‘The Unit’ carries out its mission

At the beginning of this season of “The Unit” (CBS, 9 p.m. Tuesday), its third, the special-forces outfit at the show’s center was in turmoil, the victim of a vast government conspiracy. Terrorist suspects were being taken from Guantanamo Bay and killed, then dumped in the north Pacific Ocean. The Unit was to be scapegoated. One by one, they ran, or were caught. Either way, they were in bad shape.

But the Unit is nothing if not resilient. After a torturous interrogation at the hands of the CIA, Mack Gerhardt’s (Max Martini) face was an abstract impressionist landscape of bruises and scars. But like all great David Mamet characters -- Mamet is a creator and executive producer of “The Unit” -- Mack is droll even under fire. Finally released, he was asked by his superior Jonas Blane (Dennis Haysbert) what got him through. He replied, gingerly, “I was thinking about the senior prom . . . . I was thinking about America.”

Oh, but this is not your president’s patriotism. “The Unit” strives for security on the home front as assiduously as out in the world, sometimes more so. The idyllic Fort Griffith, where the Unit resides, is like something out of a Disney Channel show. Closer to Wisteria Lane, maybe, but peaceful all the same. When the men return home, they’re wiped clean, purged of their sins. By and large, they’re allowed clean lives (apart from Mack, with his alcoholic, abusive and adulterous tendencies).

But what country does the Unit serve? Or more specifically, what principles? As on “24,” the only ideology at play on “The Unit” is that of victory at any cost. There are evil forces to be reckoned with, and defeating them is all that matters.

That our government should sometimes be an obstacle to that end is little surprise; for the Unit, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness matter more as personal goals.

To reunite the squad, the members must (at least for now) become accomplices to the government’s scheme. Their silence buys them the right to get back to reckoning and to keep their home lives, their facades of normalcy, intact. But at what price self-righteousness? Why fight at all?

There’s certainly plenty of skepticism at play on “The Unit.” While the squad is being undermined, its commanding officer, Col. Tom Ryan (Robert Patrick), is reminded sternly by his conniving wife that true power in this country resides in the hands of six or so families. Later, a CIA operative reminds team member Bob Brown (Scott Foley) that “real power isn’t concerned with the Oval Office -- it rents the Oval Office out.”

But though it hints at skepticism, “The Unit” rarely allows it to detract from the prime directive. The battle between the on-the-lam Unit and the CIA spooks determined to capture them made for some of the most gripping television of this season -- Jonas shaved bald and in hiding, Mack’s torture, the team’s reunion through kidnapping and subterfuge. And the subsequent episodes have been a return to form for the show, which slipped somewhat last season with ancillary plot arcs.

Room for (character) development

Some problems remain -- the two remaining members of the squad, Hector Williams (Demore Barnes) and Charles Grey (Michael Irby), remain emotionally underexplored. And while the Unit routinely saves those who can’t save themselves, not all victims are created equal -- last week’s self-important and melodramatic Ivory Coast Embassy workers evoked little sympathy (do-gooders tend to suffer particularly hackneyed portrayals on “The Unit”).

But the relationship between Brown and his wife, Kim (Audrey Marie Anderson), pregnant with the couple’s third child, promises to become more interesting as she pursues more opportunities outside the house. She has become the most complex of the Unit wives, taking her place alongside the tragic Tiffy Gerhardt (Abby Brammell) and the sometimes sinister Molly Blane (Regina Taylor).

And the main characters are improbably tough, and dry, even when they’re being sympathetic: “You’ve been open more often than Tallulah Bankhead,” Mack gingerly tells a mule who’s been transporting a computer chip inside his shoulder in this week’s episode.

Last week, Jonas and Molly’s daughter Betsy (Angel Wainwright) decided to drop out of college and enlist in the Army. Jonas responds the only way he knows how -- with a daylong excursion into the woods that included hiking, rock climbing and, natch, Betsy saving Jonas from a rattlesnake by shooting it. It was positively romantic.

“I’m going to like the Army,” Betsy later tells her mother.

But one arched, unimpressed eyebrow from Molly is all it takes to remind that eager patriotism comes with a price.