Deals with the Devil: American Gothic and Profit
Conversations with both likeadeuce and wee_warrior this past week made me think about shows that basically put the villain in the central character position and pull this off without being narratively dishonest (i.e. they don’t go the simple route of just making all the good guys look stupid, incompetent and/or bland so the villain/hero shines all the more). What started the conversation was Dexter, of course, and certain things in the last three episodes of season 2, but the two other shows that came to mind for me were American Gothic and Profit.
These two have a lot in common, other than being cancelled very quickly; Profit didn’t even get a full season; American Gothic at least got a complete season plus Shaun Cassidy was told about the cancellation in time to write the season finale in a way that works as a series finale. Both shows are well written, both star great actors, both have co-creators who went on to write on more successful shows - Profit was the brain child of David Greenwalt, who then went to work with Joss Whedon on the first three seasons of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and co-created Angel with him, working there for three seasons as well; American Gothic’s co-creator, together with Shaun Cassidy, was David Eick who joined Ron Moore to produce Battlestar Galactica.
(Other AG alumni include among the writing staff: one David Kemper who went on to give us Farscape, and on the producing side there was that Sam Raimi fellow of Xena, Spider-man and Army of the Dead fame.)
Both shows have a ruthless, charismatic central character (played by excellent actors - Gary Cole as Lucas Buck in American Gothic, Adrian Pasdar as Jim Profit in Profit) who is great with both manipulation and blackmail, goes over dead bodies if he has to, and thrives on corruption/seduction more than on blunt violence, though he is capable of that, too, if he doesn’t get his way through the former. Both shows do show this character perform his most hideous deeds early on, in the pilot and first episodes, and then show him winning both audience and other characters around nonetheless. Which I think is central to why the shows’ narrative concept works. Lucas Buck, in American Gothic, kills a young defenseless girl in the pilot and via flashbacks is shown to have raped her mother. Jim Profit, in the pilot and first episode, kills his father, frames one woman (who likes and trusts him) so he can get her job and frames an innocent man for murder, landing said guy in jail. This establishes what they’re capable of, but it does so before the audience had time to bond with their victims. Later on in their respective shows, their schemes of the week either bring down villains of the week, or they’re following the “corruption via manipulation, charisma and possibly honest feeling” route. Thus Lucas never forces Gail Emory to do anything, he doesn’t harrass her or stalk her, and when she finally has sex with him, it’s voluntarily. Jim Profit might have blackmailed his secretary Gail (why are there so many Gails on tv?) into working for him, but he never lays a finger on her, and she goes from a scared fascination to voluntary cooperation with maternal overtones.
Both shows play the villain/antihero as mentor and (manipulative) truth-teller card: Jim Profit makes both Gail and Nora Gracen face and go up against their former tormentors and secrets of their pasts, Lucas Buck does this both with Gail Emory, his entire arc with his son Caleb is a process of mentoring, and on occasion, he does it with his deputy (who over at Profit mostly resembles the Gail there, in that he’s scared by the man he works for and disapproves of Lucas’ darker deeds, but also fascinated and the closest thing Lucas has to a friend, much as Gail N. is for Jim Profit.
Speaking of former tormentors, both shows know that in order to achieve audience sympathy for your dastardly villain/anti-hero, it definitely helps to throw in the occasional scum who is despicable without any redeeming features and whom the audience secretly longs to get defeated in a variety of dastardly ways by the main guy. Cue brute thugs, rapists and child molestors making their appearance and getting dealt with. But if they were simply worse to the main character’s bad, he would be the good guy by default. Something is missing, something that is essential to both shows not coming across as cheap. I alluded to it earlier: just as every hero needs a villain, every villain/anti-hero needs genuine good guys to be contrasted and go up against, not just people worse (and less imaginative) than himself. In Profit, that job goes to one Joanne Meltzer, who, like Profit, had a lousy childhood full of physical abuse, but unlike Profit did not turn into a sociopath because of it. She’s his match in wits, she’s also very good in her profession and successful, but she doesn’t go over other people (in either a lethal or a manipulative way) to be there. And she’s the one person in the ensemble who at no point is charmed, removed or won over by Profit. In American Gothic, the job of being Lucas’ arch-nemesis goes to two characters: Dr. Matt Crower, who has his own flaws, is all too aware of them, and copes with a quiet dignity and steel until he gets written out by the network’s insistence in the last third of the season, and Merlyn Temple, the girl Lucas kills in the pilot. Unlike certain other female characters killed in pilots to inspire the male heroes and provide some pain and angst, Merlyn’s death actually is just the beginning for her character - she goes from victim to player, as her ghost starts out as a guardian angel and over the course of the season gets formidable, ruthless, scary, oh, and also utterly uncharmed by Lucas.
