Jonas Blane

Jonas Blane
The Unit character
Sergeant Major Jonas Blane
First Episode Appearance	First Responders
Final Episode Appearance	Unknown soldier finale
Character played by	Dennis Haysbert
In-universe information
Alias	Snake Doctor
Nickname	Top/Snakedoctor/Snakedoc
Gender	Male
Title	Sergeant Major
Occupation	United States Army Special Forces
Spouse	Molly Blane
Children	Betsy Blane
Nationality	American

Sergeant Major Jonas Blane (United States Army, callsign: Snake Doctor) is a fictional character on the CBS television series The Unit. He is portrayed by Dennis Haysbert. In most cases, he is the main protagonist in the series.

Character Overview

Jonas (often referred to by his men as "Top") is Alpha Team's Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge. Blane is a former Ranger and Special Forces-qualified senior NCO, leading Alpha Team of the 1st Special Actions Group (official cover as the "303rd Logistical Studies Group"). He is competent in Arabic, French, German, Persian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Blane and his wife, Molly (Regina Taylor), have one daughter, Betsy (Angela Wainwright).

His sidearm of choice is a Kimber Custom TLE II or Kimber Warrior .45ACP Model 1911A1-frame Semi-Automatic, but as an off-duty concealed carry weapon, he uses a Smith & Wesson .380 pocket pistol. In tropical climates he wears a distinctive Australian slouch hat, which he considers a lucky charm. He is a confidant of 2 different U.S. Presidents who both use him for personal secret missions outside the normal chain of command. His hobbies seem to be collecting antique militaria and fishing. Outside of his teammates, his best friend is Ron Cheals, a former member of the Unit who was crippled during a mission and forced into retirement. He is also a friend of Tom Ryan, but this is stretched by Ryan's behavior in the later seasons.

During the series pilot of The Unit, Blane takes down a private jet with five terrorists on board, incurring the wrath of the FBI for violating the Posse Comitatus Act. However, Blane and his team are let off the hook. At the end of the 1st episode, when a mechanical speaking toy repeats an Arabic phrase, he pivots around and fires 2 rounds from his pistol into a bedroom mirror, a reaction presumably caused by stress. When the incident is uncovered, his wife states that she fired the rounds in an attempt to eliminate a rat.

While in the Balkans, the war criminal who Blane's team apprehends gets a good look at Blane. When the criminal escapes from U.N. custody, he tracks Blane back to Fort Griffith, the 303rd's headquarters. When Alpha Team leaves post to celebrate the marriage of unit commander Colonel Tom Ryan, the war criminal kills a few workers and injures Mrs. Ryan and Blane.

A few months later (during the second season), after being assigned to active duty once again, while in Pakistan, Blane and his team prevent the spread of weaponized smallpox by members of al-Qaeda. His team is also responsible for the downfall of the world's foremost illegal weapons dealer. When a member of his team, Hector Williams is killed during a mission to Beirut, Jonas conducts an unauthorized mission of personal vengeance on those he holds responsible.

In season 4 Jonas leads his team in the rescue of the president-elect from an assassination attempt and later works to destroy the terrorist network responsible, including thwarting a chemical weapons attack on a small California town. When his daughter Betsy Blaine is captured in Iraq whilst serving as an army officer there, he leads a private mission to rescue her and succeeds in doing so. In the last few episodes of the season, Jonas foils a nuclear attack on Washington. At the end of Season 4, Molly decides to live away from Jonas after he refuses to retire for her.

In the provisional storyline outlined by the writers for season 5, Jonas would begin an affair with fellow Unit member Bridget Sullivan. When she is killed on a mission mid-season, the combat stress that affected him in the first episode resurfaces. Leaving Mack Gerhardt in charge of the team, Jonas works through his feelings with the help of his daughter and father, both of whom also experience posttraumatic stress disorder (his father, also a soldier, was awarded the Silver Star medal during the Korean War); the storyline allows the series to address the issue of the treatment of traumatised soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The series would end with Jonas' reuniting with Molly and retiring from the army to help her in her real estate business. According to remarks made by executive producer Shawn Ryan to The Futon Critic: "Jonas was finally going to be seeing his run end", and " The final season was going to be, I figured the fifth season was going to be the last... It was going to be a long, sort of final mission for Jonas. He's not medically cleared, Mac has to go in and sort of change the medical records so that Jonas can keep on [going on missions]. We had a whole thing planned, it was going to be good."

Jonas' personality is that of a hard taskmaster. He effortlessly commands the respect of his men and is extremely patriotic, pushing himself hardest of all. However this self-centeredness sometimes alienates people outside The Unit in a detrimental manner. He is also very ruthless, never hesitating to kill in cold blood and nearly always putting the mission first. On three occasions, he has tortured enemies for information by shooting them in the kneecap. In the course of the series, Jonas kills at least 58 people. His medal ribbons include a Bronze Star and Purple Heart, although they were, presumably, awarded before he joined The Unit, whose members do not seem to receive decorations for their heroism. He also wears the Kuwait Liberation medal, indicating that he began his military career as early as the late 1980s.

