The UnitMislead and Misguided
Original Air Date: 30 Nov 2008
Brittany Wells – TwoCents Reviewer
brittanyw@twocentscorp.com
Check your calendar – it’s the last new episode of The Unit in 2008. Best to tie up some of those loose ends, don’t you think?
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[photo: CBS.com]
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Check your calendar – it’s the last new episode of The Unit in 2008. Best to tie up some of those loose ends, don’t you think?
ReplyDeleteIt begins with what appears to be a very badly botched raid on an anthrax lab. By very badly, I mean the whole team dies. Obviously, it isn’t real or we would have one very short episode. Seems our boys are trying to figure out how to get to the anthrax lab and not having a very good time of it, especially since the team before them all ended up dead. Not only that, but they find themselves saddled with the Deputy Undersecretary from the State Department, some blowhard named Metz who claims he has a lot of combat experience and a better plan. If I were any of these guys, I’d just knock him unconscious and leave him locked in a closet. Though I have to say, if you need to cast someone annoying? Michael McKean does that so, so very well. This is the guy from This Is Spinal Tap, kiddies.
Back at Fort Griffith, Bridget is unfortunately back. But not for long, as the Army wants to court-martial her for lying to the chopper pilot in “Into Hell, Part Two.” Nice continuity there. Between Ryan and Kayla, they manage to come up with a plan to smuggle her out of the country in about two minutes. I don’t know how that works, but I like it. Ryan informs her that while she saved them all in Syria, she’s staying where she goes until she dies or he cuts her loose. I wish that would actually happen, but I’ve also read a rumor that she’ll be a series regular next year (no surprise given how much the writers seem to love her), so that wouldn’t make much sense. We’ll see how that develops. Hey, here’s one idea: if we need a woman to do more on the show, how about Kayla? I think her character’s been awesome for a long time and she’s been with the show since practically the beginning. I would love to see her get more screen time. Just a thought.
And now for the moment we’ve all been waiting for: what the heck is going on with Kim and Isaac? Kim is not happy that she has to go back, but Ryan tells her they need more information to really turn Isaac. Props to Hank Stratton, because the guy is really starting to weird me out. It’s also amusing to note they’ve been dressing him in darker colors since the revelation that he might be Evil. Turns out Kim has a reason to be worried as some Random Evil Guy shows up at Isaac’s house, informs him he’s being watched – wow, Camp Pendleton’s surveillance teams really suck – and then tries to kill her when he finds out she’s in the house. Surprisingly, however, Isaac stabs him in the back first. This is a nice touch: it proves he really loves Kim, which makes the issue thornier. If he’d just been lying, he could have let the Evil Guy kill her, but he saves her life. Unfortunately, he then wants her to help him dispose of the body. Ew.
In their little military planning room our boys keep dry-running a couple of different scenarios and in every one, at least one of them manages to die. In fact, they all die at least once because we may as well spread the drama around. Still, Metz insists they really have to go find the anthrax to the point where he orders the plane without telling them. Despite their reservations the team actually gets on it. You have to admire their dedication to, I presume, avenging their fallen comrades. Anthrax or no, if I thought I was probably going to die on some badly planned mission, I would not be getting on any plane. I also have to love Mack and his awesome shades. They look cool – and also, horribly out of place when he’s the only one wearing them. Then again, he was the only one to get shot in the face during the scenarios, so maybe it’s the fact that he’d like not to go through that again. As if your sunglasses will stop a bullet. Anyway, he looks really cool.
Kim and Isaac spend the rest of the episode in the car arguing about hiding the body while Kim’s cell phone, dialed to presumably Ryan, picks all this up. Of course he won’t say anything about what he’s involved in, so we the audience don’t learn anything more than we already know. When he tells Kim she can go, she somehow looks surprised to see him pulling a gun on her as she leaves. But he never gets to shoot her, because here comes a big military helicopter. A little bit deus ex machina if you ask me but I like it. Kim tells Ryan as Isaac gets interrogated that he saved her life. Which leads me to ask: come on, we couldn’t have seen Ryan on the helicopter, hauling this guy in? We couldn’t let Robert Patrick go interrogate the guy? Was it too expensive to land the helicopter or something? Anyway, we don’t learn any more about Isaac or who he works for, although Kim and Ryan manage to stop arguing for one episode and he actually gives her a compliment. Thus, my three – yes, three – Robert Patrick scenes in the episode.
Back in Afghanistan our boys are shocked to learn there is no anthrax, but a whole lot of heroin. There’s also their missing comrades – well, the one guy who survived. He tells them the obvious: they got played by Metz to do his dirty work. Not only that but Charles gets shot in the shoulder. I will say this: you give me these four guys with guns and I honestly believe they’re Army Special Forces. Whoever trained them does excellent work.
Needless to say, when the five guys get back? They are not happy. The look on Max Martini’s face scared the daylights out of me. Their revenge? Well, they’re off on another mission, and Metz is stuck on the plane with them. Looks like they’ll all be heading out…because it’s a two-parter.
Ouch.
There were a lot of things about this episode that I liked, but I’m not sure it’s worthy of a two-parter. I didn’t feel any need to continue with the story by the end of the episode. There were a lot of things I’d like to have seen – Bob punching Isaac in the face, whatever happened to Isaac’s equally creepy wife – that we didn’t see. And for the last new episode for a month, we didn’t really learn that much. We still don’t have much of a clue who killed the Vice President or who’s pulling the strings behind the Unit…and that is starting to be the most irritating thing of all.
Is it January yet?