Maybe a couple of other reasons, too:

1) The soldiers (and their wives) behave as if they are actually under military discipline, not like (ahem) <i>Battlestar Craptastica</i>'s characters who flagrantly disobey orders and change sides every other episode.

2) The wives are resourceful, three-dimensional characters with interesting storylines of their own.

3) There is plenty of witty gallows-humour banter to go around.

It is also fairly Cold Warrish - small scale - in the sense that this could be a 1978 TV show except for the reasonable production values. There is the certainty of victory that a lot of other hand wringing TV of either the fear-mongery or fear-mongery-accusatory class does not convey. It is also essentially a dramatization of Counter Strike, family lives added. I played too much Counter Strike from 2000 to 2003 and played it badly.

I'll have to check it out.

I've known one Hector. A Nova Scotian, yes; but an Acadian, not a Pictouonian.

Is "Street Cents" the best Canadian show ever? I think it could well be. (... maybe after "Corner Gas")

I'm not with you on this one Alan. I tried watching it for the first time last night but the hokey-meter went to far into the red zone form me and I bailed after about the first 5 minutes. I know that isn't really giving it a fair shot but the cast just seemed too cool and confident to be enagged in a life or death situation with guns, bombs and baddies galore.

And how come bad guys can't shoot straight! They just pop around corners with automatic weapons blazing in random directions while the good guys pop them off with one or two superbly placed shots from their little hand guns. All those guys in the red shirts from Star Trek (you now the ones that didn't have enough training to duck when a rock was coming their way) didn't die - they just got re-assigned to 2006 bad guy squads.

The bad guys can't shoot because the propaganda machine that is Hollywood won't let them. During times of conflict, the movie industry is brought to bear on the populace to show that the boys are fighting the good fight. It's no coincidence that there's been a sudden increase in WWII movies in the past few years. They're meant to make the sheeple feel good about going to war.

I think you're giving rather short shrift to training. The series is based on the book "Inside Delta Force" by Eric Haney, and that calibre of operator spends a considerable amount of time in very focused training and would be at a major advantage over the average rifleman.

If you read accounts of the modern battlefield (like "Black Hawk Down" by Mark Bowden), particularly the stories of MSgt Gary Gordon and SFC Randy Shugart, you will note that Delta operators can hold off a numerically superior (but not as well-trained) opponent for quite some time before being wounded and overwhelmed.

It's not rocket science or propaganda -- just a matter of how good your training is and how often you exercise and maintain the skill.

We're not actually comparing Hollywood to the real world now, are we? I didn't think so ...

You're not actually comparing your fellow citizens to domesticated livestock now, are you? I didn't think so ...

Actually, I am. People are sheep: generally quite happy following the rest of the herd and not thinking for themselves.

Boys, boys. I may be home sick but you are entirely missing the point. I am aware that some of the fighting scenes are like that moment of the un emptying gun and Steve Zissou but as Chris points out, you do not have to go very far into the news to understand that according to the numbers these things have an air of reality. That all is merely the best fall factor. I think what I really like about the show is the absence of higher command. No wavering politicians or five-star generals. They either do not know or have all made the call already. In that sense it is also <i>The Rat Patrol</i>.

So there's no possibility that they <i>are</i> thinking, but making choices that you don't like, don't agree with, or can't rationalise into your cosmology?

Alan: but without the jeeps jumping off of sand dunes, sadly.

I have no idea what show you are talking about. But I do know this: put Gordo, Chris, Paul and portland into a ring for a gen x at 40 celebrity death match and it would be wicked good entertainment.

(my money would be on portland--somehow he seems crazier than most)

He bites.

I learned how to field-dress a deer on the weekend, does that help my odds? ;-)

Gordo - d'you *really* think that Hollywood is hyping the war to further the Chimpy McBusHitler agenda?

I rather think it's more (especially the WWII films) catering to an audience demand for movies about when war seemed so clear-cut and simple, i.e., the escapism movies are good at, vice some subtle Rovian-co-opting of Hollywood...

