Undercover Boss turns 10: Why the CBS reality show is really about class warfare

The A.V. Club

Now in its ninth season, Undercover Boss premiered on Feb. 7, 2010 as "some of the most blatant propaganda on American television," says Alex McLevy. "It’s a shameless endorsement of capitalist inequality that may as well end each episode by reminding everyday Americans that they should shut up and be grateful their lives are controlled by such selfless exemplars of virtue. It’s class warfare in everything but name. Unsurprisingly, it seems clear that this was the intent from the very start. True, it’s based on a British show that was birthed by the idea it’d be fun for a CEO to eavesdrop on what it’s really like to work for them, but the American version is notably different. Developed in the midst of the worst financial recession since the Great Depression, the opening seconds of the pilot were explicit about the show’s aims of resuscitating the reputation of the corporate leaders and Fortune 500 assholes who rode the backs of working people into the ditch of the 2008 collapse."