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.
I wish they would have had a season five me and my friends in the army loved watching the show. It shows a different side of things in the military and a soldiers life. I would have watched the finale season and i know others would have to it would have been nice to see how the people turned out. If CBS didnt change the show to sundays I think there would have been alot more viewers.
Somebody do something!!! We need more of The Unit!!! No seriously I love the show and would REALLY like to see more. I don’t watch too much CBS and obviously even less now…
So sorry to see the series ending. Bought them on iTunes and we really got into it.
It is not very often we find a series with so much action together with intelligent plotlines and interesting character development.
Please bring it back!
The Fact Is. It is gone and it ain’t never com min back.:(
The network made a HUGE mistake by taking this off the air……….
Very disappointed…….GREAT series!!!! We LOVE this show!!!!!!! We bought every season box set and we are saddened that it ended at season 4!!!! 🙁
I’ve been following this series on box set download from Apple and it’s amazing. Homicide ran for seven seasons because the people running NBC knew a small quality audience can still sell soap and cars well. Dumb move by a dumb network. It would have been a great cable show if Fox played in that space. Had this been a Universal show it would have made. USA.
what a wonderful show full of action, another network should have picked them up. This is show related to a lot of military familes. too bad for cbs, The reruns in my area are on all day Mondays and they usually follow one another in the way the series went. We also get them on Wednesday evenings.
I can’t believe this show only lasted 4 seasons but other stupid shows like NCIS go on forever!!
This show has been the BEST I’ve ever seen. Better than any CSI, Burn Notice, etc..
Bring the show back!!
The Unit was one of the best shows in a long time. No weak spots until Seas 4, where there were a *few* moments when, for the first time, isolated character actions/choices felt ‘written’. But very few. They set the standard so high!
I think they should film the episodes for season 5 and send them straight to dvd, they would make a lot of money and the viewers would get the opportunity to see how it all ends. Its not good to leave us hanging off the cliff knowing that the ride wasn’t officially over.. Please finish the story and get it to the viewers. I feel like i got into a great book and the last chapters and just all blank pages without even saying to be continued….. lol.
I couldn’t agree more!!!
Thats a interesting idea that just could work, if everyone would get on board.
I can’t believe it. This is one of the best shows on TV. I only just began watching in the last year. Sometimes it takes a couple years for people to catch onto how good a show is especially when they move the time slot around. Seems like every show I like gets cancelled. Last year “KINGS” one of the best things I’d ever seen made for television – a truly unique show barely aired beyond 5 or 6 shows. They hardly advertised it and stuck it in a crappy time slot. If you get a chance watch KINGS 13… Read more »
Yess.. A very good sounding fith season ending!
Try to push it through.. i miss it already after number 4..
i want more!
i cannot believe they’ve cancelled the show, the Unit was one of the best things on television and i don’t watch many shows. the acting was brilliant and the plotlines very intelligent, its a shame to be honest, maybe they should move to another network?
I agree with everything said and its my hope that another network does pick up the brilliantly written show. The show is great.
If I could have followed all the different changes to night and time, I would have been able to follow the show. I thought it was perfect following NCIS on Tuesday night, but CBS had to screw things up and move it around. The last time I ever saw an episode was on BET, and that was only by chance. They even had it on AFRTS for a while, but again, the times were always hard to follow.
As I read the most recent comment WinAmp flip to the next song. Patti LaBelle started to sing from the sound track of Miami Vice, ” One of these mornings
it wont be very long they will look for me and I will be gone” They Don’t care. They are quite happy with the “Meaningless” I mean the mentalist and the neurotic AKA “Monk”
We the people are not to get inspiration or anything useful from TV.
Its like Ellsworth Toohey is in charge. And he is on a mission to destroy all that is really
good. And Atlas shrugged.