The Unit“Sacrifice”
Original Air Date: Sept 28, 2008
Brittany W - TwoCents Reviewer
brittanyw@thetwocentscorp.com
There are certain things that I’ve come to expect from watching The Unit after four seasons, one of which is exactly what we open with for the fourth season: at some point, Mack shoots somebody with a sniper rifle. This is what I’ve missed for the last couple of months.
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[photo: Photo: Sonja Flemming/CBS]
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The Unit
ReplyDelete“Sacrifice”
Original Air Date: Sept 28, 2008
Brittany W - TwoCents Reviewer
brittanyw@thetwocentscorp.com
There are certain things that I’ve come to expect from watching The Unit after four seasons, one of which is exactly what we open with for the fourth season: at some point, Mack shoots somebody with a sniper rifle. This is what I’ve missed for the last couple of months.
Apparently I’m not the only one out of the loop. After all hell breaks loose in Yemen, during which Jonas almost gets shot except not really, Bob and Charles shoot a bunch of people, and someone gets arrested we figure out that Alpha Team has been out of country for five months. Count backwards and that’s roughly about the time most TV seasons end. Nice little bit of continuity there. Anyway, getting on the plane to head home, they run into the woman who just a couple of minutes ago shoved Jonas into a pool. Turns out that she is an undercover Army officer named Bridget Sullivan, and the boys make fun of her for a little before they find out they’re not going home. There’s been a change of plans.
This is because Colonel Tom Ryan is back at Fort Griffith and he’s looking royally pissed. Robert Patrick manages to give us our daily dose of needless exposition while looking like he wants to strangle everyone with his bare hands. In the event of an apocalypse, I plan on hiding squarely behind this guy. He finds out that hey, someone tried to kill the President, someone did kill the Vice President and Vice President-Elect, and nobody can find the President-Elect – in about the space of two minutes. I can’t even get out of bed in two minutes. Smartly, Col. Ryan decides he’s had enough and now we know where Jonas and Co. are headed off to.
Things get vaguely convoluted after that, so I’ll summarize: the boys spend the day searching the woods in Colorado for the President-Elect, who’s been kidnapped. Things seem to get better when they encounter a military unit, until Bridget – who somehow manages to check the duty roster for said unit from a Park Service post in the middle of nowhere – informs them the guy they borrowed from said unit doesn’t exist. Jonas decides to let the bears eat him, and tells Ryan that if they don’t pull all the soldiers out of the area he’s going to start shooting indiscriminately. This leads to the best WTF expression on the face of Robert Patrick and I try not to laugh too hard.
Eventually they find one terrified President-Elect, who’s managed to escape the guys holding him and wants to help shoot the rest of them. Hey, I would too if they’d kidnapped me. Jonas realizes that this is a Bad Idea and everyone ends up barricading themselves in an old cabin in the woods. While they stuff the President-Elect in a bathtub (if you’re ever being shot at by terrorists, hide in a bathtub), they start looking for ways to defend themselves. Seems they’re very low on ammo. Apparently Bob paid attention during high school archery, and in our cool effect of the week, Charles blows stuff up with black powder and a mason jar. Mack, meanwhile, has rescued Bridget who was pinned down in the middle of nowhere, and turns up just in time to help finish things off. Dennis Haysbert gives us all the scare of our life by looking momentarily like he might be dead…but he’s okay, just covering up the President-Elect, who’d really like to go home now. Mission accomplished.
Meanwhile, while all this is going on, the women of Fort Griffith are pissy because their lives are being packed up and they’re being yanked out of them by some really bitchy base MP’s. The kind you’d like to punch in the face. They’re pulled into some basement in the TOC, and finally when he’s done hating his job (and a little too late in the episode for my taste), Col. Ryan comes down and drags them to his office for an explanation. Seems that they tracked one of the terrorists to a nearby hotel and he had surveillance footage of all the base wives. Oops. The women all understand now why they need to be relocated, as much as they dislike it. Thankfully, they’re soon also reunited with their husbands. Kim, who wins a gold star for her spine in this episode, is just happy to see Bob. Molly wants to talk shop with Jonas. And things are really awkward between Mack and Tiffy, because it seems she’s planning on divorcing him and taking the kids. She just hasn’t told him yet, although she’s told everyone else on the planet, it seems. Including Colonel Ryan, to whom she gives an absolutely ridiculous rant, and he’s not in the mood to argue with her; he lets her have it, pointing out that her kids aren’t exempt from being in danger just because she wants to throw a fit and leave her husband. And finally, Robert Patrick gets to do something that isn’t expository! Makes my night.
The guys are busy looking for stuff they misplaced in the boxes of all their family’s belongings. This is how Mack discovers a photo of Tiffy with Col. Ryan and finally learns what everyone else on the show has known for a couple of years now. In a massive display of awesome by Max Martini, he decides to go put a hole in Ryan’s head, stopped only by Jonas pointing out that hey, they are still under siege. (I think, too, Mack called Jonas “Tom” in this scene. Um, editing guys?) So instead, Mack glares at Ryan for the entire briefing, and Ryan doesn’t know why. He’s too worried about his entire organization. He talks about “doing more with less,” and all the actors pull that off in this scene by just staring at each other. It’s obvious what’s on everyone’s minds.
So the boys are headed for Sarajevo to follow a lead on this new and as yet unidentified enemy. Meanwhile the women are on a bus to who knows where. And guess who’s on the bus but Bridget, who already is like nails on a blackboard to me. She launches into another long speech about being undercover. I’m not impressed. I’m more touched by the fact that the last glimpse the wives get of their husbands is them getting ready to get on a plane for a heck of a fight. This time, nobody knows where they’re going or if they’re coming back.
All in all, not bad for a season opener. It felt a lot like part one of a two-parter, with a lot of exposition and leaving many things fairly unanswered. Despite her being all the buzz, I’m totally uninterested in the new character, who seems unnecessary and annoying. What I’m more concerned about is who can pull off an attack on four prominent people in the government at pretty much the same time. And the inevitable showdown where Mack and Ryan are probably going to beat the living daylights out of each other. Threats to national security and plenty of personal intrigue carried by great acting: there are certain things you can always expect from The Unit.
My question is this. If Bridget is joining the team... why did they put her on the bus with the wives like a glorified admin?
ReplyDeleteMy guess would be to have a Unit member with them as protection.
ReplyDeleteThe usually call Jonas "Tom" my guess is that they measure him as a Colonel Ryan out there in the field. I'm just glad the show is back although I don't think CBS is too happy as they continue their ways to "not" advertise this good show.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed the recap. I believe Mack called Jonas "Top", not Tom.
ReplyDeleteGood episode, really liked it. I still don't understand how every bad guy and terrorist knows about the unit. Isn't the unit supposed to be a top secret elite army special forces unit? The team members also give their real names way to often to non-unit personnel.
ReplyDelete@brittnay:
- I'm not sure that Bridget is an officer
- Mack didn't rescue Bridget, she had already killed the bad guy
- Mack did call Jonas "Top" not "Tom", like all the team members often do (on a mission)
@sunrunner: Bridget joined the Unit, not sure if she's an official alpha team member. But even if she's an Alpha team member there's nothing strange about that she went on the bus with the wifes. One of the team often stays behind.