IMPERIAL BEACH, CA: Greg Ruzicka and his 20-something son Cole, dressed in jeans and hoodies, hand over $57 for the day’s rent and look apprehensively at each other; they now have only $97 left for five more days of food and housing. Their new slumlord leaves them to explore their dingy motel apartment.

They find a hole punched in the bathroom door, and a wall lamp with exposed wires. “Don’t touch it-it looks too dangerous,” Greg warns. Cole repeatedly closes a cupboard door in the kitchen that won’t stay shut. Greg pulls back the covers of one of the beds and smells the sheets. He finds silverfish in the sink. “Cockroaches, termites…” Cole lists off the gross things he sees. They inspect a mysterious gritty substance spilled all over a chair. “Oh, that is disgusting.” Greg comments.

Greg and Cole are slumming. The millionaire and his son live on Balboa Island, where you can’t buy much house for less than a million bucks. Today, they have boated down here disguised as poor people, with the intent to philanthropize. Greg-who admits with a hint of pride that Cole was “spoiled rotten”-also thinks that this will be an “enlightening experience” for his son. It will at least be a very different experience from, say, the time that Greg leased a castle in Ireland for Cole’s 15^th birthday.

So begins Fox’s new series Secret Millionaire. The premise is simple: a millionaire (or a pair of them) goes undercover for five days in one of the country’s poorest neighborhoods. The only cash they are allowed to take with them is “welfare wages” of about a hundred bucks. Their temporary digs are in keeping with the standards of the neighborhood, and some, like Greg and Cole, will find low-paying jobs in order to cover their basic expenses.

The millionaires’ mission is to go out and find deserving locals to whom they will, on the sixth day-after changing back into their “real” clothes and personas-donate at least a hundred grand of their own money.

Public reaction has been polarized and often heated. Snarky detractors are quick to point out the hypocrisies and shortcomings of both the show and the participating millionaires; god-blessing fans retort that the haters are “just bitter” and should give the millionaires more credit.

It’s true that all the millionaires have changed many lives with their generosity, and it’s true that their participation on the show opens their eyes to some important social realities. For that, I congratulate both the producers and the participants. There’s nothing wrong with rich people giving away lots of money to poor people, and there’s nothing wrong with teaching rich people what it’s like to be poor. Both of those things should be encouraged, and should happen more often.

It’s also true that there is much to criticize.

As is the case with all reality TV, the show is heavy-handedly edited for the entertainment values of voyeurism and sentimentality; to this effect, the producers take care to showcase any of the millionaires’ particularly grating behaviors or utterances. After all, we’re supposed to love them and hate them.

Certain of the show’s participants have been more roundly disparaged than others, and millionaire Gurbaksh “G” Chahal has been an especially easy target for character criticism.

G. acquired his millions by starting internet-ad companies and then selling them to other companies (the first for 40 million; the second for 300 million). The producers deliberately exaggerate his young-metrosexual-playboy style and demeanor as he shows off his brand new, gaudily decorated penthouse condo in what looks to be one of the widely hated new skyscrapers in San Francisco’s recently gentrified SOMA district.

They send him off to live in the Tenderloin, an area of the city full to overflowing with camera-ready homeless people and junkies. His temporary apartment is, by area standards, hella nice. It has refinished wood floors and uniformly white walls; there is no visible grime or mold; the furnishings are spare but stylish. It’s a one-bedroom, the likes of which would currently go for $1,500 to $2,000 per month. For effect, somebody has left a jar of something old and gross in the fridge.

A real poor person could not afford this apartment. Minimum wage in San Francisco is $9.36, the second-highest in the country, but at 40 hours per week that’s still only $375 per week, roughly $1,500 per month, and $19,400 per year–before taxes. And, as anyone who’s ever worked for minimum wage (or close to it) knows, truly full-time crappy jobs can be hard to come by.

We watch as G changes into his “poor” outfit: jeans and a tight camo hoodie. He looks like he belongs in the Castro, not the Tenderloin. He passes many a grizzled old homeless guy. He wakes up at night, afraid because there’s a knock on the door and the toilet keeps making sounds. He goes grocery shopping and struggles to tear off a produce bag from the roll. He now claims on his blog that he did not actually say afterwards, “grocery shopping–it’s not that easy”.

