What We Elevate

 This is a story of two different networks. Two different shows. Both of these "reality-based" series got their start in the early twenty-first century, a time when entertainment was searching for an identity. Something that would ring with the masses. 

Though it was the second of the shows to appear on the scene, the Columbia Broadcasting System offered up Undercover Boss. The premise of this slice of life was to offer corporate big-wigs a chance to go, as the title suggests, undercover and work alongside the employees who are not necessarily among the profit-sharing. For example, the President of Waste Management, Larry O'Donnell put on a fake mustache and went to work scrubbing porta-potties and sorting recycling. Over the course of his on the job training in various less office-based chores, he learns of the struggles and realities of the rank and file. In subsequent episodes, CEOs and COOs and Presidents of companies experience a Dickensian opportunity for awakening of the struggles that exist for those not appearing on the corporate registry. Each show ends with the big reveal, where the employees are summoned to headquarters where they find out that the guy who didn't know how to put on his own hair net was really the one signing their checks. And then they are offered a chance to move up, but not too far, and hear promises of new programs that will make cleaning porta-potties a more dignified way to spend forty hours a week. 

Prior to this, the flip side of the coin was found on your local NBC affiliate. You may be familiar with a little slice of TV history called The Apprentice. If not, the premise here was that a dozen or so business types were brought together to try and get a chance to work for the real estate empire of one (checks notes) Donald Jessica Trump. Each episode made a game out of some task that would elevate the teams' brand name and when one of the teams was declared the winner, the losers were called into the board room where the titular head of the company would single out one member to receive the ultimate penalty and catchphrase of the show: "You're fired." D. Jessica Trump was eventually fired from the next job he had, but he seems willing to debase himself as well as all those around him by making a show of trying to get that job back. 

What I find interesting and terribly sad about this is that we as a culture didn't choose to make a cultural phenomenon out of Undercover Boss. Instead, we tuned in by ridiculous numbers to watch a man of little or no moral center screeching "you're fired" at those who might disappoint him. How could we not have seen what was coming? To be honest, I think I would tune in to see D Jessica Trump put on a fake mustache to clean porta-potties for eight hours. Anybody with me?