Profiler - Season One (1996)

The first season of Profiler gives fans and newcomers a fresh opportunity to view this popular TV series at its best. Premiering on September 21, 1996, the series lasted four seasons as part of NBC's Saturday-night "Thrillogy" lineup, attracting a predominantly female audience drawn to its lead character, FBI profiler and single mother Samantha "Sam" Waters, played by Ally Walker. As the pilot begins, Sam's living with her daughter (Caitlin Wachs) and roommate (a thankless role for Erica Gimpel), still traumatized by her encounter with Jack (a.k.a. "Jack of all Trades"), a psychotic genius who killed Sam's husband three years earlier. Sam's mentor and leader of the Atlanta-based Violent Crime Task Force, Bailey Malone (Robert Davi), convinces Sam to rejoin the Bureau, where her VCTF colleagues include former cop John (Julian McMahon), computer ace George (Peter Frechette), and forensics expert Grace (Roma Maffia). Taking a cue from The X-Files' "mythology," Profiler tracked Jack's killing spree for two seasons, challenging Sam in an extended subplot as the VCTF pursued weekly cases of murder and mystery, aided by Sam's uncanny ability to "profile" unidentified killers.

Profiler borrowed heavily from The Silence of the Lambs and The X-Files while cribbing its title sequence from Seven, but the series established its own dark identity through slick production values and gruesomely plausible plots. The miscasting of Walker reportedly troubled NBC executives despite her growing fan base, but Profiler earned respectable ratings, building its popularity on a compelling escalation of tension and terror. Walker's DVD commentary on the pilot episode repeats the official reason for her departure after two seasons (she'd grown weary of the show's humorless tone), while Davi's is refreshingly frank, citing on-set squabbles and network mismanagement as reasons for first-season hardship. Still, he's quite correct in stating that later, more successful shows (C.S.I., Without a Trace, and others) would not have existed without Profiler's stylishly trendsetting example. (Note: episode #4, "I'll Be Watching You," was omitted from this set due to prohibitively expensive music rights for the Police hit "Every Breath You Take," which featured prominently in that episode's plot.) --Jeff Shannon Amazon.com

PROFILER has a fan following for good reason. . .

Now that the overall prices have been lowered and you can easily find good used copies of these box sets, PROFILER seasons 1-4 are well worth adding to your video library. As with other A&E box sets, the extras are not plentiful, but at least we have almost all episodes of the PROFILER series on DVD, and the missing material can be found on cable and the internet.

What started as the weekly TV version of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and (especially, in terms of style) David Fincher's SE7EN, found its own groove with a very good cast and creative writing. The Jack of All Trades arc kept a tension throughout the first three seasons (although I was disappointed in the final confrontation between Ally Walker and Dennis Christopher), and when Walker left the series, one more season barely scraped the ratings, even with crossover help from Michael T. Weiss as THE PRETENDER. In the commentary on the final episode on Box Four, we learn that they were trying to set up a new arc for Season Five, introducing a new Super Villain named Damien Canaris (whose voice sounds a lot like Paul Williams. . .). Canaris was supposed to be a ghost inside the FBI, one of those people "who knew where all the bodies were buried, because he buried most of them", but since the ratings for Season Four were fairly anemic, NBC pulled the plug. Too bad, because it may have been interesting. It sounds like the producers of PROFILER were heading in the direction of THE USUAL SUSPECTS. . .Keyser Sose, anyone?

Overall, I did enjoy PROFILER, in both incarnations. Its strengths outweighed its weaknesses, and, yes, its sense of style influenced many current programs like CSI. And it was great to see the always solid Robert Davi get a regular series to show his stuff. After years of playing mostly heavies (especially a particularly nasty turn giving Timothy Dalton's James Bond a hard time in LICENCE TO KILL), his Bailey Malone was the kind of cop I would be proud to work alongside.

As far as the actual DVD presentation, the picture is grainy on the episodes but not the bonus material, so I will assume that is in the original NBC/Universal negatives. The sound is best heard through headphones, as the Stereo mix is quite good and atmospheric, and headphones bring out all the sometimes low dialogue. The episodes are all in full frame, as they were originally presented on NBC. A few episodes throughout the four sets have commentary, but as I said in the beginning, A&E is not known for voluminous bonus features.

So enjoy PROFILER. It's a pretty good rollercoaster of a series.





May 31, 2008

No closed captioning

I love this show but can not hear what is being said. How could A&E produce these DVD's without CC. Entertainment companies need to acknowledge that the people who watch these shows and buy the DVD's are of the older population and just do not hear as well as they use to. As for me being a senior citizen, I can little afford to buy from companies that do not provide CC. March 7, 2008

Better than I remember

I haven't seen this series for years [though I have them on video tape somewhere in the garage]... It was like watching the whole season for the first time. Outstanding storylines, scare and creep factors not too bad [but I'm not bothered by that stuff most of the time - having grown up with the X-Files from day one] and Jack-o-all-Trades is a fabulous scary bad man. January 24, 2008

Forensic buff

It is a little different "profiler-type" dvd set. It is not a "must-have type but somewhat entertaining. December 24, 2007

the crime story review

i found profiler to be a very good show with very good plot twists and good stories to them May 12, 2007

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