TELEVISION . . . PROFIT: 'Profit,' which debuted on Fox last week (Mondays,
9:00 EST) is perhaps the first show on television to ever build itself entirely
around a character as resolutely insidious as Jim Profit. A thriller, it
is also the first series to set itself in the shadowy recesses of American
corporate culture. Profit, played with a slippery chill and eerie aggressive
whisper by Adrian Pasdar, is a young man of untrammeled ambition, of unfathomable
turpitude, but what he's up against, the labyrinthine universe of big business,
may be just as pernicious. "Profit is such incomparable television because
it works as well as a suspenseful drama as it does an intriguing piece of
social commentary," says TIME's Ginia Bellafante. "Creators and writers David
Greenwalt and John McNamara have done their best to imbue the show with a
sense of mythology. As a junior vice president at the fictions Fortune 100
company Gracen & Gracen, Profit ingeniously blackmails, murders and
manipulates to remove obstacles and enemies, but his ultimate goal is unclear.
We know only that it has nothing to do with money or obvious authority. The
operations of Gracen & Gracen, 'a family company' are also shrouded in
mystery. They simply 'acquire' -- businesses, information, and of course,
souls."
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