Morgan Spurlock's "30 Days" sets reality straight.

I'm not a big reality TV fan. "Who Wants To Marry My Dad?" reached something of a critical Freudian mass for me, and all of the "Bachelor" spin-offs turned me off right from the premise. The only reality TV show to pique my interest would be "Project Greenlight", which I may have been fascinated by because I am, in honesty, something of a media whore. I read Entertainment Weekly, for chrissakes. But this isn't about me. This is about Morgan Spurlock (the documentarian behind last summer's "Super Size Me") and his new program, 30 Days, on FX (Wednesdays, 10:00 pm.) "30 Days" has your basic fish-out-of-water reality premise: a person is transplanted away from his family, friends, and comfort zone, into a new and unfamiliar environment. Putting his money where his mouth is, Morgan and his fiancee spend 30 days living on minimum wage in the pilot. Over the hour, we see what it's like in an ER without health insurance, scraping together nickels and pennies to afford food, and living literally, on the streets. In the second episode, a West Virginian Christian goes to live with a Muslim family, and lives as a Muslim. While scared and anxious at first (the phrase "There is no God but Allah," gave him trouble) he grows to enjoy the company of his hosts and even defending Muslim concepts to his fellow Americans, who begin to treat him as "...a traitor." The show's zenith thus far is in the latter half of the second episode, as the episode's protagonist and four Muslims are heatedly debating the issue of hate crimes against American Muslims. However, at the argument's "apex", it is time to pray. And the anger stops. Seeing the transformation and information is, in two words, perfectly timed. But what seperates the show is it's seemingly bleary-eyed desire to actually foster tolerance and spread knowledge. Tastefully shown, with Spurlock narrating with basic information about the topic, reality TV is finally living up to it's potential. My grade: A.