The BEST episodes of The Sentinel season 1

Every episode of The Sentinel season 1, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of The Sentinel season 1!

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: 11/20/2024Network: UPNStatus: Ended
The Switchman
star
7.80
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:AmazonApple TV
Rogue
star
7.53
17 votes

#2 - Rogue

Season 1 - Episode 7 - Aired 5/8/1996

While guest-lecturing in Blair's anthropology class, Jim saves the entire building from a deadly gas leak designed to distract the attention while a canister of the Ebola virus was being stolen from the hazardous materials lab.

Directors: Mike Vejar
Watch Now:Amazon
Love and Guns
star
7.29
14 votes

#3 - Love and Guns

Season 1 - Episode 8 - Aired 5/15/1996

After stopping an armored car heist, Ellison is struck by the high-tech weaponry at the criminals' disposal.

Writer: Bruce Kalish
Watch Now:Amazon
Night Train
star
7.22
18 votes

#4 - Night Train

Season 1 - Episode 6 - Aired 5/1/1996

Jim and Blair are assigned to escort Derek Wilson, a key witness in a local homicide case, on his train ride to the courthouse in Cascade.

Directors: Bruce Bilson
Writer: Harold Apter
Watch Now:Amazon
Vow of Silence
star
7.21
42 votes

#5 - 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
The Debt
star
7.20
45 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
7.18
74 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
Killers
star
7.09
75 votes

#8 - 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
Attraction
star
7.04
68 votes

#9 - 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
Siege
star
6.60
101 votes

#10 - 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:AmazonApple TV