TV is the new reading

'30 Days' is good even in disappointment

Last week’s installment reminded me of why I’m impressed with Morgan Spurlock.

The scruffy guy on FX who chronicles several different month-long projects and airs them under the title “30 Days” doesn’t scrap the projects when the results maybe aren’t what he might have been hoping for – or even when they really didn’t work at all.

“30 Days” has followed Spurlock personally into a month behind bars in a prison and down a coal mine and for a life on minimum wage. He has chronicled other situations as well where he put a border patrol volunteer in a home with an illegal alien for a month, or immerses a “God-fearing Red State homophobe” in gay culture for a month.

Last week the show aired a similar project in which Kati, a Mormon woman who believed to the middle of her that children should not be raised by gay couples. That is, in a situation where there were two men raising foster children, the children needed a mom and any other situation – including their remaining in foster care – was against God’s good plan for everyone.

I recognize that there are people who share this belief, so I want to be respectful. But in 30 days of her sharing a home with people in this exact situation, I witnessed her resisting the evidence of her own senses.

She resisted any suggestion that this could be an appropriate situation. She resisted the reasonably convincing demonstration that the four boys were happy in their situation – people might be able to just pretend for a day or two, but for a month of 24-7 observation? Doubtful.

Kati also resisted empathizing with gay men and women she met who feel as strongly about their adopted children as she does about her own adopted children.

And despite the children’s situation as foster children, in meeting with foster family advocates who spent their entire lives as orphans in the state system – when they showed her the rundown situations they grew up in and it made her cry – it rolled right off her back that there were families who would gladly accept children in need because they were, in her mind, acting contrary to God’s plan, laid out in Scripture and confirmed in her own prayer life.

But as her time with Tom and Dennis and their children progressed, she had more crying jags as she had more and more difficulty reconciling the evidence of her senses with the core beliefs she was clinging to. She felt attacked more and more, had to remove herself more and more often from situations and slammed a lot more doors than anyone else seemed to – even though, based on their interviews, they were feeling the same pain and frustration she was.

So in the end, this “30 Days” experiment did not produce the sort of results Spurlock might have been hoping for – that a Bible-believing Mormon might come to see her fellow human beings as fellow human beings who felt love for each other and for family as truly and deeply as she did, instead of a gang of roaches to be feared and crushed.

But ultimately, it was a pretty good window on the hatred and contempt some people will always have for others, and the pain and division their small-mindedness causes in lives of people they will never meet.

“30 Days” airs at 9 p.m. Wednesdays on FX.