2) her failure to learn that lesson caused her downfall. She certainly didn't experience #2. And while she *did* learn that things didn't always *work* according to her ideals, I don't think she ever accepted the idea that those people who didn't subscribe to her concept of what was ideal could have any sort of moral justification in their position.
The rest of your points are really, really interesting, but I'd like to come back to them later. I'd LOVE for you to write that Walter meta, btw.