The Unit is a Cigar Smoker’s Television Show
I can’t believe I forgot to talk about The Unit the other day when I wrote about Sons of Anarchy. While it is true that there is more cigar smoking going on in SoA I have to say that my favorite between the two shows is The Unit for a couple of reasons.
First off, The Unit has been around for a longer time. I know what I am going to get from that show from now on. The same cannot be said for SoA. There’s a chance that they can be going through story lines a lot quicker than they should be and they might run out of ideas.
Secondly, The Unit is on network television. While this is also a negative since they can’t do the more edgy stories it is a net plus because you know CBS is going to be able to afford many more seasons of The Unit. The same cannot be said for SoA. Even if it does become a hit on satellite TV that doesn’t mean anything. Just look at another one of my favorites, The Shield. It’s still doing well ratings-wise, I think, but they are shutting it down because it’s just costing to much to produce.
Thirdly, The Unit is about the military. Sure, marauding motorcycle clubs are awesome to watch but there’s just something about watching Special Operations guys completing missions. Maybe I like the good guys (The Unit) better because during my formative years I read nearly every Tom Clancy book and watched John Wayne movies with my dad. But, let’s face it, the good guys are obvious with The Unit and the same can’t be said about SoA.
Fine, this last point does need some more explanation. I know that the vast majority of situations we encounter don’t present us with purely good or purely bad/evil options. And the writers of The Unit know this as well. While the Delta Force operators on The Unit are mostly good, decent people they are routinely faced with situations that push the bounds of their morality, or code, if you will. It still is just as complex a show as SoA or 24, another one of my favorites.
The last factor that is in The Unit‘s favor over SoA is that Dennis Haysbert is the lead actor. The ex-president from 24 is a big-time cigar smoker and also an avid wine lover. And, even though The Unit is on network television, they have smoked cigars on the show in the past. I don’t know for sure but I would wager a pretty big bet that many of our military men and women smoke cigars. Not a majority of them by any means but a good sized minority of them.
Alright, enough with this comparing and contrasting. Both shows are great and should be watched by any cigar smoker. The Unit, in particular, is an action-packed thinking mans shoot ‘em up hour-long drama that has always impressed.
Like 24, The Unit will kill off major characters (24 is the undisputed king of this by a large margin, however), which adds an air of unpredictability to the show. And the guys aren’t always successful. So, unlike those law and cop “dramas,” there actually is some drama for this show. For example, in a show a couple of weeks ago Haysbert’s character promised a group of prostitutes that he would free them. Unfortunately for the prostitutes, the mission got in the way and some of the bad guys got away with the prostitutes.
Perhaps the best thing about The Unit is that they actually have the guy who wrote the book on the Delta Force, Inside Delta Force, as a major part of the production of this show. He actually knows how things work in the black world of Special Ops and it shows. There aren’t any James Bond-ish flying cars or Mission Impossible helicopters flying in a tunnel ridiculousness.
The Unit is all about misdirection, brains, deceit, and force. In the end the good guys will always win the day even if not all the victories are not total ones.
One last thing, I would be remiss if I don’t mention the women of The Unit. Their stories are just as captivating as the stories of the guys on mission. The women have to deal with their own problems that are frequently exacerbated by the fact that their husbands are members of one of the world’s most elite fighting forces.
What this all ads up to is tension. There’s tension on each mission, tension between husband and wife, mother and daughter, between shooters and their colonel, soldier and politician, even between team members themselves. No story line stands still on this show and everything inevitably goes off in some totally unforeseen direction.
The Unit is an awesome show and is absolutely worthy of an hours worth of a cigar smoker’s time. This show is highly recommended by me.
Sons of Anarchy is a Cigar Smoker’s Show
Ever since The Sopranos went off the air there has been a hole in my TV-watching schedule. There no longer was a show for cigar smokers. Sure, I watch shows like The Shield and 24 (when it’s on) but all those shows for men lacked cigars. Then I found a little show called Sons of Anarchy.
Sons of Anarchy is a show in the same vein as The Sopranos, except on bikes. The lead character Jax, played by Charlie Hunnam, is pretty much the equivalent of James Gandolfini’s Tony. Jax, like Tony, grapples with many of the same questions that Tony does. “Are we doing the right thing?” “Is there more to life than this?” “Can I be a good person and be a gangster?”
It is this complexity found in the lead character that really sets these shows apart. It’s almost like the writers put a person who at his core is decent and caring but who also is capable of shooting a man in the head and then sleep with a woman in the same room… with the body on the floor. (That happened on last night’s show.)
What first attracted me to the show was how it was going to be edgy. Solidly anti-government with a flair for the dramatic. But it was the cigars being smoked by a couple of the characters that really piqued my initial interest in the show.
Two of the characters, Clay (Ron Perlman) and Bobby (Mark Boone Jr.), smoke cigars in at least one scene a show. Clay, the leader of the motorcycle club SAMCRO (Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original Charter) is completely alpha male.
During one particular episode, Fun Town, the Sons capture a rapist who had assaulted a young girl earlier in the show. Clay and some other club members presented the rapist to the girl’s father so that the father could shoot the man. When the father, a straight laced businessman, fails to pull the trigger Clay steps in without a moments worth of hesitation and executes the vile rapist.
Bobby, the club’s Jewish accountant, is frequently seen with a cigar in hand. He is the type of guy who can do Elvis impersonations one minute and then go kill someone the next.
The person who really steals the show isn’t one of the guys, it’s the matriarch of the club – Gemma. Gemma, played by the bad-to-the-bone Katey Sagal, is the glue that holds the club together behind the scenes. She never attends any of the meetings but holds more sway than almost anyone, even Clay and Jax (who is the club’s VP).
After all, she is Clay’s “old lady” (wife) and Jax’s mom (Clay isn’t Jax’s dad). There are many times when she is more ruthless than most of the murderous club members could ever think of being. Heck, in one of the earlier episodes this season she told Clay that he has to do whatever it took to make sure Jax (her son!) wouldn’t screw things up for SAMCRO. That’s cold!
If you haven’t watched the show yet you definitely should tune in. It is on the FX Network on Wednesday nights starting at 10pm Eastern with a couple of replays later that night and one on Sunday night. With only four episodes left this season you might want to check out some of the older episodes at Hulu.com.
