David Mamet's Unit: "That's The History of the World"

Well, Alex seems to have hated it. The Mad Pulp Bastard, Bill Cunningham, wasn't too complementary (down there in my comments below) -- but judging by the Nielsens, America has another take on it: They love The Unit.

From Variety:

According to national estimates from Nielsen, "The Unit" averaged a hearty 5.1 rating/12 share in adults 18-49 -- the best showing for a noncrime CBS drama since "Touched by an Angel" six years ago -- and 18.5 million viewers overall, the largest audience for a regular Eye program in the timeslot in nearly seven years.

The drama from 20th Century Fox Television, starring Dennis Haysbert and Scott Foley, improved on its solid lead-in from "NCIS" (3.8/10, 17.21m) and also gained 1 share from its first half-hour to its second (4.8/12 to 5.3/13 in 18-49) -- a good sign for a premiere.

The 5.1 rating in 18-49 reps a 50% rise from the 3.4 CBS had averaged in the 9 p.m. hour since "American Idol" bowed on Fox in mid-January and shook up the night. Among all regular-slot drama bows this season, only ABC's "Invasion" (which followed "Lost") had a higher 18-49 score.

"The Unit" also earned a big 7.0/15 in adults 25-54, drawing nearly the same rating among men as women.

A high male rating, high female rating, solid numbers for 25-54, massive rise in 18-34, build on the lead in, and build in the second half hour? That's pretty much ratings nirvana, kids.

And this is where sometimes negative hype helps. I just skimmed, didn't read, the comments below -- but I got the sense of a negative spin going in. So I girded myself, because I was really looking forward to this show. Being disappointed by it would be a bummer.

Luckily, I wasn't disappointed. I'd call it a solid B+. I'm not a big CBS viewer. Wait a minute, what do I watch on CBS? Mmm. None of the CSI's, no NCIS...holy cow...there's not a single CBS show that I watch regularly. Wow.

Okay. They got me for one.

When they announced The Unit, the thing that attracted me to it was obviously Mamet, plus Shawn Ryan, who's proved himself a deft, muscular storyteller with The Shield. I was interested to see if Mamet-rhythm-and-worship and Ryan's cable-pedigree could translate to network -- especially a red meat, red state, stodgy old warhorse like CBS.

Let's face it. There's not a blessed thing that's original about The Unit. We've seen the Special Forces thing before. In fact, we've even seen the wives-home-thing before, in good old Mel's We Were Soldiers, co-starring Madeleine's Stowe's freakishly botoxed lips.

The intriguing thing about The Unit for me was seeing how Mamet and Ryan would spin these all-too-familiar tropes. And after seeing the pilot, I can honestly say that I wasn't disappointed.

First, there's the cast. Dennis Haysbert, Scott Foley, Robert Patrick, Regina Taylor? You had me at hello.

So what if there's a silly teaser -- and it was pretty silly -- it's nice to see something blow up and things go down. You're thinking, "Yup, I've seen this before." Great. Solid. Safe. CBS.

And then they start fucking with you. There's a bit of Mametspeak in the hood -- but just a bit -- The way Foley calls Haysbert "Top," the fast-scene where they spring into action at the wooded cottage of the ex-unit member -- where everyone moves quickly and at once and doesn't pause to let you the viewer in -- well, that could have been straight out of HEIST or SPARTAN...

...then there's what I think is the poignant subtext to that scene -- a subtext that I haven't seen anyone comment on so far. There's all this fooferal about "Don't you lure my husband back, he's not coming back" -- which to me plays as wife-and-commander in cahoots to try and give dignity to the badass commander who's there in the wheelchair. He obviously aint coming back, guys. He's in a wheelchair. Then there's a left turn: he offers Foley's newbie the gun -- and the scene, like most of Mamet's best, has just gone in a different direction. He was showing the new guy off. And once he passed muster, he was offered the gun. This was a scene about cost (the guy in the wheelchair) and initiation. Then the crisis begins, and the real initiation begins. I dig it.

