Undercover Boss: 4 Reasons to Hit It and Quit It

"How great was Undercover Boss last night?" -- what absolutely no one in America said today.

After four hours of football, new commercials, and sodium-based snacks, Americans can stomach anything, which explains Undercover Boss's gargantuan audience last night. At 38.6 million viewers, it became the most-watched Super Bowl lead-out since 2001. While that's certainly a feat for any new series, CBS shouldn't let that figure go to its head. Undercover Boss may have provided adequate thrills for the bloated and drunk couch-surfers last night, but it's not something that self-respecting viewers will be returning to anytime soon. Here are four reasons why:

Case in Point #1: Hierarchy Mind Games

At the center of last night's series opener was Larry O'Donnell, President and C.O.O. of Waste Management. A man who clearly had never spent a day waiting for work in the Home Depot parking lot, Larry modestly tried to play off his impressive career ascent with phrases like "I've had a lot of nice opportunities come my way." Producers tried to at once earn sympathy for their CEO by letting him rattle on about his son and developmentally challenged daughter, while simultaneously cheapening the effect with footage of his family water-skiing and enjoying the luxuries of their country club. That back-and-forth continued the whole episode. Just when you started to feel for Larry because he was moved to tears when a developmentally challenged neighbor thanked her trash man for his good work, you started to hate him because he couldn't complete a simple task (more on that later).

Case in Point #2: Job Porn

Have we forgotten that a large chunk of Americans are unemployed and would gladly switch positions with the president of Waste Management, who is "slumming it" by working on the floor of his recycling house at an $8/hour job? For that jobless population, last night's Undercover Boss played out like a soft-core job porn. Factories full of workers milling around in uniforms and hard hats, free to "punch-lunch" during their shifts...there wasn't much hardcore action, but there was enough innuendo about pulling cardboard off of the conveyor belt to remind a part of the nation that having a full-time job at Waste Management is only a fantasy.

Case in Point #3: Seriously, You Can't Correctly Put Garbage Into a Bag But at the End of the Day, You're Still My Boss?

That mind-boggling moment arrived last night for Waste Management employee Kevin, who supervised "Randy" (actually Larry) while cleaning up trash on a windy day. After Larry insulted Kevin ("Do you have any tips for doing this? You've obviously been doing this a lot longer than I have") and then proved himself a miserable trash-picker-upper, Kevin let "Randy" go. It was a moment of victory for half-drunk viewers everywhere, until the inevitable turning of the tables came at the end of the episode. Larry revealed that he was actually the COO of the company and would be resuming his position, even though he's hopelessly inept at the trash disposal his company provides.

Case in Point #4: Lamest Ending Ever

Really, Larry? You just wasted everyone's time by going undercover and proving that you're incapable of performing some of the lower-end tasks at your company and now you're going to tell your employees that you'll improve their awful jobs by installing a task force? I'm sure they'd all rather have an oversized CBS t-shirt. Sure, Larry also gave the few of his employees that cooperated on the show a pay bump. But what about the employees that didn't have the pleasure of interacting with their bumbling boss? Can we get a benefit analysis of how CBS's PR for the company compares to the company's change in attitude towards staff as a result of Undercover Boss?