This week's Nikita marks the third appearance of my least favorite character: foreign dignitary/Michael's baby mama/MI6 agent/Gogol mole Cassandra (Helena Mattsson). Unlike the first two, though, this one's pretty good.

The episode opens in London, where Cassandra is meeting Ari (Peter Outerbridge). He's handing her a new assignment that seems to momentarily throw her. Alex clues Michael and Nikita into the fact that Cassandra is a mole, causing Michael to blow a gasket. He breaks stuff and then decides to get his son back. (Wouldn't Shane West be awesome if he was in a movie like...

In this week's Nikita, Michael heads to London to see Cassandra and Max - and unsurprisingly, the trip ends up being anything but a pleasant father and child reunion. It's painful for everyone, including the audience.

In the most awkward and yet least dramatic teaser in the history of this series, Cassandra (Helena Mattsson)'s got a new man in her life, which makes Michael wonder who's hanging around his kid, and she has to be pleaded with to let him see Max at all. Surprisingly, Michael isn't angry with her, but he's certainly ticked off with the two guys that have been following ...

This week's Nikita is a high and a low. Shane West can still turn in a performance like nobody's business - even if it's in another formulaic episode filled with plot concerns.

Apparently Michael shares my affinity for pina coladas. I approve. But wait, who's this blonde woman he's with? That's Cassandra Ovechkin (Helena Mattsson). Relax, kids - this was six years ago. And she's the First Lady of Belarus, and up until two seconds ago she thought that he was a cultural attache named Jonathan she was bedding, not an agent there to kill her husband.

While Michael's operation succee...