Soldiering on: CBS' The Unit buries a lead character
11/13/07 07:34 AM
By ED BARK
Jaws set, weapons cocked, the men of CBS' The Unit take their missions and stoicism seriously.
On Tuesday's second of a two-part episode (8 p.m. central), team leader Jonas Blane (Dennis Haysbert) and his brothers in arms grieve in their own insular ways over the loss of medic Hector Williams (Demore Barnes). He was fatally shot last week during a rescue mission in Beirut. First, though, he heroically attended to the grave wounds of fellow comrade Charles Grey (Michael Irby). That's what these guys do.
CBS long has been the only network to have any success with straight-ahead military dramas. Its NCIS, which precedes The Unit on Tuesdays, has stronger ratings than ever in its fifth season. And of course there also was JAG, which NBC gave up on after a single season before CBS made it an enduring hit.
The Unit easily is the bloodiest of them all, terse with its dialogue, copious with its action. Its producing partners, David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross) and Shawn Ryan (The Shield), share a male-centric approach to their respective worlds of scripted drama. And they don't like crybabies.
Ryan sent an accompanying letter to TV critics in which he detailed his desire to show how the military puts its special operatives to rest. All of their missions are covert, so any death in action requires a companion cover story.
Unit co-producer and consultant Eric Haney, former member of the U.S. Army's counter-terrorist Delta Force, knows all of these particular intricacies.
"One of the most fascinating and moving tales was that of Delta funerals," Ryan wrote, "For three years we've wanted to tell this story, but couldn't until now. We needed the audience to know and love our characters for it to have the impact we knew it deserved . . . These two episodes pull back the curtains for the American public to see the reality of what can go wrong for our Special Forces soldiers in combat."
Tuesday's affecting but still out-of-balance episode remains too rife with gunplay. Blane and four fellow operatives had been on a mission to rescue a "Washington Tribune" reporter held hostage and to capture a terrorist known as "The Butcher." And so in true Rambo fashion, Blane sends his men out of harm's way with their dead comrade while he stays to singlehandedly compete the second half of the mission. Bang, bang, you're dead. And the hits keep on coming.
It would have been far better to keep this particular episode grounded solely in the reality and impact of Williams' death. A doctor is required to go about the business of extracting the bullet from his corpse so as not to leave any evidence of his mission. Fellow operative Mack Gerhardt (Max Martini) stands by his side as the grisly procedure begins.
Later, with his latest bloody task competed, Blane and his wife, Molly (Regina Taylor), carefully affix the appropriate medals and ribbons to Williams' Army uniform. Some still can't be displayed because they were awarded for missions that supposedly never happened.
Viewers also will get the satisfaction of seeing Col. Tom Ryan (Robert Patrick) angrily lash an officious government official. Finally comes a brief, by-the-book private service attended by those in the know.
The Unit, which premiered in March, 2006, continues to air in tandem with the ongoing war in Iraq. It also remains studiously non-judgmental, taking on new and necessary counter-terrorist initiatives under the dictates of a weekly action series.
The ongoing writers' strike soon will prompt a cease fire to The Unit 's weekly combat missions. Hostilities in the real world can't so easily be written off.
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