NIKITA Recap: “Clawback” (Episode 7)

What significance does a guy running on a treadmill in the basement of his home possibly have to do with Nikita or Division? Well, we find out quickly when Roan, the assassin, walks in and aims a gun at the unsuspecting man. He is forced to place two monitors on his chest or Roan warns he will go upstairs to kill the man’s wife. Once the monitors are put in place by the terrified man, he is told to run faster and soon an electrical shock is jolted into his body and he collapses dead on the floor. At that precise moment Amanda is on the phone with a mysterious man, who is sitting inside an opulent apartment, telling this man his order has been filled. He, in turn, makes a call, telling the person on the other end “to sell Brightley, all of it,” he says.

Meanwhile, disgraced and imprisoned CIA analyst Ryan Fletcher (guest star Noah Bean) sees a news report on the prison television set about the death of the chief chemist of Brightley Pharmaceuticals who died of an apparent heart attack in his home while running on his treadmill. Being the analytical genius that he is, Ryan quickly realizes that the man’s death wasn’t natural. He is then seen inside his cell where the walls of his confinement are covered with all kinds of newspaper and magazine stories; talking to himself about their connections. He then asks a guard to make a phone call – to of all people – his mom.

In a non-descript, run-down warehouse building Michael and Nikita are hiding out, having just been contacted by Birkhoff about the new base he is establishing. But Michael is pre-occupied with Cassandra and Max, telling Nikita that he has learned that Cassandra has left Belarus for London while the government change takes place. He, of course, wants to go to them, but Nikita doesn’t agree, thinking it is too dangerous. If Division were to find out the truth about Max, they would do him harm in order to get at Michael. Michael is obviously angry not only at Cassandra but also Nikita for keeping this secret from him. Nikita tells him not to make a decision out of anger; but before they can discuss this personal matter any further, Nikita gets a ping from Ryan on her computer (something they had set up between them as a means of communication). She can hear his phone call to his mother, which is actually code that he needs to meet with her.

As to be expected, though, Amanda intercepts the call at Division and quickly divines that Ryan wants to meet with Nikita. Pierce is there as well and asks Amanda who exactly is Ryan Fletcher. She uses their cover story that he was a CIA analyst who Nikita corrupted; his action led to the murder of three CIA agents inside Langley. He asks if Nikita corrupted him with money and she claims it was sex; but it obvious that Pierce doesn’t fully believe her.

Next we see Alex suiting up, picking out weapons to protect herself from Gogol as Pierce comes into the room to talk to her. She reminds him that there is a hit out on her because of her taking out the Zietrof spokesman. Since they left Belarus a few weeks ago she feels like someone has been following her yet when she doubles back there is no one there. He questions her if she really thinks Division is the one place where she can be safe and she argues this is where the weapons are, she’s taking them home. “I don’t want to be in Division any longer than I have to,” she explains. That’s the very reason he wants to talk to her; he has questions about Division and she is the only one who will tell him what he needs to hear: the truth. But Alex counters if Oversight is asking the questions or if he is as she doesn’t see the difference but he states that there is.

Gaines and Nikita

Back at the prison Roan and a team of armed Division agents are there to get at Ryan, who is meeting with a guy who claims to be Ryan’s old racquetball buddy “Bob”. He is actually a stand-in, paid to meet with Ryan on Nikita’s behalf. Ryan quickly shares what he has deduced from the articles on the wall of his cell. He has figured out how Oversight makes their money. Someone high up in command is making events happen that have an effect on the stock market without those events being easily tied together. As Roan is being granted entrance to the phone banks at the prison, Ryan tells Nikita to check on a riot in China, a factory in Ireland that was burned to the ground and the recent death of the chemist. If they follow the shell companies behind those incidents it will lead them straight to Oversight. If Ryan is right, Michael and Nikita could cripple Oversight, but now Ryan has put himself in the crosshairs of Division.

