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Regina Taylor, The Unit: Sudden Flight

Oct 7, 2008 01:30 PM ET
by Regina Taylor

"Sudden Flight" continues the unimaginable plotline that began last week. America's president-elect has been assassinated. Determined to reel in the terrorists, the team boards an international flight using a scientist with secrets as bait. Meanwhile the team wives drop anchor in a new home with new identities. Missing what they've left behind, the adjustment is hard. Kim, especially — missing her two older children and a newborn — tries to get back "home."

As we came back to work in July on this new season, the writers' stike that slowed the industry earlier in the year was resolved along with a new agreement with the Directors Guild. The actors returned without a new contract, and to date there is an impasse. People are tense waiting for a resolution, and many projects have been suspended. There are rumors that SAG will turn over the question of whether to strike to its members any day. There is an uneasiness, a tension as to which way to turn to secure our future.

Certainly these are uneasy times in this country as the economy crashes and we search for weapons of mass destruction and we look outside and within as pundents argue over who's to blame.... We look for a change. Who's going to turn things around? Even as we hurdle forward into the unknown, into the unpredictable and unprecedented future, the question keeps circling back around to: What are we willing to sacrifice to get back to where we want to go?

"And the times, they are a-changing."

Over the break I traveled. Madrid, an ancient city, it has become the center of Spain. It is a non-stop modern urban bustling wonderland. The energy of Madrid is something like New York on Red Bull. Still, people stop in mid-stride between 2 and 4 — lunch time. Shops close, cell-phones are turned off, the pulse slows as people gather in restaurants with friends, at large tables surrounded with family. The meal is leisurely, the conversations animated (yes, people still smoke publicly with no apology), and the food is simple and good. Grilled meats, fried seafood, the sumptuous paella, or tapas with noble regional wines. Time stands still. And the national mantra is heard humming from every mouth — "Life is to be enjoyed."

Then there is the siesta, before people take to the narrow winding inclined cobblestone streets again at full trot. I kept pace, stopping at churches parks and museums. Was struck dumb by Picasso's masterpiece, Guernica. The first time I could actually hear a painting, standing in the museum — staring at this mural on war — inspired by the Nazi German bombing of Guernica, Spain. It speaks of the tragedies and the sacrifices that war inflicts time and time again.

Dinner begins around 9, and lingers through midnight.. The crowds continue strong and loud, out on the streets searching for after-dinner entertainment before they begin to think about wandering home well after 3 in the morning.

With this schedule I soon find out why the siesta in the middle of the day is necessary.

Taking the train from Madrid to the more languid port-city of Barcelona is a time of reverie. The landscape is of verdant rolling hills, sensuous and dreamlike and my mind rolls back to the words of Miguel de Cervantes Saaveda, as I imagine Don Quixote and other Spanish writers I vaguely understood till now.

Barcelona is breezy and calm. I turn my mind to the askew vision of the architect Guardi, the artist Miro, and lose myself navigating through Los Rambles. I keep my Spanish translation book handy. My tongue is rough, tripping over the rolling Rs, though I am hypnotized by their sexy Castillian lisps. I struggle to be understood. I have a new appreciation for anyone who leaves everything behind to start new in a foreign country. I'm intrigued by how well versed average Spanish citizens are on the subjects of politics, economics and culture in the USA. And my mouth drops every time I exchange the diminishing dollar into Euros. I enjoy the time exploring how another place thinks, dreams, laughs.... I have a great appreciation for the differences and the universal wants and needs. Traveling is a sacred time. What anchors me as I lose myself in traveling is knowing that I can return home, to those things that name me, though I return a different person redefined by the journey.

Over the summer break Scott Foley worked on an NBC miniseries, The Last Templar, costarring Mira Sorvino and Victor Garber. Scott recalls, "We shot two months in Montreal and one month in Morocco. The first two weeks in Morocco was in the desert, and the last on the ocean in a small town called Essaouira

"Essaouira was formerly known as Mogador a corruption of a Berber word for 'safe anchorage,'" he continues. "At one point or another each member of the cast and crew was laid up with some sort of stomach ailment. I had a really great time, although I don't need to go back to Morocco anytime soon. At one point it was 52 degrees Celsius — that's hot!"

Scott also wrote, produced and directed a web series called Who Cut the Cake? Scott enthuses, "It's really, really funny. I cast a lot of great actors and used most of the crew from The Unit. We had a great time. I spent a lot of time editing it and I am really proud of it. It should be on the Internet within the next few weeks."

Scott's favorite part about the break? "I got to spend a lot of time with my wife (Marika Dominiczyk). Working can really take me away from her, so any amount of extended time we get to spend together is really great."

The last time I saw Sharon Watson, who penned "Sudden Flight," was at a writers' rally during the strike. I've talked to her on the phone since we've been back. She drops in on the set on the day we shoot the scenes of Kim trying to get back to her newborn.

I don't recognize Sharon at first. Once willowy, she is now very round. I politely wait for her to offer that she is pregnant. She doesn't know if she's carrying a boy or girl though, she's done sonograms. She wonders at the fact that each time she has gone in, her little one has presented self with crossed legs, keeping secret their full identity.

No wonder to me. Sharon, a writer of espionage, her dreams seeping through amniotic fluids, influences her child to retain their mystery.