'Undercover Boss,' feel-good television
Now may not be the best time to debut a series that shows the positive side of big American corporations and the men who run them. As the narrator of the new reality series “Undercover Boss” says, times are hard, and “many Americans blame wealthy CEOs.”
Nonetheless, the show, which will premiere in the plum post-Super Bowl slot this Sunday on CBS, expects us to empathize with and even like top corporate executives. In the series, the bosses will go incognito to perform various low-level jobs at their own corporations and presumably learn how their own directives play out on the front lines.
The premiere episode, which stars Larry O’Donnell, the president and chief operating officer of Waste Management Inc., is a surprisingly effective hour of feel-good TV — if viewers are willing to put their cynicism on hold.
In the episode, O’Donnell learns how to sort through recyclable materials on a conveyor belt, pick up stray paper around a landfill and clean portable outhouses. The scenes in which he fails at the most simple tasks, while predictable, are predictably enjoyable.
Waste Management obviously put its best foot forward. O’Donnell comes across as a diffident, likable sort, and his supervisors at all of his blue-collar jobs turn out to be both hard-working and mostly telegenic.
The narrator says that the supervisors were told that O’Donnell is a blue-collar worker named Randy who is being filmed for a documentary about entry-level jobs. Since the footage is shot without hidden cameras, we see everyone on his or her best behavior.
That said, viewers are likely to come away feeling that America’s workers are the salt of the earth. A latrine cleaner named Fred is hilarious as he shows O’Donnell how to flush out the sewage, shouting, “Make it dance, Randy!”
Jaclyn, an overworked office staffer who says that she is a cancer survivor, actually invites O’Donnell to dinner at her house. Though the average cynic might think that Jaclyn wouldn’t have been quite so kind to a random job seeker who didn’t have a camera crew following him, it’s hard not to be moved when we learn that she is helping to support her extended family and that she might lose her home.
O’Donnell says the process has made him realize that some of his own orders concerning productivity may have led to policies that make the company’s workers’ lives worse. A female garbage-truck driver says she doesn’t have time for bathroom breaks, and a recycling-plant worker complains that she is docked two minutes’ pay for every minute she clocks in late.
Though O’Donnell is apologetic, the episode suggests that the real villain is someone else: middle management. Unnamed supervisors are spotted shadowing the garbage truck, and the poor guy who created the time-clock policy winds up having an unpleasant meeting with O’Donnell.
The episode concludes with O’Donnell revealing his identity to his temporary colleagues and then addressing the issues raised by his blue-collar days. How satisfying viewers will find this depends on their ability to repress their skepticism.
Most people will finish the hour with greater appreciation for both bosses and blue-collar workers. As for middle managers, the most sympathetic treatment they’ll get on TV is probably “The Office.”
Posted on February 19th