Outside Division is some kind of wooded park, Alex and Pierce talk about Ryan. Pierce dug up information on him. He knows that Ryan is a ‘boy scout’ – he had a clean record and now he is supposed to believe that after all of that he was corrupted by Nikita, he snuck a nerve toxin into the CIA and helped to kill three agents. He doesn’t buy it and Alex confirms what he believes, telling him the toxin was Percy’s plan and one of the agents was a Division mole who killed the other two agents. “The only thing that Nikita offered Ryan was the truth,” Alex states. But then she wants to know why Oversight didn’t brief him on everything that went on inside Division and she questions who they really are.

But before they can talk more, Pierce tells them they have been tailed for the last two minutes and they both quickly realize that it is two Gogol agents coming after Alex. One of them shoots Alex in the back – but she is obviously wearing Kevlar under her jacket. As they both fall to the ground, Ryan shoots one of the agents dead while Alex only wounds the second. Rather than shoot the wounded man, Alex says they need to question him.

Michael and Nikita research the three incidents that Ryan told them about. Operation Grey Rain was where Division sparked a riot in China over a tainted water supply, which was a big setback for Brightley Pharmaceutical. The factory fire in Ireland was Operation Silent Cross that was blamed on a man leaving his post and affecting a number of companies, but the biggest client was, again, Brightley Pharmaceutical. And, of course, there was the death of the chemist for the pharmaceutical lab – it all ties together.

It’s at that moment that they get an email from Birkhoff who hacked into the SEC, getting information on TransWorld Consortium, who bought 6 million dollars’ worth of Brightley Pharmaceutical stock six months ago. It would seem that Oversight is secretly controlling when a company’s stock will fail so they can make untold millions from the failure by selling their stock. Michael tracks down the address for the consortium to a location in Dover, Delaware while Nikita checks the black box, learning that all 3 missions (China, Ireland and the death of the chemist) were all authorized by Oversight member known simply as Midas. Michael and Nikita believe he is Oversight’s money man so they plan to go after the Consortium in order to draw him out.

Then the wealthy guy from the opulent apartment – who is, in fact, Midas (guest star Matthew Glave) – is meeting with Amanda and Madeline – one of the other Oversight members – (guest star Alberta Watson) to discuss Ryan. Madeline chastises Amanda that “her value is that she doesn’t exist,” but the Oversight members have public profiles that cannot be tarnished because they will be held accountable. Amanda counters that Division will take care of Ryan with an accident happening in the prison, but Midas doesn’t want that. He wants to meet with Ryan first, glean whatever intel he can to make sure their actions cannot be figured out by anyone else, then Ryan’s accident can happen.

Meanwhile, Michael and Nikita arrive at the Dover, Delaware address for TransWorld Consortium, which turns out to be a suburban house that is nothing more than a front for a secret post office run by a seemingly suburban housewife with a bad southern accent. While the housewife goes looking for her supposed cat, Nikita breaks into the mailbox in question with Michael standing watch. Just then the “housewife” rounds the corner with a shotgun, trying to take both of them down. But, in typical style, Nikita fights with her, turning the shotgun on her and taking the woman down instead.

Pierce and Roan

Back at Division the Gogol agent is being beaten and interrogated because they need to know everything about his mission against Alex. Obviously shaken, Alex states that she knows the agent, whose name is Yuri. He is the son of a bodyguard of Alex’s late father who was killed the night Division murdered her family. In fact, she and Yuri were childhood friends and she wants to talk to him. Pierce argues that she won’t be able to stay emotionally detached; but Alex counters that the agent won’t be able to either and that will be her leverage over him.

At the prison, Ryan is being transferred to a different cell after dark – which is against prison rules – so, of course, Ryan knows that this means trouble for him. Where he is left by the prison guard is right where Midas – aka Jonathan Gaines, the former chairman of the SEC, is waiting to talk to him. Gaines grills Ryan on how he picked up on the pattern by reading nothing but newspaper and magazine articles; but Ryan won’t budge on his methods of analysis. Gaines even offers to bounce Ryan into a minimum security facility, but he declines. Ryan tells Gaines that by showing his face, letting Ryan know who he is, he already knows his life is over. But, he warns Gaines that he has already pointed Nikita onto Gaines’ trail and it’s only a matter of time before she takes him down. As Ryan is led back to his real cell, he asks the guard how much he was paid to help with the secret meeting, but the guard tells him to shut up and whips out his bully club. They scuffle with Ryan fighting for his life, but then they both fall over the railing from the second floor. The guard dies on impact and Ryan lands on top of him, hurt and shaken, but alive.

