"The Unit" Continues to Wreak Havoc on the Competition Every Tuesday Night

Every once in awhile, a TV show comes along that actually improves on itself after a shaky first season. "Seinfeld's" first season was a show riddled with awkward and stilted acting from the now-famous group of actors on their maiden voyage on NBC, and now you can add the action-packed CBS show, "The Unit" to that category. Most critics agree that David Mamet, the show's creator, is one of the best living writers working in the movies and on Broadway today. His famous screenplays include "The Untouchables" and "Glengary Glen Ross", so you know the guy is a true genius of the written word, and when it comes to dialogue,he is without peer.

But during "The Unit's" first season, Mamet could not quite get a handle on showing the brutality of the battlefield while also cutting back to the Army base where the unit's family were having common problems that seemed very tame by comparison. During the first season of the show, the Army base family storylines threatened to turn the series into a soap opera at every turn. Mamet did not want sheer brutal action in every episode, so he went too far in the other direction and got overly involved with the the unit's family life. Instead of bringing the television viewers into the heat of battle, he kept going back and forth between sniper attacks that the unit were using against the military forces in Iraq, and the wives back home who were shown having problems with their children behaving badly in school. Not a good way to keep the momentum flowing for a television audience at all. Luckily, Mamet and company have learned their lesson.

During Season 2 of "The Unit", we have been shown the real intensity of what it must be like to be with a squad of soldiers like the Navy Seals or the Green Beret. The constant machine gun fire that the men are surrounded by during an attack on an Arab military base is just one example of the incredibly intense situations that this unit is constantly involved with. The possibility that the men might get blown up by a missile strike or a suicide terrorist during a routine check up of an American outpost in the Saudi Arabian desert, also points out the unbelievable danger these men live with on a day to day basis.

Jonas Blane (Dennis Haysbert) is the squad leader of this tightly-knit special Army division, and he will stand by his men over every possible obstacle, even at the risk of his own career. During this tension-filled season, his squad has been accused of diamond smuggling during a mission to the far east. His accusers work for the CIA, so they have a great deal of clout when it comes to believing them over Blane's protest of innocence. Blane is threatened with a court martial if he does not cooperate fully with the CIA's investigation of his squad. Blane then told the CIA where they could stick their investigation, ending the season with a big question mark as to what will happen in season three. At the end of the final episode, we see Blane going AWOL to another country to hide out and find out who really is behind these supposedly false allegations.

The great magician and screenplay writer, Ricky Jay, actually met with his friend David Mamet and suggested that he should write a few of the season ending episodes. Mamet made the right decision in allowing this to happen, as Ricky Jay came up with the plotline of the CIA infiltrating the unit and accusing them of smuggling diamonds. Jay's original scripts helped develop these two episodes into being the highlights of the entire season.

Ricky Jay himself portrays a shady CIA undercover agent trying to procure one of the unit's best operatives, Bob Brown (Scott Foley), by making Bob believe that it is in his best interest to come work for the CIA as soon as possible. He will do anything it takes to get Bob to defect from the unit, even murdering an informant if he has to. Jay is always adept at playing a sinister type, and he always plays the villain with unbridled relish. Ricky Jay's character is always getting Bob to do reprehensible things so that no one suspects that Jay is a CIA undercover agent. Since Bob is always the model of good behavior, it makes it all the more interesting to see him shoot an unarmed suspected terrorist in the back, as he did in one of the later episodes in season 2 to protect Jay's identity from the enemy.

The powerful directing of all the action sequences has brought to the series a more realistic viewing experience. The attempt to bring in more intriguing story elements like the marital infidelity between the wives and husbands involved in the unit also succeeded to keep the audience glued to their seats. This all helped to really move this season along to a very strong conclusion. If David Mamet continues to bring in his literary friends to help build more depth to the storylines, "The Unit" is in a very strong position to continue its domination over the rest of the competition every Tuesday night.