Fractionals

So I just got back from watching all but the last two episodes of Profit at Wes' place. I had seen three of the four episodes that originally aired on Fox back in 1996, but we got through six of the eight that were filmed.

It's a pretty horrifying series - after all, it's about a viciously immoral business man with a... close relationship with his step-mother and a sharklike drive for power. There's plenty of black humour and it's very tightly plotted (while mostly keeping on the right side of the line between intricate and confusing), but ultimately I think the most fascinating thing about it is the way it exploits the power of the narrator (there may be some official technical term for this, but I don't know it).

Despite the fact that he's fairly unambiguously horrible, everyone who watches the show (and doesn't instantly recoil) winds up rooting for Jim Profit, at least a little. And not because he had an awful childhood, either - you see things from his perspective and its his projects that you're put into the position of wanting to see succeed. Despite the fact that in real life you'd be desperate for Jeffrey Sykes and Joanne Meltzer to nail him to the wall, he's so entertaining (albeit occasionally queasily so) that you hope they keep screwing up. It doesn't help that Sykes takes seemingly as much joy from the pure game of cut-and-thrust that they play as Profit does.

My favourite of the episodes we watched was the last one, "Chinese Box". Profit's assistant Gail (whom he blackmailed into helping him before he even started this job and has had an interesting working relationship with since) has been slowly getting more and more into helping her boss, partly because he always looks out for her but also, you get the sense, just because it always works out. He's been kind of, sort of grooming her for "better" things for quite a while at this point, and over the course of the episode he tests her quite a bit. And the result is more than a little disturbing; not because she starts enjoying it, that would be a bit too easy, just because she visibly becomes more used to doing the sort of thing Profit would do. Every time there's a little less hesitation, even as she retains fully the knowledge that it's wrong.

Gail is one of my favourite characters, mostly due to the excellent job Lisa Darr did playing her, and the way she handles the events of "Chinese Box" makes it incredibly compelling, especially if you watch the episodes in order. This one story alone says more about the seductive ease of evil than a hundred rigourous, complicated texts have.

I should point out too that Adrian Pasdar is responsible for a good bit of the success of the show thanks to his performance as Jim Profit. The best part is probably the way he allows just enough doubt, surprise and concern show on his face so that you can tell Profit isn't actually as smart as he thinks he is, or as he's made others think he is; he just reacts fast enough and ruthlessly enough that he cons everyone into thinking he's a bit of a genius, even himself.