The UnitHero
Original Air Date: March 8, 2009
Brittany Wells – TwoCents Reviewer
brittanyw@twocentscorp.com
Yet again, it’s been almost a month since the last new episode of The Unit (not that the show has done that much to make me miss it)…and as much as that irritates me, it’s equally as irritating to come back with an episode that should have probably been episode 9 instead of episode 15. At least, it would have made more sense then for us to be flashing back to Syria. I’m not sure who to blame for that – the writers or the network. At this point, it’s probably either or, or maybe even both.
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[photo: CBS.com]
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Yet again, it’s been almost a month since the last new episode of The Unit (not that the show has done that much to make me miss it)…and as much as that irritates me, it’s equally as irritating to come back with an episode that should have probably been episode 9 instead of episode 15. At least, it would have made more sense then for us to be flashing back to Syria. I’m not sure who to blame for that – the writers or the network. At this point, it’s probably either or, or maybe even both.
ReplyDeleteWe open with what appears to be our team chasing down a suspect, but then find out that is just our introduction to yet another new character. (I echo the sentiments of Mitchy, who once told me, if they needed another Unit member – why did they kill off Hector?) The new guy, it seems, is kinda cheating by pulling a grenade out of nowhere to kill his target. Literally, nowhere. This is like that scene in Anchorman where Steve Carell’s character Brick magically produces a grenade during the great news team rumble. It is that random. On top of that, a guy on fire – I am not kidding – stumbles into the debriefing. Seems like he got hit with the grenade. Which leads to another question: why are you holding practice for a top secret Army unit in an active public office building? There aren’t facilities for this? Even police departments have training buildings or structures.
After the credits, my brain stops. I have Robert Patrick on a motorcycle in a leather jacket. Yes, please. Shallowly, he looks darn good for almost fifty. Once my brain starts working, I realize he’s at a Unit safehouse to chew the team out for A) not clearing the building and B) using a grenade. Way to go, new guy. Of course, being the new guy, he wants to claim he’s justified and so on. Never mind that the guy on fire happens to be a federal judge that died. Tom chews them all out, then walks out when he finds out Bridget has a lead on Hector’s killer and tells them all to stay and shut up. This, of course, makes Mack pissy and he punches the new guy. Frankly, I’m on Mack’s side. (How many smartmouthed young supposedly cute guy characters does TV already have, anyway?) So now the whole team gets to pull a disappearing act just like their wives. Yay. Fort Griffith is now occupied by…Kayla and four guys in the TOC. In other words, basically, the new guy makes the entire team have to run for cover. Where did they find this guy, and why do we need him?
Betsy is back, being poked and prodded by some media relations guy because the higher-ups want her to sound like a hero. They’re even coaching her on what to say. Kind of makes me sick, really. She’s been through enough. But of course, there’s always the Unit’s cover story to protect, as the PR guy reminds Tom and Jonas. Jonas takes it on himself to get Betsy ready for her fifteen minutes of fame. So, of course, he says she should say that she let her team down, because of course making her cry and sound like a wimp is more genuine but forget about, you know, traumatizing the poor girl again. It gets her to buy the story, but darned if I don’t feel worse for her.
Meanwhile, Mack and New Guy get picked up by some ATF people and end up in jail. New Guy expects Tom to make everything go away, and Mack points out that would mean revealing the Unit. (I beat my head into the wall when New Guy claims – or his paperwork says – that he’s from my old neck of the woods: Riverside, California, the 909 area code. Granted, I also just saw Riverside County on COPS half an hour before.) The ATF agent is played by Career Guest Star James Remar, whom I still remember from The Huntress, and of course even in the face of that the New Guy (also known as Sam McBride) thinks he’s the coolest person on the planet. He claims the team is a bunch of terrorists and he was on a training mission for them. I would be more impressed by this if he wasn’t smirking the whole time. As it turns out, the ATF guys are all part of the training exercise, too, as Jonas and Co. are all hiding in the van. The dead guy is not dead – he’s a Hollywood stuntman. But then the New Guy clocks Mack. You just do not hit Mack. I hear fangirls everywhere protesting that one.
Jonas brings New Guy up to speed on his new cover, and he gets to go through all the new guy kind of stuff for about thirty seconds before Charles informs the team they’re all going to Manila, where I sort of wish they’d have been a long time ago. (Who watches this show and hasn’t wanted to see Hector’s killer’s butt kicked?)
Meanwhile, Tom (still looking good, thank you wardrobe department) meets the Blane family as Betsy gets ready to go through her own rote. The junior Blane shows a lot of spine, just like her father. I really like Betsy and wish she’d be around more, especially when she has a great moment with Tom over that critical moment in Syria.
The team finally arrives in Manila to the obligatory “New Guy goes stupid at Bridget” moment. She briefs them on a suspect in Hector’s death. There’s the even more obligatory “sitting around surveilling while not looking like we’re surveilling” moment, but Mack easily spots the guy and takes off after him like he damn well should. Of course, being that this is the show that believes making its new characters save the day makes them likeable, New Guy gets in the middle of it. At least, unlike Bridget, he then goes and hurts himself doing it. Meanwhile, while there’s a whole bunch of random shooting that signifies nothing, Mack randomly pumps two shots into the man that killed his friend. There’s no pause, there’s no real confrontation – the guy the fans have all wanted to see brought to justice is just tracked down and shot in the last ten minutes of an episode like an afterthought. Very, very disappointing for me and for all the Hector fans. It’s not like we don’t know that Max Martini would have hit that out of the park if they’d let him really tear into the guy. Less time trying to get us to like the New Guy, more time appreciating the guy he replaced, guys! (At least we get the kind of obligatory Mack and Charles at Hector’s gravesite moment.)
I liked this episode a lot more than I had the ones before it, and it proves that there’s no need to mess with a good thing. I found the New Guy lacking, and even if the whole exercise was one big setup, it didn’t really seem all that rewarding (probably because I didn’t care if he made it into the Unit or not). However, the flip side of the story – seeing Betsy come into her own as a soldier, and her parents connect with her and with each other, to say nothing of possibly finally being able to avenge Hector’s death – was the first part of this show that’s gripped me since, ironically, the “Into Hell” two-parter. I could easily have seen this episode following that and creating a nice continuity. As it is, in this order it seems like going backward when we should be going forward, but I can’t fault it for being a better episode compared to the last few. Hopefully, it will be the springboard to the next few new episodes – three of them, I believe – that I am really hoping will improve on the miserable status of this season.
What did you think? Is The Unit back on the right track?