30 Days (new show from Supersize Me's Morgan Spurlock)

i'd say he learned how to be gay.

as hilarious as that sounds, i don't see what kind of lesson one could get from that ... isn't one of the reasons behind collegiate binge drinking that you're young and can reasonably fight off the effects of it much better than a 50 year old?

Haha I was not! I have a DOPPLEGANGER!

xpost. looked like you, same hair and similar glasses.

Lemme check...

such a fun show.

actually, this show seems like very differently-framed version of that Fox(or ABC?) show where the weirdos moved into a neighborhood of squares. the one that was killed before it aired.

See, it's a great show like that.

I think the first one was one of the weakest, because yes, they lived on minimum wage, but there were certain things they didn't get. Like, when you're poor, YOU DON'T RUN TO A DOCTOR FOR EVERY ACHE AND PAIN. Of course they ran out of money! What do they think, health care is some kind of RIGHT in this country?

Like what, "The Bachelor"? No, it's really quite good. It's a bit like "Wife Swap" I guess, but I love "Wife Swap".

What's the incentive for people to be on the show? Do they ever discuss that?

Surely there's some coersioc to be on TV, but at least in the case of the guy who took steriods for a month, there was real desire to improve himself. And yes, they dealt with that.

30 Days
(FX, Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET)

Premise: Lifting the high-concept idea from his documentary hit Super Size Me, affable leftist Morgan Spurlock conducts 30-day experiments in empathy. In the first episode, Spurlock and his fiancée Alexandra Jamieson perform a mini-Nickel And Dimed stunt by trying to live for 30 days on minimum-wage jobs. Future episodes feature a Christian hosted by a Muslim family in Dearborn, Michigan, and a homophobe plopped in San Francisco's Castro district.

Humiliation factor: Low. Catchy premise aside, 30 Days' commitment to reality sets it apart from just about every other reality show. Though his conclusions are a little predigested, Spurlock wants to create enlightening and ultimately dignifying experiences that teach people how the other half lives. Hardships are common: In the first episode, Spurlock and Jamieson move into an ice-cold apartment above an abandoned crack house, subsist on a diet of rice and beans, and wait hours in the cold for the bus to take them to menial, backbreaking jobs. These conditions bruise them, humble them, and occasionally put a strain on their relationship, but they rarely have reason for embarrassment.

Insight into the human condition: The "working poor" is one of those designations that shames anyone who believes hard-working, law-abiding citizens are entitled to a piece of the American dream. The country is teeming with them, but when's the last time they got any air time? While it's true that Spurlock and Jamieson are only playing poor for a month, their adventures lead to countless insights on the tragic lapses in the health-care system, the pitfalls of living paycheck to paycheck, and the touching generosity of ordinary people who step up when there's a tear in the safety net.

Summary: Not since Michael Moore's TV Nation has a show rallied so passionately for a leftist political agenda—and on one of Rupert Murdoch's networks, no less. Its concept may hamstring it over the long haul, but 30 Days is more austere and substantial than Moore's show was, and it has a sense of humor, too. Time will tell whether Spurlock is capable of arriving at conclusions rather than telegraphing them in advance, but for now, he's a voice in the wilderness.

Say, do you think he could get "affable leftist" printed on business cards?

I didn't appreciate the kind of reality-bending/truth-altering (yes, 30 days of all fast-food will make you fat. so will 30 days of all-french bread, but that's why we don't eat nothing but french bread y'know?) that he had to pursue for whatever you want to call his goal in Super Size Me, this would presumably just be more of the same in smaller chunks.

actually, i don't think so. I think that SSM was him doing that to himself just to so the particular health effects of prolonged exposure to that type of food.

i think this show is more of a social laboratory than a health one, with the whole "take people out of their comfortable environments and make them face a different way of living for 30 days".

then again, the one ep has the guy apparently eating steriods & other drugs for 30 days in an attempt recapture lost vigor of youth, so perhaps you're right.

see how much spurlock cares about our health?

Holy crap, so you're the other one. The only thing Morgan Spurlock makes me want to do is murder Morgan Spurlock.

That was the angle of the piece, anyway. More telling: the FDA, DEA, and really everyone except Congress OPPOSED making anabolic steriods a controlled substance, citing a lack, if not a complete absence, of evidence that they are dangerous. That shocked me. I would not have thought that. Who would have.

And if steroids kill, where are the bodies?

Also, there's evidence that "roid rage" is either a total myth or a result of extreme abuse of the drug. Like with alcohol.

His status as an athlete does not make him a good poster boy for much of anything medical, though. *He* was the only one who ever linked his cancer to his steriod abuse. He just assumed.

Yeah, I know, but the difference between what we're told about steriods and the facts are wide and long.

steroid use of the kind now in the sports pages has nothing to do with responsible use by informed adults,

How do you know that? I self-administer marijuana pretty frequently, and I don't need a medical professional to tell me how much I can handle.

My revelation seemed obvious to me at the time. "Holy shit, is the government lying to us about the dangers of steriods?" Seems plausible enough.

Heads up: you're being a douche right now.

What possible stake could Rupert Murdoch have in claiming that steroids are *not* dangerous? If he were so politically connected to his programming to care, which he is not, he would make an effort to toe the Republican party line, no?