The Unit 4.8: “Into Hell, Part 2″

The Unit offers up the conclusion to last week’s “Into Hell” storyline that’s every bit as dramatic and exciting as its former half. But what’s interesting about this week’s episode isn’t so much the action, but the difficult and unconventional dramatic choices the show made. Well played, Unit… well played.

“Into Hell, Part 1″ found The Unit going into Iraq and Syria to rescue Jonas’s daughter, Betsy, who had been captured by some terrorists. To make matters worse, Col. Ryan joined the squad on the mission, even though he knew that Mack was going to kill him for sleeping with Tiffy. The whole storyline had a vague A Chronicle of a Death Foretold quality about it. At the end of the first half, Col. Ryan is captured and thrown in the same prison as Betsy, allowing the rest of The Unit to track him down.

This week’s episode finds Jonas and Mack in constant psychological flux. Jonas, who has horseblinders on while trying to find his daughter, is seemingly off the deep end. He storms into a Islamic worship center with a bomb strapped to his chest in order to get information on his daughter’s location. Later, he duct tapes a machine gun to a cleric’s throat while holding him hostage. It’s unclear whether or not the usually-calm leader of The Unit is bluffing through all of this, but his willingness to sacrifice everything for Betsy is made quite apparent. On the other side of things, Mack is struggling with the issue of having to execute his boss, Col. Ryan. They hint at the act the entire episode, and the actual execution scene is one of the most tense moments in the series’ history.

But it’s the dramatic choices that come from these two characters that made this episode so striking. Of course Mack doesn’t kill Col. Ryan (why, that’s jump-the-shark territory), but he does beat the pulp out of him. Perhaps the idea of keeping Ryan around, living with the shame of betraying his men, is more deserved? It would have been very easy for the show to kill him off, and there are plenty of red herrings to make you think Ryan could die any number of ways. Instead, The Unit had some heart, and took a more satisfying path.

The same could be said of Jonas, who doesn’t kill a single civilian. His connection with the cleric, who tells Jonas to go after his daughter while the cleric stays back to hold off the Syrian military, resonates through the episode. It also added to the show’s important distinction between Muslims and Islamic Fundamentalists.

The “Into Hell” episodes are a huge step forward for the show, and will hopefully be a catalyst for the rest of the season. Things were going well, if somewhat uneven, up until episode 407. Here’s hoping that they can keep the drama coming, and continue to make the show challenging and surprising.

B.A. Moment of the Week: Col. Ryan is paraded in front a terrorist’s camera before being executed. Instead of following his script, damning America, Ryan instead takes the time to admit betraying the trust of his men. No matter how hard the terrorists hit him, he never says what they want.