Temporary Dismantling of The Unit

At the end of season 2, Blane is targeted by the Central Intelligence Agency due to unnamed crimes that he may have committed. These are mentioned to Bob Brown by a CIA handler who wishes to recruit Brown to the Agency. After returning from a mission in Cyprus, Blane and his team find that the United States Army Criminal Investigation Division is investigating Alpha Team, and has shut down the 303rd completely. After finding that the CIA is behind the investigation, Blane fakes his abduction and disappears to Panama City. His official duty status is "Missing", though in reality he is AWOL.

The Season 3 premiere has him changing his appearance by shaving his head and growing a goatee (similar to Dennis Haysbert's famous character in the Major League series, Pedro Cerrano). Blane is found out by Brown, who has him in sight through the scope of a sniper rifle. Brown is then surprised by a gun to his head by Charles Grey, who himself had gone AWOL upon the Unit's being shut down. Grey took Brown to Blane's boat, where Brown insisted he was not trying to kill Blane, despite being caught by Grey in a compromising position. Blane tests Brown by asking him to put a spoonful of rice cereal into his mouth and then spit it out, if Brown were not trying to kill him. Brown did this successfully and Jonas believed him, citing that when humans lie, saliva is not produced in sufficient quantity to spit out rice.

Blane, through his networked contacts, learned about how the Oil Minister of Venezuela was assassinated. Earlier in Season 2, Blane was ordered to kill the oil minister, which order Colonel Ryan had a change of heart about, after talking to a Congressman of another political party and realizing the assassination was a conspiracy by the Big Oil lobby to get rid of an actor in the oil market whom they could not control. Blane and his local CIA contact (whom he slept with in order to preserve his cover) were eventually found out, and Blane barely escaped with his life. It was this contact that Blane sought to find, to figure out what happened to the Oil Minister, whom a Congressional Review panel was led to believe had been killed by Blane, by showing them doctored security footage.

Shortly after Blane found his contact in her apartment, they were visited by a CIA assassin. They barely escaped and decided to link up with a CIA agent who was her contact. During the drive to the agent's house, Blane's contact revealed to Blane that she was supposed to obtain a thermal imaging map for the CIA. She told Blane that she informed the CIA that he was the one with the map, so that they wouldn't kill her for knowing about it. She explained that she used him as the scapegoat because she felt the Unit was secure enough to not have the government go after it, and she told him that the map was in a secure safe deposit box in Dallas. When they reached the agent's house, the CIA agent shot her and was then subsequently killed by Blane. Blane, assuming the agent's identity, doctored his passport and returned to the United States with coffins carrying both bodies.

After returning Stateside, Blane knew he had to use a woman to pose as the girl in order to retrieve the map. He correctly deduced that Bob Brown's wife, Kim, was going to be in Texas staying with her parents and contacted her. When Kim went to retrieve the document while Blane waited outside, he was approached by a local police officer who suspected him of being a jewel thief. Blane gave the officer the doctored passport of the CIA agent he had killed, as Kim was returning with the documents. When the officer discovered the passport was a fake, he tried to take Blane into custody. Blane eventually struggled free before taking the document from Kim and driving off in Kim's car, making it look as if he and Kim didn't know each other.

Blane later met up with Grey, and Brown and figured out the map was of a location in the ocean off the coast of South America. When the three got there, Blane uncovered a CIA dump site of human bodies.

The Unit later found out that the bodies were of prisoners at the terrorist detention camp on board a modified oil tanker (which constantly stays at sea in international waters). A rogue group of CIA agents, who had ties to the military-industrial complex, had been illegally killing the terrorist prisoners and dumping them at this location. The Oil Minister had found out about the CIA body dump, and thus the rogue group put in motion the orders for the Oil Minister's assassination that The Unit had originally been assigned.

After rescuing Hector Williams and linking up with Colonel Tom Ryan, Blane and the rest of the Unit (without Mack Gerhardt—who was being tortured by the rogue CIA officers—devised a plan to get Mack returned safely. Ryan's wife, Charlotte Ryan, had links to important people in the military-industrial complex who wanted to give Tom Ryan a lucrative job, and they used this opportunity to meet one such man in person at a public dinner, where The Unit ambushed him. The two parties struck a deal, allowing the Unit to be reinstated and Mack Gerhardt to be returned safely, in return for the Unit's silence about the CIA gravesite.

Badges, Ribbons, & Insignias

• Special Forces Tab and Insignia
• Ranger Tab
• Combat Infantryman Badge
• Parachutist Badge
• Air Assault Badge
• Pathfinder Badge

• Distinguished Service Cross
• Army Distinguished Service Medal
• Defense Superior Service Medal
• Legion of Merit
• Bronze Star Medal
• Purple Heart
• Meritorious Service Medal
• Joint Service Commendation Medal
• Army Commendation Medal
• Army Good Conduct Medal
• National Defense Service Medal
• Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal
• Southwest Asia Service Medal
• Kosovo Campaign Medal
• Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal
• Global War on Terrorism Service Medal
• Humanitarian Service Medal
• NCO Professional Development Ribbon
• Army Service Ribbon
• Overseas Service Ribbon
• Kuwait Liberation Medal (Saudi Arabia)
• Kuwait Liberation Medal (Kuwait)

• Army Presidential Unit Citation
• Army Meritorious Unit Commendation
• Army Valorous Unit Citation

See also

• List of The Unit episodes
• Delta Force

External links

• Jonas Blane at IMDB
• Jonas Blane at TV.com

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