Monday, May 11, 2009

"The Unit" Location on Mother's Day

(GPS: N 34 03.855, W 118 27.350)

Here is an odd one. I have to give credit to my mother for notifying me of this one. For Mother's Day my brother and I decided to take our mother to Pink's Hot Dogs. She likes to go there so we decided to take her. I have been there a few times, and somewhere down the line I may write something about it.

After eating there I wanted to head to the Los Angeles National Cemetery. I wanted to see if I could find a few headstones of some historical people. I will share a few in one of the next blogs I do. As we were leaving my mother pointed out a large granite oblelisk and wanted to know what it said on it. It reads, "In Memory of the Men Who Offered Their Lives in Defense of Their Country."

Monday afternoon I was told by my mother that the strangest coincidence happened the night before. She was watching the CBS show The Unit (Season 4, Episode 22: Unknown Soldier). The climatic scene was supposed to be at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC. Like this:
Okay, I see the Washington Monument and the Capital Building in the background. Mom realized something was not quite right though. Those landmarks in the background look to be added into the picture and we are not in Washington D.C. at all. Mom saw the following monument in the show:
Yeah, it was sort of suprising to see that. I do know that the new G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra is supposed to have a scene at this cemetery, but I do not watch much TV these days so I had no clue that show was going to be right where we were earlier.
In the climatic scene, the above car and open gravesite you see in the first picture are crucial to a happy ending. I think the name of this road is called "San Juan Hill" and we drove on it on our way out. Here is my picture as we went by.
It is quite interesting how they filmed the ending to this show so if you have some time you should watch episode that is now online. Our two heroes run down the cemetery after the crisis. You can see where the car was and the monument in the background. If I truly wanted to I could probably go back and pinpoint every part of the final scenes at the cemetery.
Again, I have to thank Mom for this one on Mother's Day. She told me that she probably would not have recognized it had she not been there earlier and made the connection with what she saw on tv. Let me list the TV show link and the episode link if you want to watch the episode:

The Unit (Website)

Unknown Soldier (Whole Episode)

Graveyard Bust Up (A short clip of the key part of the episode)