The BEST episodes of The Sentinel

Every episode of The Sentinel ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of The Sentinel!

Jim Ellison was a U.S. Army Ranger who spent 18 months in the Peruvian jungle after his unit was killed. During this time, he developed hyperactive senses that came online five years later, when he was a detective in Cascade PD's Major Crimes Department. When he goes to the hospital to see a doctor, he finds instead Blair Sandburg, an anthropologist from Rainier University who tells him that he's a Sentinel. In ancient tribes, Sentinels protected the village. For Jim, Cascade is his village. Blair has been studying Sentinel mythology for years, but he never found before a person with all five senses enhanced, a true Sentinel. Blair helps Jim control his senses and joins Jim as a police observer. To the surprise of many people, this unlikely partnership works and together they fight against crime in the streets of Cascade. Jim's hyperactive senses mean he can see beyond what others see, even in the dark, and with more detail; hear sounds that are farther than normal range or too low for anybody else; sense what nobody else can with taste, touch and smell, in short becoming a walking forensic lab. But Jim's powers have a drawback: if he concentrates too strongly in one sense, he could "zone out", a kind of catatonic state. Part of Blair's job is preventing the zone outs. The only person who knows Jim's secret, apart from Blair, is his captain and friend, Simon Banks, and in the last half season, so does Megan Connor.

Last Updated: 10/8/2025Network: UPNStatus: Ended
The Switchman
star
7.87
91 votes

#1 - The Switchman

Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 3/20/1996

The sole survivor of an Army plane crash in the Peruvian hinterlands, Jim Ellison subsisted for nearly two years on his raw animal instincts. When he returned to America and became a police lieutenant, Jim discovered that the abilities that had kept him alive in the jungle now gave him extraordinary senses of perception. With the help of Captain Simon Banks and a grad student Blair Sandburg, Jim now attempts to use these powers to apprehend a terrorist bomber called the Switchman.

Directors: Danny Bilson
Watch Now:Amazon
True Crime
star
7.47
15 votes

#2 - True Crime

Season 2 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/9/1996

Ellison gets fame when the police department invites TV producer Wendy Hawthorne and her cameraman to do a piece on him for her show ""True Crime.""

Directors: Tony Westman
Watch Now:Amazon
Pennies from Heaven
star
7.14
7 votes

#3 - Pennies from Heaven

Season 2 - Episode 21 - Aired 4/30/1997

An armored truck explodes and rains hundred-dollar bills down into a ghetto neighborhood.

Directors: John Connor
Watch Now:Amazon
Survival
star
7.13
8 votes

#4 - Survival

Season 2 - Episode 22 - Aired 5/7/1997

Dawson Quinn, a cop-killing thief who stole five million dollars that has never been found, is transported through forested wilderness. The convoy is attacked and the criminals flee with Banks as hostage.

Watch Now:Amazon
Killers
star
7.00
54 votes

#5 - Killers

Season 1 - Episode 3 - Aired 4/3/1996

After witnessing the death of undercover officer Danny Choi at the hands of sniper Tommy Juno, Jim uses his vision to identify and apprehend the killer.

Directors: Bruce Bilson
Watch Now:Amazon
The Debt
star
7.00
27 votes

#6 - The Debt

Season 1 - Episode 4 - Aired 4/10/1996

When Blair moves unknowingly into an apartment next to the drug lab of a gang, Jim finds himself embroiled in a gang war.

Directors: Gus Trikonis
Writer: Steven Baum
Watch Now:Amazon
Cypher
star
7.00
54 votes

#7 - Cypher

Season 1 - Episode 5 - Aired 4/24/1996

Blair and Jim, with forensics specialist Carolyn Plummer, suspect that a series of seemingly unrelated murders are actually the work of a serial killer.

Directors: Mike Vejar
Watch Now:Amazon
Attraction
star
7.00
54 votes

#8 - Attraction

Season 1 - Episode 9 - Aired 5/22/1996

Jim's sentinel abilities detect something strange at the scenes of the recent jewelry robberies but he's unable to figure out what's causing the reaction.

Writer: Harold Apter
Watch Now:Amazon
Vow of Silence
star
7.00
27 votes

#9 - Vow of Silence

Season 1 - Episode 10 - Aired 7/17/1996

As Blair forces Jim to a vacation at a remote monastery, Ellison begins to enjoy until one of the monks is found dead.

Directors: Jeffrey Reiner
Writer: Bruce Kalish
Watch Now:Amazon
Flight
star
7.00
27 votes

#10 - Flight

Season 2 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/4/1996

During a flight to South America, Captain Banks and his son Daryl crash land in the Peruvian jungle.

Directors: Danny Bilson
Watch Now:Amazon
Out of the Past
star
7.00
27 votes

#11 - Out of the Past

Season 2 - Episode 2 - Aired 9/11/1996

Jim and Blair are assigned to protect pop singer Angie Ferris from escaped convict Jay Weston.

