‘The Unit’ presents two sides of single story

A member of the Delta Force goes down in a white-knuckle episode of “The Unit” (8 p.m., CBS). Sgt. Blane’s (Dennis Haysbert) team comes under fire while extracting an American journalist from an urban terror cell during an Israeli strike on Lebanon.

Their efforts are complicated after a member takes a bullet and their escape helicopter is destroyed. This forces the team take over the apartment of a Lebanese family and establish a temporary hospital.

The tense episode does a fine job of showing the pressure-cooker atmosphere of conducting covert operations in a hostile neighborhood filled with armed militia. But it also asks us to think about that mission and see it from several perspectives.

By setting the action in the apartment of an extended family, including a young boy suffering from seizures, we’re asked to identify with the Lebanese and their feeling of violation, even as we root for Blane’s team to escape.

Not many gung-ho series demand viewers to extend empathy to the “other side.” But how would you feel if armed foreigners crashed your Sunday dinner, held you at gunpoint, threatened your sick child, threw your best china on the floor and let a man bleed all over your dining-room table? How would anyone feel?

¢ “Nova” (7 p.m., PBS, check local listings) recalls the launch of the Sputnik satellite on Oct. 4, 1957, and the political shockwaves that resulted in the space race between the United States and Soviet Union.

Tonight’s other highlights

¢ Murder strikes the institute, making everyone a suspect on “Bones” (7 p.m., Fox).

¢ The CIA needs the grumpy doctor’s help on “House” (8 p.m., Fox).

¢ Alex rallies to defend the family’s rum on “Cane” (9 p.m., CBS).

¢ A formal gown proves fatal on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (9 p.m., NBC).

¢ Denny faces weighty charges on “Boston Legal” (9 p.m., ABC).

¢ Some pay a high price for fame on “Nip/Tuck” (9 p.m., FX).

¢ Sparks fly among the selfish, shallow and siliconed on the third-season opener of “The Real Housewives of Orange County” (9 p.m., Bravo).

Cult choice

A young man (Cary Grant) discovers that his sweet old aunts have become serial mercy killers in the 1944 comedy “Arsenic and Old Lace” (1:15 a.m., TCM).