I thought the new Fox reality show “Does Someone Have to Go?” was about kids about to embark on a long road trip.
No such luck. It’s about downsizing, internal friction at the workplace and employees deciding their own fate by turning on one another.
Dema Barakat and her husband Danoush Khairkhah, bosses of a company selling credit card processing systems in Downers Grove, Ill., tell their staff they are going to leave their considerable personnel problems with them and they should vote on the three employees who should be considered for elimination.
Before that, though, they roll a video with each employee saying what they really think of the others, causing some friction, and then show how much salary each employee is making, an eye-opening exercise for most.
Velocity Merchant Services, or VMS, is a family business as well, so there are a lot of her family members on the payroll, causing some more friction among the others, particularly that one of the highest paid employees is the founder’s mother, with the odd name of Kout.
Even reality shows as contrived as this one are interesting in what they inadvertently show about how people interact in the 21st Century, and particularly in race relations.
Nobody mentions it on screen, but it is the African-Americans who are lowest paid, and when it comes time to list the bottom three vote-getters up for elimination, they are also on the list to go (as is the boss’ mom).
With all its hamfisted, dramatic music and inflated drama, viewers are never given a sense of the business whatsoever (and can’t determine who is doing a good job or not). So they are left to follow the paranoid or catty remarks of people who want to frame others for elimination while saving themselves.
And though this is a slightly different take than the happy-talk workplace reality of shows like “Undercover Boss,” the short-lived “The Job” or the new “Crowd Rules,” it’s really boils down to not much more than any tribal council on “Survivor” or a boardroom scene from “The Apprentice.”
The difference is that this will move awfully slow. It took all of the first hour to get the list of the three nominated to be fired. Next week they’ll have to deliberate on which among them will go. Then on to submit some other unlucky company to this sad game of musical chairs.
For all its frantic jump cuts and overheated music, “Does Someone Have to Go?” makes one nostalgic for a workplace reality show closer to the Fox brand that aired almost a decade ago.
On “My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss,” employees were ruthlessly cut week by week until it was revealed that the person doing the choosing was a monkey who spun a wheel.
Now that’s a Fox reality show.