One of the most important TV shows never to make it to a full season, Profit debuted in 1996 on Fox to great fanfare and overwhelmingly positive reviews and was cancelled after four of the nine episodes produced had been aired, due to overwhelmingly negative viewing figures. The American audience wasnt ready for a network TV show about an amoral sociopathic yuppie, killing, blackmailing, lying and just plain tricking his way to the top of a multinational company. Raised by an abusive father in farming country, forced to live in a large cardboard box with a hole cut in the side so that he could watch television, the boy who would become Jim Profit escaped by tying his father to the bed and setting fire to the house. When he reappears, hes a changed man. Masquerading as a highly-educated, well-groomed executive, the newly christened Profit begins to insinuate himself into the corporate hierarchy of Gracen & Gracen, a large but unethical multinational conglomerate, by fair means or foul. As select people begin to suspect Profits actions and motivations and dig a little deeper into his background, Profit begins to move beyond corporate skullduggery, lying and blackmail into outright criminal acts and violence All the things that turned the 1996 audience off Profit are the things that have made Dexter, The Shield, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Sopranos and Sons Of Anarchy massive worldwide hits. Dexter, in particular, is eerily similar in execution right down to the voiceover narrating Profits interior monologue. The show was just ahead of its time. The perennially underrated Adrian Pasdar plays Profit with a quiet, predatory grace: hes brilliant as the sinister mystery man hellbent on taking revenge against an entire corporation for his horrendous childhood, and ruining anyone who gets in his way. Why does he pick on G&>? The box he was raised in was a G&> shipping box. As a result, Profit both hates and loves the company, wanting to do well and join the team, but wanting to tear the family-run concern down as well. And despite living in a luxurious apartment, Jim goes to sleep every night lying on his side in the foetal position, naked, in the G&> cardboard box he was kept in as a child https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca8B9lUxicU
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
