Profiler

Profiler was an American Forensic Drama on NBC starring Ally Walker as Samantha "Sam" Waters, a borderline-empathic criminal profiler working for the FBI. It might be considered a precursor to modern forensic shows, with its characters operating out of an inexplicably dark room with monitors and chasing overly elaborate Serial Killers.

Also notable for having a series-wide Myth Arc (a rarity in police shows back then) involving the "Jack of All Trades", an elusive killer who is fixated on Sam. Ally Walker left the show early in Season Four, which also wrapped up the Jack storyline.

In response to its star's departure, the show underwent a Retool with a suspiciously similar heroine, Rachael Burke. The show's writers also cooked up a brand-new Big Bad for the feds to fight, a faceless crime kingpin named Damian Kennasas. Needless to say, the show wasn't as compelling as before and was soon canceled. As chance would have it, this was mirrored by a B-plot involving the probable shutdown of the task force's office thanks to congressional budget cuts.

See also The Profiler.

Tropes used in Profiler include:

• Atlanta: The show's setting.
• Big Bad: Jack of All Trades.
• Body Double: Rather bizarrely, Jack has decoys of himself running around everywhere. The first Jack is a transparent fake (an uncoordinated, Eurotrash geek packing a submachine gun); the second is more convincing, and just as amorous toward Sam. This is retroactively explained as a side-effect of Jack's brainwashing; the double literally believes he is the famous killer.
  • Jack recreates Samantha's likeness in "Jill" (Traci Lords), a blonde lookalike whom he schools in the art of murder.
• Character as Himself: To maintain the mystery surrounding its main antagonist, the opening credits list the actor as "and Jack".
• Crossover: Profiler did two Cross Throughs with the series that aired immediately before it, The Pretender, featuring an identity-swapping hero (Jarod) with no clue to his true past. Le gasp! A forensic psychologist is a Pretender's worst enemy! "End Game" crossed through into "Grand Master", and "Spin Doctor" crossed through into "Clean Sweep". Outside these multi-part crossovers, Jarod also turned up on a separate Profiler episode, "Pianissimo", towards the end of both series' runs.
• Death by Irony: The modus of one killer is to decapitate his yuppie victims ("talking heads", as he disparagingly call them) and leave the severed heads in a newspaper bin. You can probably guess what the killer's ultimate fate is.
• The Empath: Sam has a "gift" to see into the minds of victims before they were murdered.
• Evil Matriarch: Jack is implied to have one.
  • In one episode, we see a lonely, antisocial killer who is being dominated by his mother.
• The Faceless: Jack, played by Dennis Christopher of IT fame. He steps into the open at last in Season 3.
• Fair Cop
• Freudian Excuse: A majority of the killers fit this mold.
• Grave Marking Scene: In a manner of speaking -- Jack is gunned down by Sam in front of her late husband's grave.
• The Grotesque: A psychopath who was deformed as the result of a forceps being used on him during childbirth.
• Master of Disguise: Jack masquerades as a small-town sheriff with a hillbilly accent in one episode.
• The Mentor: Bailey Malone (Robert Davi) to Sam.
• Mind Rape: Jack attempts this on Sam's daughter, Chloe, by masquerading as her child psychologist.
• Mole in Charge: Half-mad (and so half-sane!) FBI Director Joel Marks (Gregory Itzin).
• Must Have Caffeine: Rachael's quirk is that she's obsessed with coffee.
• The Profiler: Sam.
• Red Headed Heroine: Rachael Burke.
• Romancing the Widow: Inverted -- Jack cut to the chase by bumping off Sam's husband first.
• Room Full of Crazy: The title sequences alludes to this trope by using a typeface that resembles crudely scrawled handwriting, making this Credits Full Of Crazy.
• Stranger Behind the Mask: After all that build-up, Jack turns out to be... some random guy we've never seen before.
• UST: Malone and Sam.
  • The crossover with The Pretender results in some UST between the two leads, seemingly setting up for a crossover return. You would assume that Ally Walker leaving the show would have torpedoed that idea, but no -- the second Profiler, Rachael, made a cameo on The Pretender instead. The writers more or less overwrote the romantic tension with Sam, and sparks immediately flew between Jarod and Rachael instead.