TV Review: Undercover Boss is somehow entertaining

On the tip of someone else, I checked out Undercover Boss the other night. The premise of the show is somewhat simple and ingenious - They ship CEOs from their plush office to the trenches of their business. The first episode focused on Waste Management, which I didn't see, and the second was about... Hooters.

I don't exactly have the best relationship with Hooters. A couple of my friends are a fan of it, so I've been, but the outfit is so tacky and the food so-so to me. Everyone always brags about the wings, but having tasted the wings, they are nothing special as compared to other places. And hey, just about every place serves wings now anyway.

Kobi (Kobe?) Brooks, a.k.a. Scotty, Scott and the CEO of Hooters, goes through a variety of jobs - back of the house, promotions team, two management teams and a stint at the production plant. Keeping in mind that Hooters is cooperating with the whole mission, you get a sort of backstage pass into the inner workings of the business.

The most reprehensible part of the episode would be the shady dealings of the first manager Scotty visits, about 20 minutes into the episode. He is the type of chauvinistic pig that you would expect to see managing a Hooters, such as when he lines the girls up to criticize their look one-by-one, and then has them do a bean-eating contest with their hands behind their backs to see who gets to go home early.

These puerile moments are balanced by some better, harder-hitting emotional moments. Scotty has to shill Hooters coupons on the street with two of the girls, and they're (somehow) very cute and personable as opposed to trashy and trampy. Later, on his second managing stint, he is paired with a female manager, who is shockingly sweet and good to the girls she is managing. In the weird, sexist environment of Hooters, there does seem to be some areas of enlightenment, which the CEO seemed to pick up on and wanted to use as a model for other stores.

Anyway, the end of the episode has a cheesy confrontation portion, as the boss reveals that he has been spying on his employees. This is followed by another cheesy portion, in which the video of the CEO mucking it up is shown to an assembly of all of the company's workers. (The episode also started out with a bad, fake "board meeting" with the CEO explaining that he would be taking a one-week break in order to go dick around as a low-level employee.)

If Undercover Boss can trim some of these fatty extras, and just focus on the CEOs in the trenches, then I think they really have something here. As is, the Hooters episode was interesting enough that I'll probably check it out again.

Grade: B+

Undercover Boss is on CBS, Sunday nights at 9 EST. You can visit the web site for the show here.