potentiality_26

Best pilot episode

Oh, boy is this one ever Profit.  If you ask me what my favorite episode of Profit is, I'll probably tell you it's "Chinese Box", because it's such a fascinating Gail-centric episode, and even the title is a hilarious joke if you're paying attention, and it's generally fabulous.  That said, the Profit pilot is, in my view, the perfect pilot.  A lot of the time shows will need the pilot- sometimes even several episodes- to find their footing, and so sometimes the pilot seems to be a slightly different show than the one you end up watching.  Watching the Profit pilot- watching, really, the first ten to fifteen minutes of the Profit pilot- will tell you if this is a) the best damn show you ever saw in your life or b) the spawn of Satan.  That's why this is known in certain circles as the show the entire Bible Belt turned off before the first commercial break.

It's an hour and a half of sheer nail-biting awesome, and if the last few moments of it will hit you like a punch in the gut.  I love it so much.

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Your guilty pleasure show

I've already said that I'd like to call this The Wild Wild West and have done with it- because a show that's imperfect, but a huge amount of fun, and that I sometimes like against my better judgement, is how I define a guilty pleasure show- but it really is just my favorite.  Otherwise, if I like a show I like it, and I don't really waste time apologizing for it.

So, I'm going a little out of the box by doing Profit here, because I know just how good it was.  But here's the thing- I watched the making-of documentary and audio commentaries on the DVDs religiously, and I've never forgotten something Adrian Pasdar remarked on the audio commentary of the pilot.  He said that the director had told him- and he took it very much to heart- that the only difference between a comedy and a horror movie is the music.  This piece of advice really is the spirit of Profit in a nutshell, and it's why I call it my guilty pleasure show- it's a psychological thriller and a dark comedy all once, and most of the time I find myself laughing at things I might well cry or cringe over under other circumstances because the writers have put me so firmly on the wrong side of so many issues.  I love watching Jim do the crazy, awful things he does, and yet I kind of feel bad about it at the same time.

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A show that should never have been canceled

I think even the best of shows can be in danger of staying too long at the party (to quote a Justified showrunner on why they plan to wrap-up the series at season six), so I'm interpreting this to mean a show that was canceled before its a time.  I like a lot of shows like that, but this spot is definitely going to Profit, because not only was it a spectacular show that deserved more than eight episodes, it almost certainly would have had a long and healthy run if it had aired five to ten years later on a channel like FX.

( Cut, for me still having more Profit feels than I thought I did )

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