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.
CBS blew it with the order to stop The Unit. Great show, always made sure I was home to see it.
If it was not so popluar why is it still list on CBS as playing Sunday nights.
Bring it back…….
CBS is trying to make it true that “with 100 stations there isnt a thing on TV”
If u have great shows, why keep funding them? u can always put another reality (cough choke) show on the air! like WWW wrestling or something !
Great job CBS!!
whatever
There are no shows for real guys on the Big three. Now i can concentrate on FX and TNT shows. they no drama.
So angry at CBS for cancelling this show. Shame on them. It was so well done, especially with how real it was. The characters had so much depth to them and really connected as a ‘family.’
I’ll keep hoping someone picks up this show so it can end the right way.
Yes it’s True!
The main reason I got a DVR!
The only series I recorded.
Quality Broadcast Television a very rare commodity.
this was a great show, reality shows are cheap to make, they don’t require high payed actors thats why the series shows are dyeing. Its to bad I guess Ill just watch Fox News.
Fabulous show and the networks keep putting trash up for us to see instead. This has been a trend for the last 10 years. We never seem to get a TV series to last. ER was the last long run. Now we get hooked on a show and see it for 1 season maybe 2. Tired of the crap the networks are putting out. I’m in Canada now, US citizen, and have really started to like the Cdn broadcasting. The Border, The Listener, Flashpoint to name a few. Not as in your face and trashy as the current US programming.… Read more »
Again – another series we have watched for years ending! Another TV series that we do not get to see wrapped up.
“The Unit” was probably at the top of the few t.v. shows I really looked forward to. The other top was “Mad Men’. The state of t.v. is pitiful. They just keep adding more reality shows and deleting anything of quality. I will continue to miss “The Unit’ and wonder what is going on in the board rooms of CBS.
It is absolutely unbelievable. CBS cancels a quality drama like “The Unit,” and retains all of the GARBAGE reality shows on their network. Well, that does it for me, I am finally finished with CBS!!!
i am an overseas airman, who does not get up to date tv shows! so waiting for the latest and greatest from the states takes a couple of weeks and months sometimes. this show was the closes thing me and my friends had in common when watching hollywood try and do shows with military plots in mind. it is a shame they ended it. it was a show we really enjoyed, it should be brought back, dvd sales with rocket with military members.
I was very much looking forward to seeing whether Jonas would willingly retire or not and how Charles would adjust to married life.
It’s a shame that the networks can’t forget for a little while about having the best ratings and just have some shows that have many loyal followers like us.
As I have said about other cancellations this year, the people running the networks are a bunch of pinheads!
great character driven show. deserved a better farewell than this
CBS should have never canceled it. It was an alsome show.