History Series / TheUnit

* CIAEvilFBIGood: The FBI are generally honest hard workers trying to protect the people. The {{CIA}}, which features a lot more prominently given the 303rd's counterterrorism missions, zigzags. The case workers and other field operatives are basically good, if very results-oriented, while the people in Washington are generally {{Obstructive Bureaucrat}}s.

** "Last Nazi" The stranger calls himself "The man who knows the colour of your shootinghouse door, which there is no door" a reference to the movie Ronin, where the CIA agent challenges a fake claiming experience with the SAS to tell him the colour of the "boathouse door," to see if the man laughs him off or takes him seriously.

* MametSpeak: Averted even in the episodes Creator/DavidMamet wrote. Perhaps due to this being a network TV show.

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:The series finale ends with Jonas, who's marriage was the strongest of the show's main characters, falling apart and his wife Molly leaving him. There's two other semi-downers too: Grey gets married, but in doing so has to leave the unit. Similarly, Ryan accepts a promotion and is elevated from command of the unit, but he likely only did so because the team found out that he had lied to them over the past few episodes. Oh and them finding out about his affair with Tiffy probably didn't help either, even though that doesn't directly lead to his leaving.]]

* IHaveManyNames: Leon Drake, who's true name is never revealed (Leon Drake is just an alias the character uses while posing as a CIA Agent as part of his various evil schemes).

* ArmorIsUseless: Averted for an FBI agent shot by Jonas.

* ItNeverGetsEasier: ... this trope is also applied in "Gone Missing" and when the character at the heart of the moral dilemma there is in a later episode ordered to kill a mother and father (granted they were traitors, but it still left their baby an orphan), he is still clearly upset at having to do it.

* AbortedArc: Molly, who had a secret past which was never mentioned beyond that one episode. It does have [[FridgeBrilliance a surprisingly solid]] justification; the man who said he'd come looking for her only specifically knew her married name and that her husband was in the Army, which, as he put it, was enough information to find her. Shortly thereafter, however, the families of the Unit members are all uprooted and moved to another state under false identities; Molly's secret past would no longer have any way of finding her, since she, for all intents and purposes, doesn't exist anymore.

** Hector's girlfriend [[spoiler: who becomes Charlie's girlfriend after his death]] vanishes without a trace in the middle of the romance picking up as part of the BikiniBar mentioned below. Thinking about this makes his love interest in season four seem a little strange, and it's particularly odd considering that the issue of [[spoiler: Hector's death]] ''is'' revisited in season four.

* BikiniBar: Justified by explicitly stating it is a non-nude bar. Notable as one of the plot elements that fell victim to the writer's strike.

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<<|AmericanSeries|>>

US TV series running from 2006 to 2009 for a total of four seasons, created by Shawn Ryan (creator of TheShield) and famed playwright Creator/DavidMamet.

** Subverted with David Rees Snell's character of Leon Drake. Many fans were expecting the character to make some sort of reference to TheShield, as part of a stealth [[{{Crossover}} shared universe]] reveal that Leon Drake was Ronnie Gardocki, having escaped from prison and become a super-terrorist following the finale of TheShield.

* TheBookCipher: In "Paradise Lost", Jonas uses a book code from [[spoiler: the poem ''ParadiseLost'' to communicate to Molly that he has arrived safely in Panama.]]

** Addressed in "Gone Missing" when one of the main members begins to be haunted by the people he's killed and nearly blows a mission to kill another. He learns that most members of the UNIT go through a similar experience until the finally come to the conclusion that they like killing (or some similar rationalization).

* WarIsHell: Because counterterrorism is the main focus of the series, there is not a lot of room for more glamorous work and badassery. Missions can, and do, go wrong resulting in horrific injuries and/or death that has to be relived in excruciating detail once the team is back home to find the operational errors. Operators who are captured can be tortured or worse. More stealth, less shooting, and lots of Army and civilian politicking. On top of that the military doesn't dictate public policy so the team sometimes has to abandon contacts and resources even if they know there is no hope for them. Missions that require the team to commit murder in order to protect the country.

* AffablyEvil: Season Four villain Leon Drake

* RetiredBadass: The Unit chaplain mentions that he used to be on the teams before becoming a priest.

* WarIsHell: Because counterterrorism is the main focus of the series, there is not a lot of room for more glamorous work and badassery. Missions can, and do, go wrong resulting in horrific injuries and/or death that has to be relived in excruciating detail once the team is back home to find the operational errors. Operators who are captured can be tortured or worse. More stealth, less shooting, and lots of Army and civilian politicking. On top of that the military doesn't dictate public policy so the team sometimes has to abandon contacts and resources even if they know there is no hope for them.

It averts:
* Main/TheSquadette (Jonas Blaine's daughter joined for the military and got her butterbars, but she'd be years away from The Unit if she ever heads there. In Season 4, the Unit has its first female member, but she spends most of the season stuck at base camp and is surprisingly not annoying even when in the field).
** Kinda yes and no. Throughout the series after Red Cap shows up, they continually answer queries about her with 'There are no women in the unit'. They keep her around after she works undercover along side them (she is the spy, they are the shooters) but we DO see her fight along side the boys. After they [[spoiler: protect her from court martial after she gives flagrantly illegal orders to rescue the team from Syria]] they pretty much had to find a permanent use for her, but it is debatable what she is doing (she goes undercover with them again). Several other women are seen in the command post but none others go on mission, even just as an agent. She is rather in a grey area, although she is always competent and non-whiny. Essentially, YMMV.

* WeAreNotTheWehrmacht: A presentation in the briefing room of "Games of Chance" confirms that the German counterterrorist team were actually from GSG-9, the specialized German police unit, as opposed to a generic special operations outfit.
* YanksWithTanks

* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: Hitler really did have the Spear of Destiny and it made him unstoppable in World War II. Then Patton got his hands on it and it eventually led him to Chile.

* MindScrew: The Lance of Longinus stuff in 'Spear of Destiny', and the Voodoo parts of 'Outsiders'

* WarriorMonk: The monks who protect the Spear of Destiny

* ScrewedByTheNetwork: Rather, screwed by the writer's strike. Season three was cut in half and had to resolve many plot lines ''very'' abruptly, certainly to the point of shark-jumping for many viewers. Probably the largest contributing factor to season four's less than satisfying ratings and ultimate cancelltion.
** Also not helping was the network moving it to Sunday nights at 10 for season four, where football overruns were constantly pushing it halfway out of primetime and its lead-in (''ColdCase'') was about three-quarters of a ratings point weaker than its previous lead-in (''{{NCIS}}'').

* SpyCouple: Bob and Kim, several times.

* InsertGrenadeHere: In one episode, Jonas' father is very belatedly awarded the Silver Star for destroying a [[KoreanWar North Korean]] tank this way.

* BloodOnTheseHands: Bob and Mack both suffer from periodic flashbacks of innocents they killed in previous episodes.