Each episode depicts a person who has an upper-management position at a major business, deciding to go undercover as an entry-level employee to discover the faults in the company.
The boss is exposed to a series of predicaments with amusing results and invariably spends time getting to know selected company employees, learning about their professional and personal challenges.
[24] CBS's premiere of Undercover Boss on February 7, 2010, immediately following the network's coverage of Super Bowl XLIV, delivered 38.6 million viewers—the largest audience ever for a new series following the Super Bowl since the advent of people meters in 1987, the largest audience ever to watch the premiere episode of a reality series, the most watched new series premiere overall on television since Dolly on September 27, 1987 (39.47 million), and the third largest post-Super Bowl audience behind Friends Special on January 28, 1996, and Survivor: The Australian Outback on January 28, 2001.
Undercover Boss received mixed reviews; most held good words for the opening episode, but some criticized elements of the show's format.
"[30] Reviewers with the Chicago Sun-Times[31] and the New York Times complimented the opening episode, although the latter described the ending as "embarrassingly feudal" and had reservations on Waste Management, Inc COO Lawrence O'Donnell III's plan to create a task force to address the problems he found: "Larry's plans to reform his company and humanize the workplace seem great, until he starts to order up committees to study what he has learned.
[34] The Washington Post, in a negative review, said that Undercover Boss "is a hollow catharsis for a nation already strung out on the futility of resenting those who occupy CEO suites.
"[35] Entertainment Weekly initially panned it, calling the first episode a "CBS-organized publicity stunt" and "a recruiting tool for a worker uprising,"[36] but in another review described the show as "irresistible.
"[37] The Los Angeles Times believed that it was deriving its idea from Fox's Secret Millionaire (also created by Stephen Lambert[38]) and that it was 'cooked' for TV, with the low-level workers being hand-picked, but conceded that the show is "undeniably touching".
[39] Arianna Huffington noted, "In the 19th century, one of the most effective ways to convey the quiet desperation of the working class to a wide audience was via a realistic novel.
"[40] In a season-end review, the New York Times's chief television critic, Alessandra Stanley, examined the unexpected success of the show and concluded that "it's the humility of the workers, their genuine astonishment and thankfulness over small acts of benevolence, that is most striking.
If nothing else, Undercover Boss is a reminder that in bad times, people are less eager to confront or provoke authority; mostly they wish for small favors and the big, serendipitous strokes of luck.
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.
[44][45] In 2016 and 2020, Saturday Night Live aired sketches that parodied Undercover Boss which featured Adam Driver in character as Kylo Ren, the Supreme Leader of the First Order from the Star Wars sequel trilogy.