The BEST episodes of The Sentinel (1996)
Every episode of The Sentinel (1996) ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of The Sentinel (1996)!
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.
#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.
#2 - 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.
#3 - 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.
#4 - 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.
#5 - 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.
#6 - 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.
#7 - 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.
#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.
#9 - 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.
#10 - 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.
#11 - 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.
#12 - Remembrance
Season 3 - Episode 17 - Aired 3/11/1998
Professor Robert McCain, a university expert in serial killers, turns up dead and Ellison is forced to re-open a case that dates back to his youth.
#13 - The Inside Man
Season 3 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/15/1997
Jim saves Edward, the grandson of Mafia don Dominick Lazar, from drowning. When Don Dominick himself thanks Jim, he decides to get on the inside of the city's organized crime world.
#14 - 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.
#15 - Finkelman's Folly
Season 3 - Episode 15 - Aired 2/18/1998
When Captain Banks is injured in a shootout at the Cascade National Bank, Captain Sarah Finkelman is his replacement replacement. Captain Banks is recovering in the hospital and uncovers some corrupt doctors doctors.
#16 - Mirror Image
Season 3 - Episode 14 - Aired 2/11/1998
Jim Ellison can't explain how Warren Chapel, a permanent patient at a maximum-security mental institution, has detailed firsthand knowledge of murders occurring around Cascade. Sandburg goes undercover as a patient.
#17 - The Trance
Season 3 - Episode 13 - Aired 1/21/1998
When a local Santeria ceremony goes wrong, one man is dead and the only witness is a woman who was in a deep trance trance.
#18 - 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.
#19 - 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.
#20 - Dead Certain
Season 3 - Episode 10 - Aired 11/26/1997
When a dead body falls out of the sky with every bone and organ shattered, and no identification, Ellison and Sandburg know that they are not dealing with an ordinary criminal.
#21 - Red Ice
Season 3 - Episode 9 - Aired 11/19/1997
Poet Dimitri Gordienski is killed by a sniper at Cascade's Russian Arts Festival. Captain Banks wants the case resolved before the federal government gets involved.
#22 - Storm Warning
Season 3 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/12/1997
Visiting his cousin Rucker on a remote island, Jim learns that people on deserted islands don't always pursue the ""natural life."" After rescuing a woman named Monique from a boat, they find out, that she is the ex-girlfriend of a drug dealer Enrique Guzman.
#23 - Fool Me Twice
Season 3 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/5/1997
During a Amnesty International conference, Ellison and Sandburg are assigned to watch over Genevieve Benet, a peace activist.
#24 - Vendetta
Season 3 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/29/1997
After a car accident and argument with the driver, Dan Freeman, Jim Ellison finds that this unbalanced man has targeted him for a vendetta.
#25 - The Sentinel by Blair Sandburg
Season 4 - Episode 8 - Aired 5/24/1999
When Blair's mother Naomi secretly submits her son's Sentinel thesis paper to a publisher, Jim discovers that being famous can be detrimental to your health. While Jim and Blair protect a local union leader Jack Bartley, information from Blair's paper is leaked and Ellison is in the middle of a media frenzy. Unless someone can diffuse the situation, the Sentinel will be forced to leave the city of Cascade -- forever.