an idiot abroad season 3 — an explainer, sort of

season three is the pension of television. you stop expecting promotions, you accept the rhythm, you make peace with the fact that nobody is going to surprise you anymore. faith-based, technically. you trust the cast will show up. they usually do. the show, at least, has that on the actual pension.

i’m writing this from the desk while carla sits through a training meeting on the third floor. i have, give or take, the rest of the morning. tie i own is loose, the kind of loose that says “nobody is coming over here”, and that is correct. nobody is. so we will use the time productively, by which i mean unproductively, by which i mean writing about a tv show.

the focus today is what people search when they type “an idiot abroad season 3” into a box and hit return, hoping for clarity. clarity is not on the menu. an explainer, sort of, is.

what an idiot abroad season 3 refers to

an idiot abroad season 3 refers to the eight-episode run that ricky gervais and stephen merchant produced in 2012, in which they sent karl pilkington on a “bucket list” world tour with warwick davis as a travel companion. it is the shortest of the three seasons. it is also, depending on who you ask, the best, the worst, or the one that gets forgotten between the other two. all three of those people are correct. that is how television works.

the premise was a small refinement of the previous run. instead of being sent to look at things, karl was sent to do things. ride a camel. drive route 66. live on a boat. the producers, one assumes, sat in a room and said “what hasn’t karl already complained about”, and the list, by season three, was a smaller list than they would have liked. you can read more about the cluster spine over in the main an idiot abroad explainer, which lays out how the three seasons fit together as a single misadventure.

i’m linking the pillar early because that’s where the ground rules live, and i don’t want to redo them here. the pillar is the contract. this post is the footnote. that is how a healthy cluster of posts about a british tv show ought to be organized, in my non-expert but loud opinion.

the pension theory, applied to tv

here is the theory. by the time a show reaches its third season, it is on a pension. the salary is steady. the commute is fixed. nobody is asking it to learn a new skill. the audience is locked in. the writers know the cast. the cast knows the audience. everybody is, at long last, comfortable. comfortable is not the same as good, but comfortable is what season three sells, and it sells it well.

this applies to frasier. it applies to cheers. it applies, with a vest and a bottle of wine, to whatever stefan was telling us at the wine night about the third vintage of a small french vineyard being the one where the vines “settle”. stefan was not lying, technically. the vines do settle. so do shows. so does most of the third stage of most things.

karl’s third season is exactly this. he is no longer surprised. he is no longer outraged in the bright primary colors of season one. he is, instead, mildly inconvenienced in seven different countries, and the camera is along for it because the camera signed a contract.

i am, as previously noted, not a tv critic. i am a man at a desk with a tie i own and a microwave at home that is the seventh i have killed. the seventh microwave does not appear in this post except for the purposes of credentials. you are now informed of my credentials.

why a pension is a faith-based retirement system

now, let me put my real argument on the desk. a pension is a faith-based retirement system, and i mean this in the most literal sense, not the snarky one. you are, at every step, trusting that the institution paying it will continue to exist, in roughly its current form, for the rest of your life and possibly some of your kids’ lives. you cannot prove this. you can only believe it. that is faith.

the third season of a show is the same instrument. you are paying with attention, the institution is paying back with episodes, and both sides are trusting the other to keep showing up. when one side stops, the show ends, the pension freezes, and the only people surprised are the ones who did not read the small print, which is to say, everybody.

examples of third seasons that disappointed (and a couple that didn’t)

off the top of my head, in no order and with the full disclaimer that i am at the desk and not in front of a stack of dvds:

the office (us) season 3 — actually one of the great ones, but only because the show was still climbing. the pension hadn’t kicked in yet. season 3 of the office is somebody in their late 20s who hasn’t realized they are middle-class yet. it is the last gasp before comfort. frasier season 3 — already comfortable, and that’s why it works. it is a man on a pension who still has hobbies. cheers season 3 — a transition. diane is leaving. the pension is being recalculated. you can feel the actuary in the writers’ room.

and an idiot abroad season 3 sits in a fourth category: a show that knew it was the last one. the producers, by all accounts, didn’t hide it. the trip with warwick was the last trip. the bucket list was the last list. the third season was, structurally, a goodbye, and i think this is what people who say “season 2 was better” are actually responding to. season 2 was the show at full pension. season 3 was the show on the way out the door, waving.

imdb keeps the receipts on this run, episode by episode, on the an idiot abroad show page, which is the closest thing to a pension statement a show has — air dates, episode counts, and a star rating that goes mildly down over time, which is, again, the pension.

verdict, i remain at desk

so. an idiot abroad season 3. third yoga mat of television. a calmer, shorter, slightly more polite version of a thing that used to be louder. it is fine. it is, in places, very good. it is not the season anyone will recommend first. that is season 1, because of the surprise, or season 2, because of the peak. season 3 is the one you will get to, if you get to it, because you trusted the show would keep paying out.

and it did. eight episodes, on schedule, with warwick davis along for the ride. the cast showed up. the show shipped. the pension paid. that is, at the desk and at the end of the morning, all anybody can really ask of a third season.

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