A Cinephile’s Critiques

Produced by David Greenwalt and John McNamara, 1996 (Color, 4:3, Stereo, 1×90′ 7×45′)
Starring Adrian Pasdar, Lisa Zane, Lisa Blount, Lisa Darr, and Keith Szarabajka

Jim Profit is a psychopath. But that’s okay with him, because it makes him a remarkably good executive. Profit understands what matters in the corporate world: promotions — at least up to the point where the press might take note of him — and stock prices. People only matter if they can contribute to either of those things. If they can’t, in some way or another, then they’re not worth considering. If they can, and they get in the way of those things, well then, Profit will just have to do something about them, won’t he?

None of the other executives notice how sick Profit is because he fits right in with the crowd. They’re all sociopaths, after all. At least the good ones are. All Profit really has to do to maintain his cover is make sure that the extra spin he adds to things can’t be traced directly back to him.

But the head of corporate security can’t help but notice that the amount of spin in the executive suite has increased since Profit came onboard. She’s perfectly accustomed to seeing managers stab each other in the back, get investigated for crimes, and collapse from cardiac arrests, but the bodies have really been piling up recently. She’s convinced that Profit is even more disturbed than her other bosses, and she’s going to find some way to corner him.

However, the real tension in this show doesn’t come from Profit’s fencing with corporate security. The truth is, security doesn’t stand a chance against Profit. He’s too thorough, devious, and cold-blooded to feel threatened by people. Profit’s real enemy is himself, because while Profit may be cunning, he’s hardly smart. He’s so destructive that his schemes keep boxing him in, and while he’s quite capable of controlling or removing the people who notice things he doesn’t want them to notice, some of them keep bouncing back, and this boxes him in even further.

The strength of Profit is in its ironies. Profit believes he’s a smart, all-American success story, but we see a psychotic stand-in for everything that’s wrong with corporate America. Profit is sure he’s charming and lovable, but we’re only watching him to see how he’ll worm his way through the messes he creates, and how low he’ll go to create some more wiggle-room for himself. Profit opens and closes his stories with homilies about hard work, perseverance, and adversity, but we’re astonished that anyone could interpret those maxims the way he does. Profit knows he’s well-adjusted to his environment, but we see a chillingly real metaphor for the tragedy of his life at the end of each segment, when we’re shown exactly how he manages to sleep at night.

If this seems a little grim, that’s because it is. But it’s also amusing. And if Profit’s latest scheme makes you too uncomfortable to appreciate the humor, then the actors will play-it-up a little to remind you that, yes, it’s only a story, so, yes, it’s okay to grin at this monster as well as shudder at him.