That more or less sums up the ethos of the show, which presented the corporation as an amoral agent of profit and as complying with customers whatever the request, only funny. (Clients included a small nation with an abundance of pumpkins it wanted to weaponize.) Fake ads for Veridian Dynamics, “developers of food and foodlike products,” spoofed the blue-sky futurism of big pharmaceutical and other nominally science-based companies, and the show drew broad laughs with products like hurricane-proof dogs, aerodynamic bagels and octo-chickens. But lurking inside was an actual message about the struggle to hang onto your humanity while working within an organization built to destroy it as if it were that defective batch of Veridian Dynamics fabric softener. (Apparently the softener caused deafness.)

The Company

Prison Break (2005-9, Fox); reprise expected in the spring of 2017

SAMPLE MALFEASANCE Framing a man for murder, thereby inspiring the titular prison break.

The closest thing to a shadowy cabal on this list, the Company was actually made up of the heads of many multinational companies who reported to a rogue general and, we were told, “call every shot this country takes: laws, judges, wars.” The Company, which framed the brother of the hero, Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller), to kick off the show, had fixes for most of the world’s ills — cheap energy, clean water, cures to diseases — and broad plans for world domination. (It took over Laos as a sort of test case.)

Its top priority, however, seemed to be to find new ways to put Scofield in prison so he could find new ways to break out. The show ended with the Company shut down and Scofield dead. But a coming “Prison Break” reprise finds Scofield alive and incarcerated yet again, believe it or not, so perhaps a corporate resurrection is on the way.