Synopsis: Dave Rife goes under cover in one of his White Castle restaurants. However, things don’t go as easy as planned when he accidently mishandles some of the bakery equipment. -TV.com

The first segment of this episode I felt were too obviously staged. Sure, you have a film crew following you around that is documenting entry level employee job opportunities. But I felt that compared to previous episodes of Undercover Boss, this episode kinda crossed that suspension of disbelief for the viewer.

Personally, I love to see the inner workings of these companies and have peeks at behind the scenes. That’s what makes the show cool for me. I’m hoping for a glimpse at Hershey’s or perhaps a Canadian company like Tim Hortons. I also like the unsung heroes in action. I just felt like either the editors didn’t blur the line enough for the audience or they felt the need to script something with that first store. Maybe if they shuffled that first segment to the end after the packaging plant, it wouldn’t have felt so unusual or out of place.

The Hooters episode is still my favorite to date, given how much stigma the company has to deal with and how hard it is to run a company like Hooters.
Even the 7-Eleven and Waste Management episodes flowed better.

But while I love White Castle and was ecstatic when I got my first sack o’ sliders, I do not rest the shortcomings on them. I just hope the Undercover Boss producers take away from this episode to give more consideration in future to story layout. As an audience member, I don’t mind planted scenes to work into a planned corporate idea so long as they are smooth all around. I’ve watched Apprentice, Dragons Den and a slew of other series over the years to accept that sometimes they’ll put together a happy string of events for a bold new promotion for the company. But the ‘healthy wellness’ segment smacked too much of scripting glue. Maybe it started out as a coincidence and editors ran with it as a tie-in to Mr. Rife that subsequently blossomed into a beautiful campaign idea for White Castle.

Good idea. Just too early for a TV audience I feel.