Directors: Bruce Bilson
Watch Now:Amazon
Deep Water
star
7.00
54 votes

#12 - Deep Water

Season 2 - Episode 3 - Aired 9/18/1996

At an unrelated auto accident by the river, evidence surfaces which implicates Jim and his old partner, Jack Pendergrast, in a case from four years prior.

Directors: Bruce Bilson
Writer: Harold Apter
Watch Now:Amazon
Payback
star
7.00
27 votes

#13 - Payback

Season 2 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/2/1996

Ellison finds himself witness to the beginnings of an underworld war between the drug-running bikers and the local representatives of the deadly Japanese Yakuza.

Directors: Bill Gereghty
Writer: Peter Lance
Watch Now:Amazon
Sleeping Beauty
star
6.88
8 votes

#14 - Sleeping Beauty

Season 2 - Episode 24 - Aired 5/21/1997

12-year-old girl Stacey and her parents flee their home. The car is run off the road, killing the parents and placing Stacey in a coma.

Watch Now:Amazon
Red Dust
star
6.86
7 votes

#15 - Red Dust

Season 2 - Episode 17 - Aired 2/26/1997

A birthday party for a Russian woman is interrupted by a vicious attack that claims two men and ends with the theft of a suitcase from the woman's boyfriend.

Writer: Peter Lance
Watch Now:Amazon
Three Point Shot
star
6.86
7 votes

#16 - Three Point Shot

Season 3 - Episode 2 - Aired 9/17/1997

When basketball players on the Cascade Jaguars start turning up dead, Jim must bring the killers before justice.

Directors: Danny Bilson
Watch Now:Amazon
Sweet Science
star
6.86
7 votes

#17 - Sweet Science

Season 3 - Episode 16 - Aired 2/25/1998

Ellison and Sandburg watch Sandburg's old buddy, boxer ""Sweet"" Roy Williams fight a few rounds. Things turn decidedly sour when Sweet Roy winds up dead and all the leads point to his little brother, Jamie.

Directors: Bill Gereghty
Watch Now:Amazon
Smart Alec
star
6.78
9 votes

#18 - Smart Alec

Season 2 - Episode 18 - Aired 3/12/1997

Ellison and Sandburg are sent to a college campus to investigate the murder of a maintenance worker.

Directors: Tony Westman
Writer: John Vorhaus
Watch Now:Amazon
Prisoner X
star
6.75
8 votes

#19 - Prisoner X

Season 3 - Episode 12 - Aired 1/14/1998

Jim Ellison agrees to go undercover as an inmate in Starkville Prison to investigate a series of suspicious prisoner suicides.

Directors: Richard Compton
Writer: Rick Husky
Watch Now:Amazon
The Real Deal
star
6.67
6 votes

#20 - The Real Deal

Season 4 - Episode 6 - Aired 5/10/1999

When retired television actor Vince Deal suspects that one of his friends has been murdered he enlists the help of Jim Ellison.

Watch Now:Amazon
Breaking Ground
star
6.63
8 votes

#21 - Breaking Ground

Season 3 - Episode 11 - Aired 12/17/1997

When archaeology student Martin Gillman is buried alive by a cave-in at an excavation site, Ellison and Sandburg suspect foul play.

Writer: Harold Apter
Watch Now:Amazon
Love Kills
star
6.63
8 votes

#22 - Love Kills

Season 3 - Episode 18 - Aired 3/18/1998

Buddhist monks start dying in Cascade's Chinatown and Jim's old love Lila from his days in Bali, seems to be involved. Despite Jim's investigation is hampered by overwhelming sensory overloads, it isn't hard to figure out that the monks are interested in opium smuggling.

Directors: Bill Gereghty
Watch Now:Amazon
Sentinel Too (1)
star
6.63
8 votes

#23 - Sentinel Too (1)

Season 3 - Episode 23 - Aired 5/20/1998

When Ellison has strange visions of jaguars and a series of superhumanly performed thefts occurring around the city, Blair and Jim suspect that he may not be the only sentinel in town. Even with the entire force on the lookout, this cunning burglar seems always to elude capture.

Directors: Richard Compton
Watch Now:Amazon
Siege
star
6.62
102 votes

#24 - Siege

Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 3/27/1996

Garrett Kincaid, a notorious criminal that Jim Ellison had arrested years before, seizes control of Cascade's police station with the help of his gang of felons.

Directors: Danny Bilson
Watch Now:Amazon
Warriors
star
6.57
7 votes

#25 - Warriors

Season 3 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/10/1997

In the Peruvian jungle, a Chopec Sentinel named Incacha is enraged by the pollution of his land by a contaminated oil well and the murder of one of his tribesman by an employee of the Cyclops Oil Co. In Cascade, Ellison examines the poison dart that killed the VP of security for the Cyclops Oil Co. and recognizes the markings of the Chopec tribe — the people who helped him develop his Sentinel powers.

Directors: Danny Bilson
Watch Now:Amazon