With Birkhoff’s help crunching numbers from the spreadsheets Michael and Nikita took from the fake post office in Delaware, they figure out that half the profit was siphoned off by a single hedge fund but the rest of it simply disappeared. That hedge fund is run by Gaines, who they quickly determine is actually Midas – Oversight’s own little piggy bank, as Nikita calls him. Then Nikita gets another ping on her computer, this time it’s a reference to an article about Ryan attacking a prison guard and she knows they have to act fast, as Division won’t fail and will go after him again. But, Michael points out that he will have been moved to the infirmary and that means they will have to alter their original plan to get Ryan out.

At the same time, Pierce is meeting with Madeline along a waterfront boat dock. He demands to know who put the hit out on Ryan with her calmly stating that the group voted on it. Angry with that revelation, he tells her he is resigning from Oversight. He moves to call Major Clark so he can go back to Camp Pendleton because he refuses to work for people who murder innocent civilians. But she counters that Ryan chose to be an enemy of the state by working with Nikita and that is why his death was sanctioned. There is obviously more to them than meets the eye, as he tells her to ‘can the double speak because he isn’t 12-years old anymore”. As it turns out, the call he made was really going to Amanda, who hears everything Madeline says, including her admitting that Division allowed Percy to spiral out of control and that she doesn’t believe that Amanda can clean up their messes. She and Oversight want someone running Division who can “run the ship, provide course correction and better than a Navy man (meaning Pierce himself). Soon enough, we realize that Madeline is actually Pierce’s mother and that she can’t think of anyone more qualified to take over Division than him; but he won’t consider it unless the hit on Ryan is called off.

Then Alex goes into the interrogation room to speak with Yuri; but he tells her that he won’t tell Division anything. She asks him to just tell her about himself. He states that his father died protecting her father. He was told there were no survivors from the massacre; he became an orphan at 14, having to leave school to go to work. At 17, he was offered a job in the security department of her father’s company, which is actually Gogol. He has been with them for five years and in that time he knew nothing about her survival until two weeks prior. He was told she was spared by Division, taking there to be raised by them, brainwashed to be their ‘doll’. That one day she would return to call the company in her father’s name, but all the while reporting to her “American masters”. He volunteered to be part of the team to take her down; he came there to give her “mercy”.

Michael and Nikita are in the prison with Michael posing as a prison transferee and Nikita as the guard from another prison. She says she wants to take him down to the infirmary for processing and to clean him up from the black eye she supposedly gave him. As Nikita breaks into the infirmary using some kind of high tech gadget, Michael hurriedly gets out of his prison garb and transforms himself into one of the cleaning crew. But, Roan is already there inside the infirmary, heading straight for Ryan. While Michael is disabling the security camera in the hallway to make way for their extracting Ryan, Roan is injecting some kind of drug into Ryan’s IV and Nikita is battling with a guard who questions her identity. She dispatches him quickly enough, but doesn’t get to Ryan in time. He has been poisoned by Roan, who flees the infirmary, shooting Michael in the arm as he exits. Unfortunately, Nikita is too late to safe Ryan and has to make her escape too.

At the warehouse Michael is treating his gunshot wound and Nikita is more than pissed, preparing weapons to go after Gaines that night. She isn’t going to wait for them to get Gaines on their own timetable because she knows Oversight will move him and keep him on the move for the next 20 years. She isn’t going to wait to get justice for Ryan against Gaines and, worst of all, she is going it alone because of Michael’s injury, the fact that he has a son and that she loves him too much. In order to make sure he stays put, she drugs the tea she made him drink and he passes out on the bed.

