THE NOT-SO-GENTLE ART OF NICK-PICKING by SusanG2522@aol.com He's a brick with fangs. Aw, com'on, it's true. You know it's true. Yeah, he's sort of sweet and goofy in his own way, maybe he's got that noble-angst thing down to a fine art, but . . . . well . . . he's kind of dense (the Knighties in the back of the room just passed out in a dead faint). But it true. Nick does some stupid things every now and then. All right (in response to the throat clearing from the peanut gallery), Nick does some stupid things a . We all know he means well. We all know he's got a good heart. But there are times when you just wanna grab that vampire by the scruff of the neck and slap Det. Nick 'there's been no one home for 800 years' Knight upside the head (Which incidentally, is why we think Nat hits Nick so often in the first season--he's broken and she's trying to fix him. Cut the lady some slack; it works with CD players, right?). For example . . . he ate garlic. Voluntarily. Now, tell me that he doesn't realize, after 800 years of schlepping through ethnic neighborhoods that have open windows on warm and wafty nights, that eating garlic might just be a B-A-D thing for a vampire. And he does it anyway. Okay, it's because Nat asked him to, but still . . . get a clue. And, if you think about it, Nick believes he's killed LaCroix TWICE. You'd think he'd know by now that a metal pipe through the chest just doesn't cut it (and this assumption after LaCroix kindly ran down the list of ways to kill a vampire a few minutes before). Not to mention when Nick nailed LaCroix with a flaming beam (that's somebody else's line, but I like it) and still looks darned surprised when LaCroix shows up again (but he do that deer-in- headlights look well). It's too easy, really, to point out Nick's blunders (Canada's Funniest Stupid Vampire Tricks?), but what else can you do when you get together a few FK fans? The subject's bound to come up sooner or later. Once, after a really brutal session which teamed a Ravenette, a Nat-Packer, and a Cousin (an unholy alliance if ever there's been one) against a Knightie (sushi was involved), the trio called an hour moratorium on Nick-picking, out of respect for the Knightie (who was pretty put upon by the sushi and didn't need to defend Nick on top of that--then again, who does?). It was a very hour. Lots of furtive glances at watches. And at sushi. You can guess the topic of conversation when the hour was up. Not that we don't like the poor schmuck. We do. Which is why we're kind of concerned that our dear Nicola is a couple of knights short of a crusade. Even though Knighties seem to find this trait endearing (Have you ever to these people when they watch an episode? They have their own language that's impossible for anyone other than a Knightie to decipher, but seem to understand one another perfectly. Amazing!), they're often hard-pressed to defend their hero on the intellectual battlements. Which is why they continue to cringe when we point out that Nick isn't very B-R-I-T-E at times, or refer to someone having 'pulled a Nick.' They do, however, have at least one good line of defense-- As one Knightie was heard to comment--"If it wasn't for Nick, there wouldn't be a show." And then there wouldn't be a Nick to pick on, would there? ***********************************************