Favorite Characters: Seymour Birkhoff (Nikita)

I’ve already talked about Birkhoff’s relationship with Nikita, one of my favorites on the show, but I figured the man himself deserved a separate post.  There’s no doubt that Birkhoff is a well-trod archetype – the vast majority of genre shows have a tech genius, and Birkhoff’s mix of extreme nerdiness and unrelenting snark is particularly reminiscent of Topher from Dollhouse.  However, despite the familiar ground, he never feels generic.  Here’s a closer look at this supremely entertaining character (includes spoilers.)

As I’ve said before, I like that Birkhoff is relatively amoral, pretty selfish, and a more gradual convert to Team Nikita.  I like that there’s some bite to him; while his pre-Division crimes aren’t as lethal as those of most fellow agents, he’s still a criminal.  He was recruited by Division (presumably to escape life in prison) after hacking the Pentagon, and he uses his computer prowess for other unscrupulous purposes at different times in the series.  At the same time, though, at the start of the series, he’s not as outright ruthless as dyed-in-the-wool Division folk like Percy or Amanda and shows periodic misgivings about some of their less conscionable operations.  This more middle-of-the-fence approach to morality gives him ample opportunity to defy expectations.  When he’s at Division, he sometimes circumvents the nefarious marching orders, and when he joins Nikita and the good guys, he sometimes turns to his old wayward tricks.  Throw in his strong rebellious streak, and you have a character with lots of potential for shaking up the story.

Like most characters on the show, another big draw is his extreme capability.  Again, his skillset is different – less ultraviolence, more hacker-fu – but even though it’s not as visually satisfying to watch Birkhoff type as it is to watch Nikita lay an epic smackdown, he’s still remarkably impressive.  His unprincipled background gives him a knack for sniffing out technical traps, and he pulls off some crazy stuff both in and out of Division.  He has such a high opinion of his own skills that he’s generally the first to point out what an incredible job he’s done, and that’s always good for a laugh.  Additionally, while he’s more of a physical liability than the likes of Nikita, Alex, or Michael, he’s not just an incapable weakling.  His Division combat training doesn’t get as much regular use as the others’, but in a fight, he can at least keep himself alive and only occasionally needs saving.  (I always love it when the techies can look out for themselves.)  However, he’s not as accustomed to fighting and killing, and when he does get into the fray, it tends to affect him more than it does the other characters.

And really, you can’t go wrong with such a genuine geek on a TV show; Nikita doesn’t call him “Nerd” for nothing.  There’s his tech knowhow, of course, and his hyper-intelligent tendency to treat others like troglodytes, but more than that, he’s a huge, unabashed fanboy.  Throughout the series, he tosses out casual Star Wars references, he quotes Lord of the Rings non-ironically, and when he hacks into the control system of some serious weaponry, he does his best Dalek impression.  Not only is it super-fun, but it also helps ground the show, which can sometimes veer into awesome-yet-outlandish, in the real world.  When the show offers up triple agents, shadowy conspiracies, brainwashing, faked deaths, and organic prostheses, it’s good to come back to Earth with the thought of Birkhoff watching X-Men in his safe house.  Not to mention, few of the characters seem to have many hobbies outside of field missions and pondering their own tragic backstories, so Birkhoff’s cornucopia of geek interests rounds him out nicely.