Back at Division, Alex is still trying to talk to Yuri, attempting to explain what really happened the night of the massacre at her family home; that Semak was behind it all. She explains that Division didn’t save her, Nikita did; that it was the first time Nikita went against Division, it was before she even went rogue. But Yuri tells her how ridiculous all of that sounds, that none of it makes sense and that Division has simply confused her. “They have their claws so deep in you that you don’t know what to believe,” he states to Alex.

Pierce is then seen meeting with his mother in a limo in the city. He is obviously very angry that she couldn’t call off the hit on Ryan. She claims that she couldn’t bring Oversight around to seeing it his way. They sided with Gaines, but Oversight knows that Nikita is aware of Gaines; that she will be coming after him. Pierce is determined to turn Gaines in while we see Roan and a team of agents guarding him. He is preparing to leave, but Nikita is outside the building, using yet another high tech gadget. This one allows her to scale the outside of his apartment building where she attaches two video links to see inside Gaines’ apartment. She then uses some kind of liquid to break the window and climbs inside, taking out one of the guards and grabbing Gaines at gun point just as Pierce, Roan and the other agents move in. It is a short stand-off with Nikita outnumbered, yet demanding the identification of the other Oversight members. Gaines is able to utter one name Senator Madeline Pierce before Pierce shoots him in the chest and all hell breaks loss inside the apartment with bullets flying all over. Then the windows are shattered and one by one the Division agents are taken down. It turns out that Michael has a high-power rifle on the rooftop of the building across the street, helping to safe Nikita’s life as she races for the window, grabs for the gadget that lifted her up the side of the building and makes her escape.

Once again, back at the warehouse, Michael is beyond angry at Nikita for drugging. “There is no more ‘my’ anymore,” he yells at her. They share in the decisions, the risks and the losses. “Did you ever stop to think how I would feel if I ever lost you?” he asks. She has no idea how much she means to him. He warns her that if she ever pulls another stunt like that again, they are through.

Amanda watches a news report about Gaines being gunned down in his Manhattan penthouse by an angry investor as Alex enters the room asking for another chance to talk to Yuri. But Alex soon finds out from Amanda that Yuri has been canceled. She couldn’t let a direct attack go unpunished. She also tells Alex that because of this attack, (failed though it was) she isn’t safe outside the walls of Division, she cannot return to her apartment. For now, Alex is trapped inside Division. She can’t go anywhere without an armed escort. She is about to learn just how Division takes care of one of their own. Once the threat has been neutralized, she can go back to life but for now she has to stay put.

Pierce, once again, meets with his mother where she states the loss of Gaines is a critical threat to Oversight. He obviously is not sorry for taking the first shot on Gaines. He did it for one reason: to protect her. It is the same reason he will go back to Division, despite his not agreeing with what his mother and Oversight are doing. He clearly states that once he has taken Nikita down and he knows that his mother is safe, he is out. They certainly have an unusual love-hate relationship.

In the final scenes, Nikita visits Ryan’s mother Julianne, letting her know that she was a friend of Ryan. She tells her that Ryan was a hero and they console each other. Meanwhile, Amanda walks into one of the secret rooms at Division where it appears that Yuri is very much alive and well; but it turns out to be none other than Ryan. Amanda welcomes him to Division where his analytical skill will be put to work. She states that no one will find him there, no one will save him and his continued survival will depend on well he puts his skills to work for them. He demands that they just kill him because he will never work for them. Then Amanda does something unexpected: she tells Ryan that she wants his help to bring down Oversight.

“Clawback” is the seventh episode of the second season of Nikita. The next, new episode of Nikita will air on The CW on Friday, November 11 at 8/7c.

What did you think of this episode? Were you surprised by the reveal that Madeline is Pierce’s mother? Did you feel sorry for Alex as she desperately tried to tell Yuri about what really happened to her? Were you shocked to find out that Ryan is alive? Was it surprising that Amanda wants Ryan to work for them as a way to take down Oversight? Were you pleased that Michael told Nikita how much he cares about her even if it meant they were fighting? Please share your thoughts on this episode in the comments section below.