Since the Super Bowl ended at a decent time, I figured I would tune into Undercover Boss, just to see how far a company executive would go.
Back in the fall, I watched a 15-minute preview of the CBS reality show and I have to admit, I wanted to see more. As I sat at my desk, trying not to let the sweeping Extreme Makeover: Home Edition-like music take me to a weepy place, naïve me thought: Wow, this show could do a lot of good, if it’s done right. But after seeing last night’s première, I don’t think it was.
After a fantastic Super Bowl game (if you’re a Saints fan, that is — whodat!), then what better way to unwind from it than by watching Waste Management president and COO Larry O’Donnell chase garbage around a landfill and clean out portable toilets? Disgusting, right? Well, not as disgusting as the show itself as it shamelessly tried to manipulate all kinds of emotions — the feel-good ones, at least. In fact, the way it yanked on the heartstrings made ABC’s Find My Family seem subtle.
So of course Undercover Boss will be a huge hit. Sigh.
The premise of the show is simple: CEOs (or COOs or CFOs) of giant corporations go undercover at the lowest levels of their corporations to see what some of the grunt workers have to deal with. In the première, O’Donnell went undercover as Randy, and shadowed five Waste Management employees. He learned about sorting recyclables, tended to landfills, drove a garbage truck, and cleaned out portable toilets. He also met one woman who was the textbook example of “overworked and underpaid” as she performed the job of three people — something I’m sure many people can attest.
As he travelled with each mentor, he learned that life is hard for working-class folks (a fact that maddeningly takes him by surprise over and over again). But since we already have Dirty Jobs, Undercover Boss had to take it 10 steps further, by throwing all sorts of sentimental propaganda viewers’ way.
The thing is, O’Donnell seems like a decent guy, not the stereotypical, moustache-twirling evil boss you might have envisioned. He also seemed unaware of what waste management actually entails, but I suppose it’s understandable for a guy that spends most of his time in a cushy office or boardroom. We learned about O’Donnell’s love for family, his wife, his son, and his disabled daughter, who because of what happened to her (a doctor missed something while she went in for something routine and came out with brain damage), O’Donnell is a stickler for protocol. The show made him out to be an absolute saint, but it was the people he met on his travels, who deal with very real issues like dialysis, sexual discrimination, and potentially losing their house that makes the show hit home. Unfortunately, their problems were just classic reality TV fodder, since we only got a peek into these people’s problems; nothing too deep, of course.
After his company tour, O’Donnell met with some other higher-ups and issued some incredibly vague directives on how the company needed to focus less on productivity and profits and more on the people. That’s when it really hit me (and not in a good way) how awful the show was. While Undercover Boss was trying to make it seem like the company now had a change of heart and was going to start fresh, producers were really just interested in the feel-good machinations.
In the coming weeks, we’ll see bosses from Hooters, 7-Eleven, and White Castle, which are sure to be entertaining (next week's Hooters episode has me particularly intrigued). And honestly, the show is compelling, but it’s more about watching the big boss doing menial tasks than anything life-changing for the company’s employees. No matter how nice O’Donnell might actually be off-camera, all he did was come off as clueless about the policies of his own company. In fact, it’s been reported that no substantive changes have been made to Waste Management as a result of his time among his low-level workers. Disgusting indeed.
Undercover Boss airs Sundays, 9 p.m. ET/PT, CTV/CBS.
What did you think? denette@tvguide.ca
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