The Unit, Do I Like It?

Taped The Unit for the husband tonight since he is in Qatar, courtesy of the US Army, and will miss the first couple episodes. With SOCOM headquarters right here at MacDill I'm guessing the Tampa area ratings for this show will be a tad higher than some cities, though Fayetteville NC will probably have us beat.

If you didn't see the promos, Dennis Haysbert (of 24, and Allstate commercials) is one of the leads in this show about a top secret army unit. It is based on Delta Force and one of the co-creators is David Mamet (of all people). In the pilot the guys rescue a trade delegation from a highjacked plane, while on the homefront the wife of one of the new unit members is in for a shock when she discovers just what kind of organization her husband has joined, and that she is pregnant. It ends with a cliffhanger of one of the wives in bed with the Colonel who keeps sending her husband on deployments.

It was more interesting than I thought it was going to be, but it's going to have to pick up to keep me away from House consistently. A few quibbles. Army wives would never talk about living "on base," instead it would be "on post." Also, a good deal of tension in the first half hour is built around the new guy's wife not understanding what's going on. It is the brave, but stupid man, who would volunteer for Delta, get selected to go through all the training, get selected to actually join The Unit, then not tell his wife what he had signed up for.

One thing did ring true. The line near the end where the new guy says "Are you kidding? You get to shoot guns, jump out of airplanes, and come home to your family. It's damn near perfect." I've heard that dozens of times in real life.