Much to the dismay of the show’s loyal followers, The Unit was cancelled by CBS in May. The series’ viewership had declined in its later years but, despite being preempted several times, still attracted 9.67 million viewers in season four.
The Unit was supposedly being seriously considered to continue in first-run syndication but the deal didn’t work out, likely because of production costs. Sadly, while the military drama and Dennis Haysbert, Regina Taylor, Robert Patrick, and Scott Foley will be around in syndication for years to come, we won’t be seeing season five of The Unit.
It turns out that the writers had a full plan for year five which Executive Producer Shawn Ryan was expecting to be the show’s last. He pitched the storyline ideas to the CBS execs but ultimately they weren’t interested.
At the recent TCA press tour, Ryan shared with The Futon Critic what would have happened. He said, “It was going to be a whole new show in the sense that we were going to be training some young people, Bob was going to be training some people for a whole new organization. Jonas was finally going to be seeing his run end.”
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Ryan continued, “The final season was going to be, I figured the fifth season was going to be the last… It was going to be a long, sort of final mission for Jonas. He’s not medically cleared, Mac has to go in and sort of change the medical records so that Jonas can keep on [going on missions]. We had a whole thing planned, it was going to be good.”
Of the cancellation, Ryan points to CBS’ last-minute decision to save NBC’s discarded Medium series. If things had been reversed and The Unit “had been owned by Paramount and Medium had been owned by 20th Century Fox, we’d be making the fifth season of The Unit right now. I don’t know how else to say that.”
What do you think? Do the plans for season five sound like a good way for the military drama to finish?
Image courtesy CBS.
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CBS is a dead network, now I see why.
I hadn’t watched CBS in several years and didn’t discover The Unit until Season 2 when I picked up a used copy of the first season in a buy 2 get 1 free deal at Game Stop. The only reason I picked up a show I’d never heard of was that I couldn’t find another season of The Sopranos to make 3 box sets.
I watched it and became an instant fan. I started tuning in and leaving CBS on again after the show, watching their news and even found myself watching CBS when there was nothing else on.
From what I understand the show had a good strong initial following, but being the poorly managed network CBS is, they decided to constantly preempt the show, switch it to late night, and even switch it to off days, pretty much finishing it off. I missed a lot of Season 3 because I never knew when the show was going to be on and had to catch up by purchasing Season 3 when it was released on DVD.
Thank you CBS, by continuing your tradition of poor managment you’ve cut my TV viewing time down. I’ve quit watching CBS again, maybe if you come out with a another decent show I’ll discover it again, likely not for another several years though.
Just like Hollywood to cancel all the good shows and keep all the (biggest) losers on… Pushing Daisies was another very pleasant surprise that met an all too early demise… I hate Hollywood
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