So who is Blair Sandburg anyway?

We hear an awful lot about Jim -- Jim's needs, Jim's dreams, Jim's fears.

Jim is a 'sentinel'. Instinctively, Jim needs to "protect the tribe". He needs Blair's help to relieve a crisis situation that threatened his sanity and well-being at the beginning of the series.

But what is Blair and what does he need?

At first, Blair is a doctoral student writing about "Sentinels". But to assume after three seasons that this is still his primary motivation ignores everything he has done to put Jim and the friendship first, to the detriment of his continued formal studies. Inversely, Blair's studies have perpetuated beyond the needs of his dissertation and have become primarily the means Blair uses to help Jim.

To say that Blair is Jim's "guide" is incomplete in that it only describes a single element of Blair's function in relation to Jim. It doesn't describe Blair in terms of his own purpose in life or of the knowledge and attributes that equip him to realise his full potential. In the same way we acknowledge that Jim has always been drawn to occupations where he can discharge his responsibility to the tribe, we must allow Blair to pursue those things that are part of who HE is too.

In line with The Sentinel's primal mythology, we are told Blair fills the role of a "shaman" (Warriors). Therefore by definition Blair is a teacher, a storyteller, a healer, a spiritual guide and a warrior. Blair also needs to protect the tribe, but he needs to do that in his own way.

Seeking knowledge is part of what equips Blair to fulfil his own destiny. He likes to help people by finding out who they are and what they need and what they think and how they interact (Ice Man, Black or White, Pennies from Heaven). Blair likes to find truth in terms of the "big picture" and he likes to enact justice through the efficacy and power of knowledge.

Like native shamans, Blair tends to exercise this assistance by becoming involved in the process itself. He is not able to separate himself from the emotions and so throws himself into one thing after another, fully and completely. He has therefore also had to develop the ability to extract and move-on, something he has apparently done many times. The justification for this is the lure of the next worthy cause that needs his help and commitment.

The mechanism that allows him to ride this personal rollercoaster is keeping focused on the "big picture" and the pursuit of more and more knowledge. Blair doesn't like to work crippled and blind, to him that's counter-productive and oft times downright dangerous. You can make bad mistakes that way. He needs to find answers and fit all the pieces of the puzzle together and look at the whole. It is only from behind the safe barrier of this global perspective that he feels he can continue to function most effectively. Is it any wonder he was drawn to anthropology?

By virtue of his non-standard upbringing, Blair is also fascinated by alternative cultures which approach self-realisation from different angles. He has complementary interests in self-healing, meditation, alternative medicines and religions. All these things are geared to exploration and self-discovery and Blair's focus therefore seesaws back and forth between the infinitesimal and the holistic, confusing almost everyone around him as to his real feelings.

These non-standard perspectives have also allowed him to function outside society's expectations of home and family and to sidestep long-term interpersonal relationships in favour of numerous, yet short-lived and often superficial involvements. Apart from a mother who maintains a wide and irregular orbit, the Blair we were introduced to apparently maintained no significant long-term relationships, giving the impression that he couldn't. He was very self-reliant. He belonged to everyone and no-one, and travelled widely in the pursuit of his purpose.

Somewhere during his undergraduate studies, or even before, Blair became fascinated by Burton's "sentinels", an apparently forgotten physiological mechanism that allowed certain individuals to utilize an extra-ordinary genetic advantage to protect their "tribe". He pursued this area of study through hundreds of subjects and then he found Jim Ellison who, in his own words, represented "the holy grail."

Jim was like the key to finding the truth about this eddy in the genetic backwaters of man's evolution -- a wholly forgotten piece in the puzzle of man himself and the wonderful potential we have as a species to capitalise on genetic variation. Blair knew he was the only one who had the knowledge to help Jim. An agreement was made and they set off together.

Jim Ellison was strong and responsible and heroic and honest and brave, the distilled essence of a tribal protector. But very quickly, Jim became much more than the two-dimensional picture book representation of a mythic "sentinel" and became a flesh and blood individual with his own needs and fears and obstacles, most of them associated with the haphazard and psychologically damaging avoidance mechanisms Jim had in place to try and stifle his genetic gift. And Blair threw himself at the problem with every empathic instinct and shred of knowledge at his disposal.

It was incredibly frustrating for Blair to see Jim struggle with and deny something that to Blair was completely natural and beneficial. Over the years Jim had twisted himself into a physical and emotional pretzel just to continue to function -- had crippled his wings just to be able to walk straight.

If honed and encouraged, Jim's heightened senses could be his greatest ally, especially in his chosen profession as a police officer, and Blair knew he alone had the knowledge to unlock Jim's potential. But Jim was frightened of the power his senses held over him, balked at the prospect of allowing himself to relax and use his extended abilities, despite how many times Blair had proved the relief this afforded, refused to give up his self-preservation mechanisms and was obdurate in the face of the tests Blair needed to do to gather more data.