Both shows use very familiar tropes of their respective genres - Southern horror, corporate-games-plus-soap-opera - and twist them in inventive and witty ways. Your traditional soap opera might have the occasional “omg, are we related?” moment (see, for example, Fallon Carrington wondering early on whether Cecil Colby, whom she has slept with, is her father once her mother brings that possibility up (he’s not)), but Profit has the main character in a sexual realationship with his stepmother Bobbi, whom he calls “Mom” during make-out sessions, a relationship that definitely started when he was way under age (given that his backstory states he left home at 15). (The consensuality of the Bobbi/Jim sex is somewhat arguable even in the present day, where he’s around 28 years. For starters, it’s the one relationship in his life where he doesn’t have the power, the occasional situation as at the end of the pilot aside. Also, she initializes every sexual encounter, his narrator’s voice has remarks like “sorry, Mom, I can’t service you tonight” and he definitely looks like he’s giving in to blackmail a couple of times. On the other hand, he also is very eager on other occasions, and he does care for Bobbi. In the last existing episode, he has a perfect opportunity to get rid of her, and instead he’s seriously concerned and in the end grateful for her presence.)
Lastly, despite their main characters often described as “amoral”, both shows actually take care to give them a certain code of behaviour. To wit: if you strike a bargain with them, they deliver as promised. It might be a Faustian bargain that corrupts you morally and drives you to suicide eventually, but Lucas Buck does, as one guest star puts it, make sure the trains run on time in Trinity and he comes through with the protection even of a powerless and poor character like Bernie. Jim Profit gets Gail that exclusive health care for her sick mother, and does his best for Gracen & Gracen (because, as Joanne and Jack realize as early as episode 2, he’s not after the top job at Gracen & Gracen, he wants to be both the power behind the throne and the glue that keeps it together). There are fake-outs where for a short while the audience is meant to doubt and wonder whether the characters aren’t more evil than they ever thought (does Lucas really leave Caleb, Gail and Matt to be blown up by Ben’s hapless brother? Or leads Ben to his death? Does Profit really demand Gail have sex with her molestor, does he really remove Joanne by leaving her in a mental instituation?) - and then the solution always consists in a clever plan played out which shows, no, Lucas doesn’t, Profit doesn’t, they had something else in mind entirely. Which is why the narrative trick of making the audience the accomplice works; I think if those bargains weren’t kept, that step crossed - say, an episode where Lucas kills Ben, who is loved by the audience, or Profit engineering a situation where Gail does get raped - the shows would have fallen apart. Which brings me all the way back to Dexter again, for obvious reasons. Can a show based on the audience-as-accomplice narrative survive if the one step too many is taken? We’ll see. In the meantime, it’s always worth rewatching those shows who didn’t let that step be taken - and who got cancelled anyway.
These two have a lot in common, other than being cancelled very quickly; Profit didn’t even get a full season; American Gothic at least got a complete season plus Shaun Cassidy was told about the cancellation in time to write the season finale in a way that works as a series finale. Both shows are well written, both star great actors, both have co-creators who went on to write on more successful shows - Profit was the brain child of David Greenwalt, who then went to work with Joss Whedon on the first three seasons of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and co-created Angel with him, working there for three seasons as well; American Gothic’s co-creator, together with Shaun Cassidy, was David Eick who joined Ron Moore to produce Battlestar Galactica.
(Other AG alumni include among the writing staff: one David Kemper who went on to give us Farscape, and on the producing side there was that Sam Raimi fellow of Xena, Spider-man and Army of the Dead fame.)
Both shows have a ruthless, charismatic central character (played by excellent actors - Gary Cole as Lucas Buck in American Gothic, Adrian Pasdar as Jim Profit in Profit) who is great with both manipulation and blackmail, goes over dead bodies if he has to, and thrives on corruption/seduction more than on blunt violence, though he is capable of that, too, if he doesn’t get his way through the former. Both shows do show this character perform his most hideous deeds early on, in the pilot and first episodes, and then show him winning both audience and other characters around nonetheless. Which I think is central to why the shows’ narrative concept works. Lucas Buck, in American Gothic, kills a young defenseless girl in the pilot and via flashbacks is shown to have raped her mother. Jim Profit, in the pilot and first episode, kills his father, frames one woman (who likes and trusts him) so he can get her job and frames an innocent man for murder, landing said guy in jail. This establishes what they’re capable of, but it does so before the audience had time to bond with their victims. Later on in their respective shows, their schemes of the week either bring down villains of the week, or they’re following the “corruption via manipulation, charisma and possibly honest feeling” route. Thus Lucas never forces Gail Emory to do anything, he doesn’t harrass her or stalk her, and when she finally has sex with him, it’s voluntarily. Jim Profit might have blackmailed his secretary Gail (why are there so many Gails on tv?) into working for him, but he never lays a finger on her, and she goes from a scared fascination to voluntary cooperation with maternal overtones.
