documentary Super Size Me, in which he willfully gorged himself on all manner of McDonald’s food (and only
McDonald’s food) for an entire month. But whereas that film gaily used
its self-destruction as a sort of teaching mechanism, Spurlock’s latest
project is a bit more tinged with lamentation and earnestness. 30 Days
finds its subjects — including Spurlock himself — trading in a certain
lifestyle to explore a social or religious issue from another point of
view for a month. While its form and rules are a bit roughhewn and
amorphous, shifting to suit the need of whatever topic is under the
microscope, the short-order summer television series is ultimately an
infinitely better exploration of the sort gulfs between cultural
subsets than FX’s own Black & White.

In the show’s pilot, Spurlock and his girlfriend Alex move from New
York to the Midwest to try to make ends meet on the federal minimum
wage — $5.15 per hour — but face difficulty both when they have to go
to the doctor and Spurlock’s niece and nephew come to visit them. Two
other top episodes send a devout Christian into a Muslim family and a
homophobic youngster to live and work in San Francisco’s largely gay
Castro district, where they experience what it’s like to live as
members of a minority that sometimes still elicit feelings of fear
and/or revulsion from many Americans. Other episodes follow an athlete
who tries to reverse the aging process by going on a controversial
anti-aging drug regimen; a mother concerned about her college-aged
daughter who goes on a month-long drinking binge to experience firsthand the social pressures and physical effects of such partying; and
“Off the Grid,” in which two overly enthusiastic American consumers
repair to a Missouri “eco village,” where they do without many of the
comforts of their material world and live without the use of products
derived from fossil fuels.

Presented in a regular Amray case with a snap-in tray, the double-disc 30 Days
includes audio commentary on four of the six episodes and an abundance
of extra “diary cam” footage for each program. More strictly
educational material could have been included, but these confessionals
form the emotive narrative backbones of each show, and in their honesty
instill a certain hope about the nature of open-mindedness moving
forward. Each episode is presented in 1.33:1 full frame, with optional
subtitles in English and Spanish. B (Show) C+ (Disc)