Living a Dare, For 30 Days At a Time

By James Poniewozik

On one level, Morgan Spurlock's 2004 Super Size Me is an incisive look at American appetites, health and consumerism. On another, it's just a brainy Fear Factor episode. Spurlock spends 30 days eating nothing but McDonald's. He gets fat, he gets ill, he vomits copiously. Documentarian, schmockumentarian: any man who will hurl in the pursuit of truth has the goods to make an excellent reality show.

And now he has made one. 30 Days (FX, Wednesdays, 10 p.m. E.T., debuts June 15) franchises Super Size Me's high concept. In each episode, someone undergoes a transformation for a month: living as a Muslim, undergoing anti-aging treatments and so on. But this time Spurlock (who also has a new book out about fast food) is not the sole guinea pig. When he pitched the series, he says, "the idea was each month, I'd go off and do these things. And Alex [Jamieson, his girlfriend] said, 'You're not going to have a girlfriend if you do that.'"

So he enlisted volunteers for all the episodes but one, in which he spends a month living on the minimum wage (along with Jamieson, now his fiance). The experience is as rough on their relationship as Super Size Me was on his waistline. They set off jauntily, she getting a job busing tables, he doing manual labor. One ant-infested apartment and many rice-and-beans dinners later, they're fighting over everything from bus money to splurging on a dollar movie. They scrimp, but a couple of minor illnesses wipe out their savings. "It's a life-size game of Chutes and Ladders," says Spurlock. "Somebody gets sick, and Daddy's going down, down, down."

30 Days pretty much busts the assumption that all of Rupert Murdoch's TV networks are tools of Karl Rove. (Spurlock shows off his A.C.L.U. card on camera.) But the series is not strident, and seems to have been made in a genuine spirit of curiosity. Later episodes, in which Spurlock serves as host and does interviews, are mixed; anti-aging therapy is simply not as burning a social issue. But the Islam episode--a devout Christian moves in with a Muslim family--is fascinating, moving, funny and without a shred of manipulation.

Another episode, not shown to critics, in which a suburban mom goes on a drinking binge, would cause outrage if Factor were asking her to do it for $50,000. But Spurlock says the woman took the challenge as an object lesson to her daughter. "I wouldn't ask anyone to do anything I wouldn't do myself," he says. After 90 gut-busting McMeals, of course, we have a pretty good idea how little that is. --By James Poniewozik