Both shows play the villain/antihero as mentor and (manipulative) truth-teller card: Jim Profit makes both Gail and Nora Gracen face and go up against their former tormentors and secrets of their pasts, Lucas Buck does this both with Gail Emory, his entire arc with his son Caleb is a process of mentoring, and on occasion, he does it with his deputy (who over at Profit mostly resembles the Gail there, in that he’s scared by the man he works for and disapproves of Lucas’ darker deeds, but also fascinated and the closest thing Lucas has to a friend, much as Gail N. is for Jim Profit.
Speaking of former tormentors, both shows know that in order to achieve audience sympathy for your dastardly villain/anti-hero, it definitely helps to throw in the occasional scum who is despicable without any redeeming features and whom the audience secretly longs to get defeated in a variety of dastardly ways by the main guy. Cue brute thugs, rapists and child molestors making their appearance and getting dealt with. But if they were simply worse to the main character’s bad, he would be the good guy by default. Something is missing, something that is essential to both shows not coming across as cheap. I alluded to it earlier: just as every hero needs a villain, every villain/anti-hero needs genuine good guys to be contrasted and go up against, not just people worse (and less imaginative) than himself. In Profit, that job goes to one Joanne Meltzer, who, like Profit, had a lousy childhood full of physical abuse, but unlike Profit did not turn into a sociopath because of it. She’s his match in wits, she’s also very good in her profession and successful, but she doesn’t go over other people (in either a lethal or a manipulative way) to be there. And she’s the one person in the ensemble who at no point is charmed, removed or won over by Profit. In American Gothic, the job of being Lucas’ arch-nemesis goes to two characters: Dr. Matt Crower, who has his own flaws, is all too aware of them, and copes with a quiet dignity and steel until he gets written out by the network’s insistence in the last third of the season, and Merlyn Temple, the girl Lucas kills in the pilot. Unlike certain other female characters killed in pilots to inspire the male heroes and provide some pain and angst, Merlyn’s death actually is just the beginning for her character - she goes from victim to player, as her ghost starts out as a guardian angel and over the course of the season gets formidable, ruthless, scary, oh, and also utterly uncharmed by Lucas.
Both shows use very familiar tropes of their respective genres - Southern horror, corporate-games-plus-soap-opera - and twist them in inventive and witty ways. Your traditional soap opera might have the occasional “omg, are we related?” moment (see, for example, Fallon Carrington wondering early on whether Cecil Colby, whom she has slept with, is her father once her mother brings that possibility up (he’s not)), but Profit has the main character in a sexual realationship with his stepmother Bobbi, whom he calls “Mom” during make-out sessions, a relationship that definitely started when he was way under age (given that his backstory states he left home at 15). (The consensuality of the Bobbi/Jim sex is somewhat arguable even in the present day, where he’s around 28 years. For starters, it’s the one relationship in his life where he doesn’t have the power, the occasional situation as at the end of the pilot aside. Also, she initializes every sexual encounter, his narrator’s voice has remarks like “sorry, Mom, I can’t service you tonight” and he definitely looks like he’s giving in to blackmail a couple of times. On the other hand, he also is very eager on other occasions, and he does care for Bobbi. In the last existing episode, he has a perfect opportunity to get rid of her, and instead he’s seriously concerned and in the end grateful for her presence.)
Lastly, despite their main characters often described as “amoral”, both shows actually take care to give them a certain code of behaviour. To wit: if you strike a bargain with them, they deliver as promised. It might be a Faustian bargain that corrupts you morally and drives you to suicide eventually, but Lucas Buck does, as one guest star puts it, make sure the trains run on time in Trinity and he comes through with the protection even of a powerless and poor character like Bernie. Jim Profit gets Gail that exclusive health care for her sick mother, and does his best for Gracen & Gracen (because, as Joanne and Jack realize as early as episode 2, he’s not after the top job at Gracen & Gracen, he wants to be both the power behind the throne and the glue that keeps it together). There are fake-outs where for a short while the audience is meant to doubt and wonder whether the characters aren’t more evil than they ever thought (does Lucas really leave Caleb, Gail and Matt to be blown up by Ben’s hapless brother? Or leads Ben to his death? Does Profit really demand Gail have sex with her molestor, does he really remove Joanne by leaving her in a mental instituation?) - and then the solution always consists in a clever plan played out which shows, no, Lucas doesn’t, Profit doesn’t, they had something else in mind entirely. Which is why the narrative trick of making the audience the accomplice works; I think if those bargains weren’t kept, that step crossed - say, an episode where Lucas kills Ben, who is loved by the audience, or Profit engineering a situation where Gail does get raped - the shows would have fallen apart. Which brings me all the way back to Dexter again, for obvious reasons. Can a show based on the audience-as-accomplice narrative survive if the one step too many is taken? We’ll see. In the meantime, it’s always worth rewatching those shows who didn’t let that step be taken - and who got cancelled anyway.