By Kofi Outlaw
“We all go a little crazy sometimes,” I always say. This week on THE UNIT, Bob learned that mantra the hard way.
When the team was assigned to an assassination mission involving a foreign diplomat, they did what they do best: formulated a plan, and prepared to execute (pun intended.) All Bob had to do, as the chosen sniper, was pull the trigger. The snag? Bob was starting to morally unravel, as “ghosts” of his past victims (specifically the young boy he shot down in Lebanon,) began to haunt him.
Back home the Unit wives’ club decided to do something nice for Molly Blane, since her daughter was due to ship out to boot camp. The proposed gift was a scarce photograph of Molly at her high school graduation. Tiffy and Annie drove to Molly’s hometown to retrieve the photo, only to learn that it didn’t exist: A gunmen had stormed Molly’s graduation and shot her father, the principal, in front of her. No one wanted to keep pictures of such a tragic day.
On the mission overseas, Jonas quickly discerned Bob’s moral crisis when Bob made amateur mistakes that threatened to scrub the mission. Jonas assured his young friend that every soldier had to face a moral crisis at one point or another, and that every man had to decide whether to keep on killing, or simply quit the life for good. Watching through the sniper scope, Bob saw a father in a nearby apartment beating up his young son—a sight was sparked more “ghosts” of Bob’s own father abusing him when he was little. When it was time to take the shot, Bob froze… for about a split second before his instincts kicked in, and he effortlessly dropped a rogue assassin in the crowd before that assassin could shoot the diplomat on stage. Before retreating, Bob stopped to deliver a warning to the abusive father: hit his son again and a bullet would be waiting for him. Helping that kid put Bob back in touch with what he loved about his chosen profession, and he went home right as rain.
Not to be deterred by their failure in Molly’s hometown, Tiffy and Annie traveled to the local prison so that Tiffy could meet the man who shot Molly’s father face to face, to get some kind of answer as to why he did the crime. The gunman wasn’t keen on saying much—he was due for parole in a few months. Upon seeing Molly’s photo however, he was all too talkative, revealing that HE was in fact Molly’s father and had been looking for his daughter for years. He assured a mortified Tiffy that when he was paroled, Molly would be his first stop. Tiffy, Annie and Kim then confessed to Molly what they had wrought. Furious, but ever level-headed, Molly explained that yes, her father had been the killer, a mean drunk who got jealous and shot the principal, who had been her mentor. With the story all laid out, Molly made the girls swear to never again dig into the past, and, more importantly, to never tell Jonas what they’d learned.
For once, it was the Unit wives’ storyline that was more interesting to me. The whole ‘crisis of conscience’ thing has been so overdone, and held little intrigue. The scene where Tiffy confronted Molly’s father, however, was extremely tense and riveting. I can’t wait for the old man to get out of prison and show up on Molly and Jonas’ doorstep. DRAMAAAAA!!!!