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Undercover Big Banking Boss, Episode #2

Published: Feb 25, 2010

 Finance       
I admit I can not get enough of the weepy condescending train wreck that is CBS' new hope for a hit: no, not "CSI El Paso," I'm talking about "Undercover Boss."

Last week on “UB” we saw 7-Eleven's head honcho discover how difficult it is to simultaneously sell Club, mop floors and brew decaf, and this Sunday we’ll see White Castle’s chief uncover the mystery behind why his company’s sales spike after 1 a.m.

In the meantime, here's another treatment I've uncovered for the forthcoming spin-off, “Undercover Big Banking Boss.”

Episode #2: Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase

Jamie Dimon

In the intro segment we'll show a few short clips of Jamie before he goes undercover, focusing on the human side of the $17 million man. In one, we'll see him writing a $325 check to his alma mater Harvard University, giving the audience an idea of Jamie's boundless generosity. In another, we'll show Jamie's vulnerable side, cutting to a clip of him lying on his back in the snow in Aspen after a spill while taking semi-private snowboard lessons along with his close bud Barack Obama. In a third, we'll witness Jamie hailing a New York City taxi then braving the back of the cab from Midtown to Wall Street, showing that he is indeed a man of the people, and doesn’t travel everywhere by private jet or black car.

Job #1: In his first undercover assignment, Jamie will be sent to a Chase branch in Fargo, where we’ll see the CEO train as an assistant branch manager. In a dramatic sequence (shot completely hand-held), Jamie will be fired three hours into his training after repeatedly complaining about the quality of the coffee served at the branch. He'll be interviewed afterward, emphatically vowing to improve the free morning Joe across the Chase footprint, flying it in from Costa Rica if he has to. "This BLEEP isn't even good on the first BLEEPin drop,” Jamie will say as we break to [a Nescafe] commercial.

Job #2: After getting canned, the $17 million man will fly further west to San Bernardino where he'll impersonate a Chase residential mortgage banker. His main job will entail calling customers to tell them the No. 1 bank in the land plans to foreclose on their homes. Of course, Dimon will be so moved by some of the tears and cuss words he encounters on the job (as well as the sad piano music playing in the background over the scenes) that he will temporarily drop cover, call in his regional manager, and, in the parking lot behind Denny’s, proceed to write a few more $325 checks to send to a few of the foreclosed-upon folks. “Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice’s story really moved me,” Jamie will say in our tear-inducing money shot of the episode.

Job #3: The $17 million man’s final assignment will be as a female first-year investment-banking associate in Dallas. Disguised as a recent Rice MBA but using his real name, Jamie will be treated well by his/her fellow associates, and will receive preferential treatment by his/her MD (a man with a penchant for seersucker originally from Charleston, South Carolina, known around the office as "Bubba"). The treatment will be so good that the MD will repeatedly invite Jamie over to his “secret fort” located in “a hot spot in downtown Houston.” Due to his time undercover being up, Jamie will be forced to take a rain check from Bubba, and at the close of the segment, Jamie will praise his firm's female-friendly policies, choking up at how well his male superiors and male peers treated him, adding that some of the female administrative assistants “were, as I think about it now, pretty pleasant, too.”

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