During the DVD audio commentary for the pilot episode of Fox's acclaimed 1996 corporate satire Profit, co-creator John McNamara (Eyes) amusingly recalls the day he and his writing partner, David Greenwalt (Angel), pitched the pilot's script to a CBS executive. Things appeared to be going smoothly until McNamara and Greenwalt described the end of Act 1: the show's lead—suave, hotshot junior executive Jim Profit—shares a steamy kiss with an attractive, slightly older woman.
Then Profit says to the woman, "Hi, Mom."
"That's the main guy? Okay, you can stop the pitch," the repulsed executive said to the writers. "Get out of my office now."
According to McNamara, the CBS tool, whose name he refuses to divulge during the commentrak, went on to produce popular but dreadful reality shows, "exactly the kind of job he so richly deserves."
That's Profit in a nutshell: too dark and twisted for network TV, which claims to celebrate inventive shows like Profit but ultimately favors—and survives off of—less costly, less challenging reality pap.
In 2005, the network ratings charts are dominated by reality and interchangeable police procedurals, but in 1996, tired Seinfeld and Friends ripoffs ruled the top of the charts. Today, those lame sitcoms have been all but forgotten by cult TV fans. (Remember The Single Guy? I sure as hell don't.) Instead, the shows that I remember the most from 1996 are ones that the Nielsen families ignored: Profit and American Gothic, both witty, multilayered dramas with sociopathic protagonists, and both destined to earn a bigger following on DVD. They were ahead of their time, airing years before audiences were willing to embrace The Sopranos, The Shield and Deadwood, which also feature not-so-virtuous characters as the leads. There's no doubt HBO or FX would have given the time of day to an oddity like Profit.
Released in August, Profit: The Complete Series collects all eight episodes of the creepy series that McNamara has described as "like The Fugitive, if the fugitive killed his wife." Brilliantly underplayed by a predatory-eyed, breathy-voiced Adrian Pasdar, the title character—who sleeps with his kinky Southern-belle stepmother (Lisa Blount) and lies and cheats his way to the top of the corporate ladder at the Gracen & Gracen conglomerate—may be the most polite and well-mannered psychopath in TV history. It's remarkable how Pasdar never once raised his voice during the entire series, and he did so without looking stiff and corny, unlike David Caruso on CSI: Miami.
The real-life case of a serial killer who was raised in a cardboard box served as the inspiration for Profit's twisted upbringing. Even as an adult, Profit continues to sleep inside the same Gracen & Gracen box his abusive father used to imprison him in, as we see whenever each episode closes with a naked Profit curling up into the box—still an unsettling visual after all these years.
While Profit aired for only four weeks, CBS's supernatural drama American Gothic, created by former teen idol-turned-writer Shaun Cassidy and produced by Sam Raimi, got to last a full season despite low ratings. Hitting the stores on October 25 in a three-disc box set, American Gothic swam in the same murky waters as Profit—murder, blackmail, rape, child abuse and incest—and didn't take itself too seriously either.
Gary Cole may forever be remembered as the unctuous Lumbergh in Office Space, but his American Gothic role as Lucas Buck, the manipulative sheriff of Trinity, South Carolina, was an even juicier turn. Like Alec Baldwin and more recently, Vince Vaughn, Cole started out specializing in dead-serious portrayals of jerks and psychos but has revealed a great comic side in later roles, including Buck, who's seen ominously whistling the Andy Griffith Show theme at one point during the pilot.
The sheriff, who may or may not be Satan himself, lives by the credo of "never letting your conscience be your guide." The pilot opens with Buck breaking the neck of mentally ill teenager Merlyn Temple (Sarah Paulson), a murder scene that got the show in trouble with CBS censors. Merlyn spends the rest of the series as a ghost, trying to protect her 10-year-old brother, Caleb (Lucas Black), from his illegitimate father—Buck. American Gothic gets portentous at times—Merlyn and the sheriff battle over Caleb's soul—but the dark humor redeems it.
The nasty behavior of Jim Profit and Sheriff Buck might make you cringe, but they look like saints compared to the scummy network execs who killed their shows.
Profit: The Complete Series, Anchor Bay Home Entertainment, 29.98. American Gothic: The Complete Series, Universal Studios Home Video, 49.98.