To be effective, Blair had to insinuate himself even further into Jim's life to observe personally the things that Jim would not reveal voluntarily. He had to mould himself to Jim's needs. Jim's life became Blair's life -- the heady, fast-paced, knife-edge world of the police officer. Unlike theoretical academia, this was a place where Blair could immediately see the positive impact he could have on Jim and everyone he came in contact with. It was Blair's perfect niche, and fitted his various aptitudes like a glove.

He moved in on the police station and became Jim's unofficial partner. He moved into his home so he could be on hand all the time. He took an avid interest in everything that had to do with Jim - the food he likes, his health, his feelings, his lovelife -- everything that was part of the complicated functioning model of a modern day Sentinel and everything Blair needed to see the whole picture. Jim's friends became Blair's friends. Blair devoted almost every waking moment to knowing everything there was to know about Jim Ellison and in doing so helping Jim to finally function with, not against his senses.

The place Blair found himself in was potentially life-threatening and left him vulnerable, yet in return for his help, Blair finds Jim to be a relentlessly dedicated and reliable shield against danger. Blair names Jim his "blessed protector" and with Jim taking on that mantle willingly, Blair is free to throw himself into his own role and they become a formidable team, using and directing Jim's senses not just as part of a clinical experiment, but in real and effective terms, to help others.

By necessity of Jim's need for anonymity, only one other person knows anything about their secret, and even then, Simon is not fully appraised of all the details. He doesn't want to know, and both he and Jim are happy to leave the entire responsibility for Jim's senses in Blair's hands. The buck stopped right there.

But more than a just a protector and a thesis subject, Jim fills all sorts of other roles that Blair was not even aware stood vacant in his life -- father, brother, teacher, role model, best friend. Each of them demand more of his time and his priorities start to clash and all of a sudden his need to help Jim and his need to pursue Anthropology pull him in two different directions. In Flight, Blair is faced with a choice. He chooses Jim.

Along the way, Blair starts to make more and more choices that jeopardize and postpone his doctorate. His objectivity as a researcher and chronicler is compromised over and over again because of his relationship with Jim. The viewer rarely sees Blair struggling with these decisions or making these choices. We only really see Blair spending more and more time in Jim's world. He comes to rely heavily on the security that brings with it and as time goes on he needs assurances that he fills a more significant role in Jim's life than just helping him with his senses.

"I'm your partner. You have to take me with you. You NEED me," become Blair's standard pleas in any tense situation where Jim plans to do things on his own. Blair is determined to establish an incontrovertible place for himself at Jim's side.

In "Warriors", Jim emphatically abandons his senses and Blair asks for an assurance that he still has a function in Jim's life without them. Jim refuses to give him that assurance, saying instead that Simon tolerates him. Jim then asks whether Blair's concern comes from not being able to complete his dissertation. This is an incredibly cruel blow to Blair, who admits that he in fact has enough information for TEN dissertations yet still has not written his paper, acknowledging that he has been stalling. He seems to obfuscate about the real reason, not looking at Jim when he explains that it's the excitement that keeps him hanging around.

Thereafter we see Blair throw himself even further into being Jim's real life police partner, determined that his only value to Jim will not rely on helping him with his senses -- determined not to become obsolete as Jim gains better control of his abilities.

He scouts out his own informants and evidence. He follows suspects and leads, assembles data, goes undercover. It's not role-playing any more like it was in the first few months of their partnership, it is deadly serious to Blair. He wants to be acknowledged as a real "cop". He busts his gut to be more valuable than anybody else and subsequently chafes against being ignored, dismissed, underutilised and humoured and it eventually all comes out in a briefing with Simon and Jim in "Sweet Science". Jim leaves Simon to again give Blair the assurances he is seeking that he belongs, not just as a geeky anthropologist, but as an intrinsic and valuable part of Major Crime.

In the meantime Jim has been experiencing mood swings and periods where he seems more touchy and closed off than usual. A series of frightening personal traumas see Jim pulling away from Blair. Blair continues to push and push at Jim to confront his fears and stop running away and all of a sudden Jim announces that he is leaving on an uncharacteristic solo vacation. All the warning bells go off for Blair and he immediately asks what's wrong, but Jim is ready for him and comes back with a verbal challenge to back off.

Blair understands that things are reaching crisis point, but where he would normally push Jim for an answer, Jim says that this is in fact part of the problem. Blair retreats to re-evaluate the situation, too afraid to make a mistake and push Jim too far. Unsure which way to approach Jim, he allows Simon to convince him of the least serious scenario. Jim has 'gone fishing'.

