60 Days In - Season 1 Summary

I must confess something. I like all of the great TV shows of our time - The Sopranos, the Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men. Those shows, at their best, play out as character studies of complicated, conflicted protagonists placed in compelling situations.

But I LOVE a bad reality show. Hoarders, Storage Wars, Mountain Men...Now, those shows make me feel both better AND worse about myself at the same time. And 60 Days In is about as bad as they come. 

Season 1 has been in the books for a while now, and as I'm posting this, season 2 is set to start within the week. So, for the uninitiated, allow me to enlighten you. 

As part of an experimental program, Sheriff Jamey Noel of Clark County, Indiana - a man who sounds like Dr. Phil would if he had just been given a lobotomy - picks several civilians to infiltrate the jail population posing as inmates in order to gather information on corruption and to give helpful feedback as objective outsiders. 

It's as fucking insane as it sounds.

Over the course of two months, seven people live among the inmates in a jail that is notoriously corrupt. Among them - Maryum, daughter of Muhammad Ali, who brings up the fact that she is Muhammad Ali's daughter about three times an episode; Tami, a police officer who damn near suffers a mental breakdown and cries about four times an episode; Jeff, a security guard who immediately fucks up his cover story, gets punched in the face, and quits the program, and Zach, an ex-marine who takes to prison like a duck to water.

But I've saved the best for last. Robert. Oh, Robert.

This fucking guy....

Robert is a teacher/insane person who pretty much immediately pisses off his fellow inmates. From the way he saunters into the room, to his strangely cavalier attitude about jail ("Do you guys get the NFL Network?") to his smug, punchable face, he's pretty much begging to get fucked with. 

Then, mysteriously, to earn the trust and respect of his new peers, he breaks a rule and, to avoid drawing suspicion that he is a mole, Sheriff Noel and Captain Maples (the administrator of the jail, and only other jail employee who knows about the program) are forced to put him in solitary. Or, as Robert calls it, his meditation retreat. Then, on the eve of re-entering general population, he comes down with a mysterious stomach affliction and has to quit. Later, he says that jail was a great time, easier than he thought it would be, and laughs when he is shown footage of inmates discussing possibly assaulting or raping him. 

Robert is the most transparently useless member of the program, but none of the others really do anything worth a shit either. When they're not diving headfirst into ridiculous drama with the other inmates or breaking down in tears, all anybody really does is complain about the food and how much they miss their families. With the possible exception of Zach, who alerts the sheriff to the fact that there are a couple of shanks stashed in one of the cells, they literally don't give any information or insight that the cameras in the jail couldn't have picked up.

So let's do it again.

That's right, Season 2 of 60 Days In premieres Thursday, August 18 on A&E. I know I'll be watching - hell, I won't be able to look away.