The Unit - Season One
Picture:
B- Sound: B- Extras: C- Episodes: C+
With the
array of military dramas on television today, a show must offer something
different to survive. The Unit is a military drama focusing
on two worlds, the world of a specialized military operations unit and the
world of their wives back on the base. The Unit has a great cast of actors, as
well as a plethora of stunning, well planned, gun battles and special effects
(BOOM!). The problem with The Unit, however, exists in the
characters themselves. Even with highly
interesting scripts and a talented cast the characters are hindered, having
very little development throughout the first season. The five men of the unit seem to have a great
love for their jobs and their jobs alone.
Where the overwhelming feeling of the military, desensitized mentality
is widely apparent, the characters show neither personal growth nor an effort
to make their character more human. The
entire season maintains a cold aura, detracting from the greatness of the
intricate scripts. The acting caliber,
great, military writing style, great, setting and atmosphere of the show,
great; but it is the coldness that The
Unit radiates which thwarts the show’s ability to grow.
Most of
the action of the show takes place in foreign lands where drugs and violence
run wild. The special ops team known as
“the unit” is a secret branch of the military that “does not exist,” meant to
neutralize the problem never to take credit for their actions (good or
bad). While these men continent hop
their wives and lovers remain on a military base where they can not even
mention what their husbands truly do for a living. The band of women stick closely together and
initiate the rookie wives to the now, cult like, program; overall the women
expressing only slightly more emotion than their men. As previously stated, The Unit is quite intriguing with its cinematic camera angles, fast
nature, and captivating scripts. In the end, if the writers and directors
manage to put some human emotion into its characters, more than just a “Good
job boys,” the show may go far.
The
technical nature of this television DVD set contains the basic qualities most
NBC and CBS shows do. The picture is
quite good being filmed originally in HD and being presented on DVD as 1.78:1
anamorphic widescreen. Though the show
is jumpy at times on purpose, the camera clarity remains. The sound is also rather good being presented
in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround, and with the rapid gun fire and team oriented
atmosphere of the show sound quality is impressive. The extras for this 13 episode television
show (now on its second season on CBS) are almost nonexistent, only having a
quick behind the scenes segment on the last disc. Overall, the extras are quite poor. For a final critical view of this 4 disc, 564
minute DVD set we explore the episode select/main menu screen. The main menu is often overlooked and not
analyzed on most DVDs due to its standard setup; but for this DVD set a few
elements are lacking, including no “Play All” function or a function to take
the viewer back to an episode select automatically. After careful criticism, the picture and
sound are quite excellent but the processes of the DVD need improvement.
This
reviewer found The Unit to be a very
impressive television series for its first season. Though the emotionless nature of the military
men and the ignorance of their institutionalized wives were annoying and
disheartening at times, the overall display of the show was admirable. So this reviewer says, as you were
soldiers…just show me some emotion.
- Michael P. Dougherty II