You've got a problem in these shows, right off the bat. Because this show's about hard men. Scott Foley's the new guy -- but unlike the pilot for Conviction, you can't view this sucker through the eyes of the new guy -- the naif. Because that's not the guy's character. He's worked hard to be here, and he's not going to show jack shit. You're dangerously close to the edge when you show the scene of him looking at the picture of the wife and kids. Haysbert's response to that is particularly stoic and Mametian.

For as much as people admire Mamet, and as much as writers like to hold him up as an ideal, it's funny to me that a lot of people miscalculate why Mamet wields such power. Everybody knows that Mamet cadence, that poetry...but not many people cotton onto the other element that makes Mamet Mamet -- he constructs worlds that are not realistic, but that are heightened. It's not reality. It's Mametovision. Whether it's the bluster of those real estate agents in Glengarry, the thieves of Heist, Val Kilmer in Spartan -- Mamet-speak and plotting isn't about real life, it's about constructing extreme situations and extreme versions of how to get out of it -- usually with the power structure stacked against you.

So for his pilot, Mamet shows you just how badass his Unit is by putting them in the worst, most extreme case they can possibly be in: an operation in the United States, that puts them at odds with the Posse Comitatus act.

It's interesting to me that the phrase is thrown around twice in the pilot, yet none of the commenters I've trolled reading online seems to have picked up on it, and wondered at its significance. It is a big deal...it raises the stakes for these guys beyond failure. Beyond Death. Sure, we've seen death before. These guys put their lives on the line, blah blah blah - and they never get credit or thanks blah blah blah -- but in this case, if they fail, not only do they open themselves to risk of life, not only do they risk failing, or killing hostages -- they go in knowing that if they fail, their government won't just deny they exist -- they'll turn on them and hang them out to dry.

That is a very Mamet theme. And the fact that these guys don't blink in the face of that, well...that's just how badass they are. They're so badass they'll threaten the lives of FBI agents because that's what needs to be done.

We don't even blink when Jack Bauer tortures anyone anymore. But that was truly shocking.

And that, chickens, is the point.

Nice ticking clock, too...they let you know that the whole point of these terrorists is to inflict maxium damage on the newscrews, Fire, Cops, and early responders -- so by threatening them and going in first, they're really protecting them. Neat trick.

Second inversion of cliche: the whole women's subplot. I mentioned We Were Soldiers above. They really did do the same plot that time, and it used a lot of the same cliches, but it layed there flat. What I liked about how they used the idea in The Unit was firstly, the way they're telegraphing right off the bat that this marriage isn't maybe the most solid: the wife thinks that the husband will be pissed, but when he comes home, he's not the slightest bit surprised that he's moved in across the street. The husband aint coming clean with his wife.

And if you missed the subtlety of that, a moment later, just as we've spent the whole ep building up the stoicism of the wives, and the family nature of the Unit, we get a nice, solid dollop of soapy-opera goodness. These people aren't Red State, Military Robots. They're just as screwed up as the rest of us.

Meanwhile, we do get to see the naif who's resisting the world she's been parachuted into, but it's the new guy's wife, someone who would be more likely to react badly and show it.

She's unsympathetic, sure, but then there's a key piece of dialogue that shows you why: "If he gets killed, in 90 days I'm off the base."

Ouch. That's true. That's so. They may "stick together" and "act like family" -- but that's also an illusion that's meant to help them cope. The reality is that on another level their husbands are tools, to be taken out and used. The support only goes so far. From the Earth To The Moon also did a good job of showing this side of the home front. In any case, it's nice to know that the "homefront" stuff isn't just going to be long-suffering wives.

And then there's Regina Taylor's speech, which ends in the line quoted in the title of this post. I laughed out loud. Man. Now THAT is Mametspeak.

I think The Unit, at least in Pilot form, did a pretty good job of setting you up for one reality that feels familiar -- and then sneaking in some other, more interesting themes underneath. This is not the straight-ahead double of NCIS or JAG. Interestingly, though, it'll still play to that crowd. That might be the most subversive thing about it.

It's sad that a lot of that has to be snuck in these days, but if that's the way it is, so be it. I thought The Unit's pilot was a nice mix of smart and familiar. I think CBS has got a hit, and at least one new viewer, (at least for an hour a week.)

Plus, I think Shawn Ryan's stock just went up.