Jared Fogle · Dowries · Bryan Singer

Though it arrives years after its central crime and conviction, Investigation Discovery docuseries Jared From Subway had the potential to capitalize on a particular intersection of very 2023 things: 1) the still-rising tide of assault, misconduct, and harassment allegations against powerful or famous men 2) the backlash against weight-loss lionization a la The Biggest Loser 3) the constant hunger for true crime content. Sadly, it only covers #3, with #1 getting only a glancing blow and #2 getting nary a mention.

You know the story. Everyone does. Jared Fogle, a late-1990s-era student at Indiana University who the docuseries terms “morbidly obese” since grade school, lost 245 lbs or so by subsisting only on two Subway sandwiches a day. That weight loss improbably catapulted him to fame, with the sandwich franchise placing him in celebrity-studded commercials that Fogle leveraged into a multi-million-dollar foundation intended to help kids maintain healthy lifestyles — with “health” characterized as a straight-sized body.

We could stop right here and have the fodder for a fascinating docuseries, albeit one that isn’t Best Evidence material. That we live in a world where, not all that long ago, a guy got famous, financially comfortable, and perceived as a motivational “expert” because he managed to cut some pounds following a highly questionable eating regimen — and that few of us stopped and said “what the fuck is happening here?” — seems quite wild in 2023, perhaps in the same way the aforementioned The Biggest Loser does now, and perhaps how reactions to Ozempic (and the like) use might be in the future. A show dismantling the societal beatification of people who lose weight (the more punishing the method, the better!) would get my eyes on it, for sure.