Working: What We Do All Day

Fascinating, enlightening and sometimes sobering.

While we hope the show, and Obama, stay as grounded as it does in the first episode, Working: What We Do All Day is still a good glimpse at just what work is like in America, especially in these post-pandemic times.

The people we meet during the four parts of the series are uniformly lovely. ... But the insights they provide are largely about themselves, not the massive problems they are intended to represent and personify. ... In the end, "What We Do All Day" is a lot of work.

It’s all pretty illuminating—until the bizarre finale, whose sunny portrait of the C-suite comes off as anything but representative.

It’s a stand-alone political message that’s also a piece of a larger political legacy. Inevitably, the latter overshadows and complicates the former. ... Loses some bite as it shifts focus from those struggling to get by to the CEOs running the show. Obama does lament corporate greed, but naturally, the leaders who afforded “Working” access aren’t identified as any of the bad ones.