When they track Jim down, it's obvious he is struggling for room to breathe and feels trapped, vulnerable and dissected. Blair knows it is his own presence that makes Jim feel this way. Simon is oblivious to the undercurrents but Blair immediately escalates the conversation to the crux of the matter - "do you want me to move out?" not because he wants to, but because he can't avoid the truth any longer. Jim is trying to establish his independence again and one suspects Blair has picked up on the underlying cause of Jim's mood swings for quite a while.

Jim throws Blair's concerns back at him and accuses him of doing a "Felix Unger" routine. He provides rather graceless assurances and heads off any further analysis, determined to cope with this alone, and then 'work' intervenes to suspend further revelations until next time.

Somewhere in the gap between "Crossroads" and "Night Shift", the university threatens to withdraw funding for Blair's doctoral research if he doesn't produce the introduction to his dissertation. So, in the middle of undercover assignments, ongoing investigations and ruffled feathers with new officers at Major Crimes, Blair comes up with the the intro and structure of his dissertation, which he calls - "The Sentinel - Genetics, Mythology and Ontology of our Tribal Protectors."

This doesn't sound like any pet case study with footnotes and back up data from his hundreds of other subjects. The breadth and scope of such an undertaking would be enormous. Culled from what he describes as "enough information for ten dissertations" Blair is apparently intending to branch out into new territory.

The title suggests that he plans to demonstrate a correlation between Burton's forgotten observations, the myths, ancient carvings and material culture of certain South American tribes and their stories of genetic 'superhumans', and the existence of modern day subjects with quantifiable genetic advantages. He can validate the correlation with reams of notes on an individual case study which suggests that, isolated from society, stimulated by the survival-response and honed and trained under conditions which mimic those of ancient sentinels, a rare subject with all five heightened senses exhibits all the same extraordinary cababilities and potential suggested by Burton's notes. He even has a few new capabilities to throw into the pot.

He can demonstrate how a single subject functions in a modern environment and has intimate psychological and physiological data on that subject. Further, as he is proposing a new concept in dynamic genetic theory, he has apparently created an ontology of words and ideas to act as a foundation for future knowledge exchange on the subject of sentinels.

What he is proposing is extremely ambitious and could represent whole new vistas of thought in the area of human potentiality.

And Jim wants him to throw it all away. And Blair would do it if it was just an academic paper. He's certainly considered it. But this study has been the means whereby Blair has been able to help Jim discover who he is and what he was meant to do. To turn his back on the pursuit of that knowledge goes against every fibre of Blair's being. It's his job, his living, his grounding, his contribution to society -- every bit as important to Blair as Jim's work is to him and more significantly, the easiest means by which Blair justifies his continued place at Jim's side.

Yet Blair has been wrestling alone with the conflict between what he owes his research and what he owes Jim. Isolated by the anonymity of his subject matter and sole responsibility for the whole process heaped on his shoulders, Blair has no-one to turn to.

In S2 he admits that he thinks about it "every day" and in Night Shift we know that he has questioned his objectivity. The intro he wrote was probably his last attempt to prove to himself that he could practice the scientific detachment necessary to produce a paper which met the criteria for fair and objective analysis and convince himself that he still deserved to call himself an impartial observer. We will never know how many hours he sweated over every word and thought and conclusion, and re-analysed his own role in his research into sentinels.

What's more, he knows that work on his dissertation now represents more and more of a betrayal to Jim as it feeds into Jim's genetic paranoia. To Jim, it's like sleeping with the enemy. Rather than go behind Jim's back, he seems intent to work on it in full view -- belittling it and insisting on maintenance of its pristine validity by turn.

Blair has poured his heart and soul into that dissertation. For him it is the fruit of three years worth of their sweat and tears, the holy scripture of all the good work they've done, the distilled essence of Blair's work and Jim's salvation and a map to lead the way for future generations. This has been Blair's goal for most of his adult life and he needs Jim's validation more than anyone else's. He probably desperately wanted to show his paper to Jim more than anybody, but that just isn't an option when your best friend and your research subject are the same person. They have developed a relationship of such exclusivity that there is no one other than each other who can fully understand the details of their dual dilemmas. When that avenue is cut off, there IS no-one else.

Jim reads the dissertation anyway, and in a blinding rage misinterprets everything -- incomplete and out of context. Jim wants him to change it, skew it, gut out its truth and and violate its purity. After Blair has put his life on hold, turned everything inside out to help Jim, lived and breathed Jim's work, stalled, obfuscated and tap-danced his way around grant committees and review boards and done everything in his power to stay by Jim's side while still conducting the research he needed to continue to help him, Jim accuses Blair of betrayal. After never answering Blair's need for reassurance that he belonged beyond his role as a guide for Jim's senses, Jim says "I thought we were friends." There can be no greater rejection of Blair's commitment to him.