G volunteers at a soup kitchen and a women’s shelter in order to locate some deserving poor people. He probes into the life stories of the currently and formerly homeless, sometimes insensitively, as when he inquires of a woman who was in an abusive relationship, “Did it ever get…physical?”

But the real problem with Secret Millionaire is not the personalities of its participants; it’s the fact that the show structured in such a way that it might be more aptly titled Secret Capitalist Propaganda.

More than one of the millionaires gushes that he or she is “living the American Dream.” The term was coined in 1931 by James Truslow Adams, who had in mind a collective wish “of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.” These days, however, it’s more often associated with the individualism found in the phrase “rags to riches,” the concept of “pulling yourself up by the bootstraps,” or plain-and-simple financial success.

Season two’s Todd Graves is the CEO and founder of the Raising Cane’s fast-food chain; his wife Gwen is a millionaire in her own right, as the former owner of a McDonald’s franchise. Todd (and several of the other millionaires) boast of coming from “nothing;” the implication is that they have at least some sense of what it’s like to be poor, and that they earned their money legitimately. Some of these rags-to-riches claims are more dubious than others.

Central to the narrative of the show is the idea that only certain kinds of poor people deserve a better life. Not one of the millionaires can get from one commercial break to the next without mentioning how “blessed” or “fortunate” they are. Luck may have been a factor in the accumulation of their wealth, but only merit will influence whom they pass it on to.

They say things like “this woman has earned the right to have an easier life,” “she’s completely selfless,” and “I want to…really find the true stories.” Poverty, in and of itself, is not what makes any of the recipients “worthy.” As G walks down Market Street, which is a spot as well known for tourism and shopping as it is for poverty, one of the homeless dudes grunts in G’s general direction, “gimme some money!” This man clearly does need money, and he needs it more urgently than do the eventual beneficiaries of G’s largesse.

He won’t get any from G though, and that’s in large part because he’s demanding it. The lucky, deserving poor people on this show are the ones who don’t ask. They’re the ones whose spirits haven’t been “broken,” the ones who aren’t pissed off about economic inequality. They’re the ones who plod along, grateful for what little good comes their way, and stoically uncomplaining about all the bad.

What is entirely left out of the show’s conceptual framework is the question of whether the millionaires themselves deserve the money that they already have.

Greg Ruzicka is rich because he’s a partner in a law firm that specializes in evictions and foreclosures. He says of his business ”when the economy does poorly…we do very, very well.” The Graveses have raked in the money by overseeing the operations of fast food restaurants. The Raising Cane’s website doesn’t advertise a wage range for any of its positions, but it does say that only full-time managers get health coverage and sick days, which leaves little doubt in my mind about the minimum-wage nature of the other positions.

Most of the millionaires wipe away tears at the end of the show as they announce that their recent experience has changed their life, and I think those tears are genuine. But never do we see any indication that they’ve made the connection between their own wealth and the systematic exploitation of other people. Will Greg Ruzicka quit his job and put his lawyerly skills to a more socially productive use? Will Todd Graves and the other businessmen millionaires start paying their staff more?

Public philanthropy of the Secret Millionaire sort is as much about the giver as the receiver, as most of the givers make clear. It makes them feel good to make a difference, to be the face associated with generosity, to be thanked and hugged. But poverty is a necessary fact of a capitalist economy, and philanthropy, whatever the motivation behind it, is a stopgap measure, not a long-term solution.

After G hands over his check and leaves the soup kitchen, the other volunteers resume their tasks. “Back to work!” one of them announces, still giddy with appreciation.

G will head back to his hyper-monogrammed penthouse; the volunteers will chop more vegetables for the stream of homeless people that won’t abate. The crack and speed trade in the Tenderloin will continue; the counter staff at Raising Cane’s will be paid far less than the value of their labor; another family will be evicted. The poor will stay poor; the rich will get richer.

Back to work, indeed.