The second season of Bravo's Flipping Out seems designed to answer the question of just how much abuse ordinary employees will put up with on the job, for the sake of keeping a steady paycheck in a lousy economy. It also poses another thought: if a jerk recognizes that he's a jerk, does that mitigate the jerkdom in any way, or make it less excusable?

The Bravo series about a real estate speculator who remodels homes in elite neighborhoods and (ideally) resells them for huge profits has become even funnier this season, probably because the stakes seem higher. Selling real estate in southern California was a license to print money not long ago, but now the overall problems in the housing market are affecting even the affluent, and since flipper Jeff Lewis is a basket case at the best of times, the pressure of life on the edge has made him almost insufferable.

Lewis is not without self-knowledge, though it's debatable if he realizes just how out of his gourd he really is. While he has no apparent sense of humor, least of all about himself, Lewis does understand that he's paranoid, prone to outbursts on the most minute subjects, and generally unreasonable. And he's not beyond accurately blaming himself for various misjudgments on the job. But like all self-centered people, he gives off the impression that other people exist exclusively to serve his needs. And while there's some justification for a business owner to feel that way about his employees, Lewis takes it to demeaning extremes.

His treatment of his Nicaraguan maid Zoila illustrates this. Zoila is to some extent a stock character: the humble working woman who can get away with having a smarter mouth than people in the Lewis organization with much more to lose. Lewis no doubt thinks he's doing well by her, but his class-based condescension is hard to miss. One fear is that Zoila, by virtue of having gotten a small amount of education, may be "building a tunnel to escape," as Lewis's right-hand woman Jenni put it. "What concerns me is she's starting to learn things like the law, and her rights. Zoila is becoming dangerous," said Lewis, with no twinkle in the eye or other sign that he acknowledges that a decent boss has nothing to fear from a well-informed employee.

Lewis later decided to give Zoila a birthday present, commissioning a portrait of her. The Lucian Freud-like realism was not quite what Zoila had expected, and she deemed it ugly. But what was strange was that Lewis would ask for her to be painted in a maid's uniform in the first place, as if working for him will be the unquestioned highlight of her life. "I think it's really nice to have something to remember your housekeeper by. She's not going to live forever," said Lewis, adding that he doubts he would do this for any of his future maids.

But the current key subplot, which apparently comes to a head this week, involves Lewis planting hidden cameras in order to catch the lolling about and shirking that he is positive is going on while he's away. There's not necessarily a legal issue here, since Lewis runs his operation out of his homes and few would question the right to have security in the home. And one of the cameras has seemed to catch Lewis's manager (and Jenni's husband) Chris engaged in serial malingering, not to mention answering the phone "Chez Louis." But being spied on is not going to help morale in the Lewis organization once it is revealed, and the whole incident seems to be a way for him to find scapegoats for what is proving to be a difficult year in the business.

Like a lot of narcissists who have difficulty with other human beings, Lewis is a huge animal lover, which is one point in his favor. But this probably isn't much comfort to those employees who have to put up with his mercurial nature (Jenni, who is an aspiring actress, has her own reasons for hanging on to the job). Hopefully Lewis will find some balance one of these days. We wouldn't want anyone on his staff to flip out postal style.

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