I've been in two firefights like were described here. In that regard, the show is pretty accurate - the bad guys I was facing did tend to do exactly that, pop around corners and spray, while waited with some semblance of patience and sent aimed, three-round bursts their way, oft times to thier personal detriment, if not always fatally so.

And most of the explosions, happily, are not the great flaming balls of petroleum that Hollywood is so infatuated with. Nice, flat cracks with dirty black/grey smoke.

What *is* often missing is the little buzz-crack sound of incoming bullets, and just be glad smellivision is not available.

As for the show, I still get little fits of apoplecty because the farking bastard of a commanding officer is poaching in the team. I want his head.

Part of me really does believe that, John. As long as Hollywood toes the political line (whatever that line may be), they don't get grief from Washington.

Have you seen this bit of propaganda on Discovery? It very obviously aimed at showing the world some of the fabulous weapons the US has in the pipeline to get the job done.

I saw the pics gordo. You are a man with many sides and abilities. I bet if we dropped you into the woods with just some dental floss and your hands tied behind your back you could take out a grizzly with your teeth. But crazy will win in a fight anytime ;^)

No, that's my bro. I could survive, but I'd run from the bear ... :-)

Well, thankfully, I've never been in a fire fight, but I think I hear what John is saying and maybe that is what the Unit needs to get me to watch. More scenes where people actually shit themselves out of fear or because they have expired. If they did however, I fear they would probably start to lose the audience that they originally wrote for.

And how come I get on the crazy list?? I am a pacifist and I would defend that postion tooth and nail!

Right.. but in action movies the pacifist always has some backstory of being a former Greet Beret or Navy SEAL, and resists violent action right up until the time a family member is threatened -- then all hell breaks loose.

That will all have to get written into your wrestler bio before the cage match.

Sorry, <i>Green</i> Beret. I have no idea what the Greet Berets might do and I don't wanna know.

<i>I am really having a hard time understanding why I like The Unit,</i>

May I offer an analogy? Consider the SF series <i>Babylon 5</i>. Like most TV SF series, the science in it ranged from "acceptable" to "laughable." While it was on, many SF fans routinely had fun pointing out all the bad science bits. But as bad as the science was, there were still two things true about it:

1) the bad science was usually lost in the excellent writing, characterization, and acting.

2) most of its competing TV SF shows (which at the time meant Star Trek) did even worse.

Thus, B5 looked great and worth watching partly because it really excelled as a drama, and partly because the competition was so horrid that it made B5 look almost perfect by comparison. I think the situation with <i>The Unit</i> (which I also like) is similar. I'm not a soldier. Never have been. I'm sure there are dozens of inaccuracies in <i>The Unit</i> that real soldiers have lots of fun sniggering at. But the rest of it is very well done, and other military-based TV shows generally do far, far worse.

The <i>greet</i> berets, or more commonly the <i>greetjies</i>, are a spin-off of the <i>groot</i> berets - or the <i>grootjies</i> - are members of a drinking club from the Netherlands according to literature I have received in relation to certain Kingston Society for Playing Catch (KSPC) activities.

Oh my, I wish I could take back my typo-ridden comment... I really can write, honest.

Gordo - the Discovery stuff is simply "fan shows." Certainly, the government and contractors happily contribute when it suits their purposes, but I really wouldn't put anything beyond that.

You really give waaaay to much credit to the government for being clever in that regard.

Trust me. I sit in the belly of the beast. We aren't that clever.

Of course, we would say that, wouldn't we?

Occam's Razor applies - any individual producer or director may have an agenda, but I really don't think there is a coordinated agenda. The market drivers are far more impersonal.

I understand there is a semi-related group in Kansas called the <i>roodbeenen</i> or <i>roodjies</i>.

Paul, you are not crazy in any way that I know of, but you are most manly and tough looking. I was thinking you were sanity's last best hope against portland and all that he stands for, in a gen x at 40 death match.

Gentlemen: I am, of course, full of crap (and Fat Dog Ale from Stoudt at this point). Please ignore anything I have said today, as it has done nothing but cause trouble.

You merely exemplify the universal condition and to do so in the presence of anything from Stoudts is even more exemplary.<p>Fat Dog review here.