After Super Bowl LXIV ends, and after the post-game interviews and final analysis, CBS will attempt to retain as many members as possible of that huge TV audience, and introduce them to a new reality series:
Undercover Boss,a program in which the heads of corporation pretend to be new trainees, with cameras along to capture both their performances and their treatment.
As post-Super Bowl programs go, it's a pretty good fit...
The audience left, after a Super Bowl, is largely male and, to generalize a bit bluntly, largely drunk. Subtlety isn't exactly the best bait for this crowd. The best bait is something visual, something kinetic -- or, failing that, something extremely simple to grasp and comfortably easy to predict.
The ultimate post-Super Bowl offering may have been in 2003, when ABC presented a special episode of its series Alias, starring Jennifer Garner as a beautiful spy. For the Super Bowl crowd, this particular episode opened aboard a private jet, with Garner's Sydney going undercover as an escort, entertaining a rich client by sporting a whip and wearing nothing but panties, a bra and a stern expression.
Over the years, there have been more misses than hits in programming after th Super Bowl. The first game in 1967, before it was even CALLED a Super Bowl, was followed on CBS by an episode of Lassie. The first truly successful use of the post-Bowl slot was in 1983, when NBC launched The A-Team.
Since then, the Super Bowl has provided a launching pad to a few great TV series (ABC's The Wonder Years in 1988, NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street in 1993), but has spawned just as many instant flops (NBC's Brothers and Sisters sitcom in 1979, CBS's Grand Slam sitcom in 1990).
Mostly, what the time slot has done right is draw bigger audiences to already successful shows, as with the 1996 NBC "Super-Sized" episode of Friends and Fox's 2008 episode of House. But Undercover Boss, premiering tonight, is the first time the post-Bowl slot has been given to a new series since Fox presented a preview of Family Guy in 1999.
So how good IS Undercover Boss? The premise is perfectly timed in these days of economic strife: Let the big boss climb down from his executive suite, assume a series of menial jobs at the lowest level of his corporation, and listen closely as his trainers both explain and complain. Then, after the training period, comes the big reveal: the trainers are summoned to meet the boss, who rewards some and admonishes others.
What concerns me about this show, at least in the pilot episode shown tonight, is that the obvious presence of a camera crew -- explained to the participants as a documentary being made about the training process of new workers -- makes me question almost everything I'm seeing.
Even if the workers don't know they're dealing with an undercover boss, they ARE aware they're being filmed, and that their boss eventually will see it. So, quite possibly, they may be more patient as a result, or more pleasant -- or, in one case, invite the new trainee to their own house for a nice home-cooked meal. What we're seeing is entertaining. But, despite the name of the TV category in which the series has been placed, is it reality?
However, if you accept that caveat and watch skeptically, then Undercover Boss works nicely.. and stands a very good chance of being the first big new reality TV hit in years. If you stayed, and you watched, let me know what YOU think...