What to Binge This Weekend: Morgan Spurlock Will Change Your Life in Just '30 Days'

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For his breakout 2004 documentary, Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock spent 30 days eating nothing but McDonald’s burgers, fries, and other assorted not-good-for-you foods. That hook proved so effective, it’s no surprise that he used it again for his first foray into television, 30 Days, which ran for three well-received seasons on FX from 2005 to 2008. This time around, though, Spurlock didn’t force himself to try a new diet — like, say, 30 days of Dairy Queen — every month. Instead, he took deep dives into specific cultures, environments, and professions for one month at a stretch, challenging his mind as much as his body.

Of course, due to the accelerated nature of television production, Spurlock couldn’t star in every episode of 30 Days. Instead, he headlined one installment a season, enlisting ordinary individuals to embark on the other experiments. In the series premiere, for example, Spurlock and his then-fiancée went on a difficult 30-day regimen of living on minimum wage. Other episodes during that first season featured a fervent Christian moving in with a Muslim family, two Internet addicts going completely off the grid, and a mother embarking on a 30-day bout of binge-drinking in order to show her daughter the dangers of alcohol abuse.

Going forward, Spurlock (who currently hosts the CNN series, Inside Man) would continue to use his show as a vehicle to explore topical, controversial subjects, from immigration and the state of America’s prison system — for which the director spent a month behind bars in a Virginia jail — to same sex parenting and gun rights. The fact that all of those topics are still hot button issues has lent 30 Days a continued relevance that not all decade-old shows possess. And while the episodes didn’t always end with the participants doing a complete 180 in their views, they clearly learned a lot along the way. More importantly, Spurlock’s series was always careful to highlight the initial clash of cultures without descending into daytime TV exploitation. If nothing else, 30 Days proves the old adage that you can’t understand another person’s experience until you’ve walked a mile — or lived 30 days — in their shoes.  

All three seasons of 30 Days can be streamed on Netflix.