Blair understands that Jim is reacting instinctively, but they have done three years worth of work in dealing with Jim's fears and systematically worked through this time and time again, but still they are back to square one, with Jim closing down and shutting Blair out. Jim remains unreachable and Gabe's "miracle" starts to look like Blair's only salvation. After three years of working two jobs, Blair's perpetual resilience is finally starting to give way to apparent fatigue and sympathetic depression. Still, they keep all this between themselves in the midst of the turmoil at the station and deal with it privately. In the cold hard light of day they finally offer each other a compromise, but the underlying problems remain unchanged.

In "Sentinel, Too", Blair is again faced with Jim's fears and paranoia.

Robbed of the chance to interpret Jim's vision, for at least a week Blair has been snapped at, attacked and shut out for no other reason than proximity. On top of that his building at the university is being fumigated so he eventually escapes to the station.

Suddenly there is another woman with headaches, sensory overload and life-threatening disorientation. Blair can no more refuse her need than he did Jim's. Blair holds the key to her rare dilemma and knows he is the only one with the knowledge to help her. Academically, she represents another valuable insight into Sentinels and Blair cannot ignore the opportunity she presents to fine-tune his analyses and add to the big picture he is forming of Sentinels.

He tries to tell Jim about Alex, but Jim, having met him at the door with a gun, is rapidly losing control. The tentative way Blair approaches Jim suggests that he has made many attempts to communicate in the past week and every one has been strangled still-born. Jim seems dangerous and unpredictable and in Blair's estimation is "unusually reluctant" to discuss his feelings with Blair. Blair knows he does not have all the answers and seems uncharacteristically afraid to do the wrong thing and exacerbate the situation.

He reassesses his data in line with Jim's territoriality and decides he has no way of knowing what would happen if he brings both subjects together and decides against telling them about each other until he can introduce them in a controlled situation. In the meantime he continues to meet with and try to help Alex to control her senses and her headaches. He is simultaneously fascinated and discomforted by her and her visions.

Suddenly, Jim kicks Blair out of the loft, severing him from his home, his friend and his life and leaving him with nothing but a pile of boxes. Jim once again flatly refuses Blair's plea to talk about it and walks out to avoid further discussion, and Blair spends a sleepless night at a motel. This time it's Megan who forces him into a confrontation with Jim when Blair is still reeling without enough data to know what is going on, ripped from all his moorings, he's flying blind.

After failing to apprehend the suspect yet again, Jim calls Blair in to talk about the felon. Blair wants to talk about their problem but Jim remains focused on the suspect. Jim finally reveals that he has been having dreams about a spotted cat and a temple in the jungle and the pieces start to fall into place for Blair. He tries to explain and tells Jim about Alex, but cannot believe she is the thief. It's never been in his nature to suspect people are inherently bad, or that he has been so easily manipulated.

Blair realises that this could explain all Jim's behaviour, but Jim can see nothing but betrayal. Blair was helping the enemy. Blair tries again to talk about it but Jim says he's trying to "get past it" and won't discuss it. Blair is starting to hypothesise a challange between the two 'tribal warriors' but Alex apparently escapes to Colombia with some nerve gas so Blair confronts Jim again and insists that they need to talk.

Blair admits full culpability, admitting that he was wholly focused on his work and lost sight of his friend. He hadn't really done this at all, and the overwhelming focus of his work was to help Jim, but whether he believes it of himself, or simply believes it is the only apology Jim will accept, is not clear.

Blair says he is willing to do "anything it takes" to get past this. It's all up to Jim, who even refuses to accept absolute contrition. Jim says instead that he needs a partner he can trust and asks Blair if he's ever stopped to think what good any of this research is doing. Blair knows that it has helped Jim find out who he is and says so, which unintentially strikes right at the heart of Jim's insecurities and vulnerabilities.

Blair has nothing left to give of himself and nowhere else to go. He leaves the final decision up to Jim and goes back to his office to contemplate the bigger picture once again. Who knows what he finally came to understand by the time Alex arrived.

By the end, it was all taken out of Blair's hands. Blair made half a dozen attempts within the aired scenes of this episode alone to confront Jim and sort through their problems, not counting a week's worth of approaches that we weren't party to. He was under threat of losing his job, his doctorate and his best friend and he DID lose his home.

Blair has never received any verbal acknowledgement of his place in Jim's life beyond helping him with his senses. All Jim's assurances about Blair have been shared with others, not Blair himself, yet he has remained none the less. By his own admission he could have written the dissertation ten times over, so that is not the reason he stayed. Three years of absolute dedication to Jim's life and Jim's needs was ultimately rewarded with accusations of betrayal.

Blair admits total culpability for things he did not have enough knowledge to understand or prevent and still it was not enough. All he had left to give was life itself.

And then, he gave that too.