Jim Profit begins his day like any other. He wakes up and peers through the glass separating his secret room from the living room. Jim boldly strides naked across his apartment. After showering and getting dressed, he has a balanced breakfast. First on his agenda is attending the funeral of the man he'll be replacing at work. He confronts his new boss' secretary outside the church and proceeds to blackmail her into allowing him the use of the boss' computer. At work the nextday, he endears himself to his co-workers with a passionate speech about trust and loyalty while secretly leaking confidential merger information to the press. Upon reaching his office, he finds a sexy blonde waiting for him, who kisses him like an old lover. His response is simply, "Hi, Mom."
And this is all before the first commercial break of the pilot.
I mentioned John McNamara, creator of Eyes and Vengeance Unlimited, in my last column. As much as I loved both shows, his crowning achievement will always be Profit, the short-lived Fox series he created with David Greenwalt.
Profit was well ahead of its time, with a singular draw: a lead character with no redeeming qualities at all. Of his character, McNamara said on the DVD release, "Imagine the ocean is full of dolphins, and Profit is a new kind of shark that looks just like a dolphin. He could maneuver among the dolphins. The other dolphins would say 'Welcome!' in dolphin talk, and then one night, he'd start eating them."
McNamara and Greenwalt spent much of the '80s writing for film, but segued into television, which they found freeing. Greenwalt started working for Stephen J. Cannell Productions, where he wrote episodes of series such as The Hat Squad and The Commish. The two of them wanted to create a show together, with a villain at the center, and found special inspiration in a touring production of Shakespeare's Richard III, starring Ian McKellen. The McKellen version of Richard III was later adapted by McKellen for film in 1995, and famously restaged the play as being set in an alternate 1930s England under a fascist regime. After seeing this production, the two television writers were convinced that the themes of Richard III could be comfortably transposed to a modern setting. Noting a lack of decent corporate dramas since Dallas and Dynasty had ended, McNamara and Greenwalt chose to center their show on corporate culture.
Stephen Cannell and Kim Lemasters, the president of Cannell Productions, loved the pitch. They optioned the idea and commissioned a pilot script, which McNamara and Greenwalt brought to every network. The executive they pitched at CBS actually threw them out of the office upon hearing about the aforementioned mother-son kiss (which became a stepmother-son kiss). But Robert Greenblatt at Fox was enthusiastic about it, and a deal was made--which was reversed days later, after new leadership at Fox found the show too dark. A year passed, and McNamara moved on to write for Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. But Lemasters continued to fight for Profit, and took the script to Fox again after another regime change. This time, the network accepted.
Casting Jim Profit turned out to be the hardest part. After going through almost every young actor in Los Angeles and New York, McNamara and Greenwalt happened upon Adrian Pasdar. A native Pennsylvanian, Pasdar was best known at the time for his role as Chipper in Top Gun, and a lead role in Kathryn Bigelow's cult vampire thriller, Near Dark. He was initially reluctant to read for the role of Profit, as he was certain he wouldn't be able to nail the character. But network executives were impressed by his audition, as were McNamara and Greenwalt. Around Pasdar, the producers fashioned a solid cast that included Lisa Zane (Freddy's Dead) as a corporate head of security and Profit's most doggest foe, Keith Szarabajka (The Equalizer, Angel) and the corporation's sardonic CEO, Scott Paulin (Captain America) as the unfailingly ethical president of acquisitions and Lisa Blount (Prince of Darkness) as Profit's scheming stepmother.
But it was Pasdar who truly shined. His Profit was a study in duality: the charismatic co-worker and friend who lent an eager ear to others' troubles, and the cold pragmatist who would seduce his friend's wife and get his boss sent to prison. Jim did anything not only to advance, but also raise himself from squalid circumstances. As revealed in the pilot, Jim Profit was born Jimmy Stakowski, who burned his abusive father alive at the age of 15 and left home. Applying himself to his studies, Jim established himself as a hard worker with uncanny attention to detail and a quick, cutting wit. He went to work for Gracen & Gracen, one of the world's largest corporations, and threw himself into the quest to become president of acquisitions. Having been raised in a Gracen & Gracen box with nothing but a television to keep him company, Profit kept two traits from his childhood: a hatred of television (lending itself well to plenty of ironic gags about the evils of the tube), and a compulsion to sleep naked in the same box every night, kept in his bedroom (possibly the most iconic image from the series).
Jim Profit wasn't the first popular champion of greed on TV. After all, the '80s gave us Dallas' J.R. Ewing and Dynasty's Blake Carrington and Alexis Colby. But Profit was the first time the bad guy was front and center. Often, Jim Profit broke the fourth wall and shared his plans and insights with the audience, as inspired by Richard III. Just as often, something would go wrong, requiring Jim's sharp mind to work fast in finding a way out. Where J.R. and Alexis were characters viewers loved to hate, here was a bad guy viewers could somehow get behind. Profit lied to and cheated everyone, yet he was always honest about himself and his world with the audience.
Profit premiered on April 8, 1996, and I remember watching it that night as a fifth grader, finding myself in awe of such a carelessly malevolent and charming character. Critics agreed with me. The New York Daily news called Jim Profit "the most unremittingly evil character ever to serve as the protagonist and principal voice on a network TV series." But most other viewers felt otherwise. Ratings dipped dramatically during the two-hour pilot, and after three more episodes, Fox pulled the plug. It's a shame, because the show was amazing while it lasted and was headed into juicier territory. For a long time, the show epitomized the label "Brilliant but Canceled" (coined by the Trio network), and in 2005, Anchor Bay released the complete series on DVD.
John McNamara, of course, later created Vengeance Unlimited and Eyes, as well as the short-lived The Fugitive remake and Fastlane. David Greenwalt co-created Angel with Joss Whedon. In an interesting twist, Greenwalt wanted to introduce Jim Profit into the series as one of Wolfram & Hart's demonic Senior Partners! Sadly, Pasdar wasn't available, and Greenwalt later stepped down from Angel to oversee the religious adventure series Miracles. As for Adrian Pasdar, he went on to play more virtuous characters on the shows Mysterious Ways and Judging Amy, before landing his biggest role to date, as Nathan Petrelli on Heroes. Funny how these things work.
Of course, the 21st century television landscape is littered with gangsters, corrupt cops, narcissists and killers as leads, from Tony Soprano to Vic Mackey, Christian Troy to Dexter Morgan. I like to think they owe a huge debt to Jim Profit, who showed us that on television, it really is okay to cheer for the bad guy.
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