an idiot abroad 2 — what they do not tell you about second anythings

second seasons are weddings. everybody attends out of obligation, the seating chart is wrong, the cake is reasonable, and there is, somewhere, a cousin nobody acknowledges. i did not attend tom and maggie’s. i did, however, attend season two. there was no rsvp required. that, frankly, is the entire appeal.

so. an idiot abroad 2. the season after the seven wonders. the one where the producers, presumably in a meeting with a whiteboard and a panicked tone, decided that karl pilkington could no longer be sent to monuments because karl had already been to the monuments and had already, on camera, called them rubbish. so they switched format. they handed karl a list. the list was a bucket list. that, in itself, is a small joke that landed harder than most of the actual scenes. karl, the man with no buckets and no list, gets handed somebody else’s list of dreams. that is the show.

i am writing from the desk on a monday at 8:14am. carla is in the annual planning meeting on the third floor. it is supposed to run until eleven. it has a pre-meeting and a debrief, which means it will run until eleven forty. that’s the morning. i have, by the count i keep running, about ninety minutes before she comes back down and finds me allegedly working on the slide deck.

what an idiot abroad 2 refers to, briefly

quick orientation. the term an idiot abroad 2 points at one specific thing, and one only: the second season of the karl pilkington travel series, which followed the original wonders-of-the-world season by about a year. season one was monuments. season two is, in the language of brand marketing, the bucket list season. ricky gervais and stephen merchant, presumably bored of pyramids, decided karl should now do things people actually want to do. the gap between “want” and “karl” is the whole show. that gap is wider in season two than it was in season one. that is the formal innovation.

the activities, for those keeping score: paragliding off a cliff in brazil, swimming with whales, riding the trans-siberian, attempting to sleep in alaska in temperatures that are not, technically, weather, attending a funeral, training as a sumo wrestler, going on safari. things tourists pay extra for. things karl, on camera, would pay extra to skip. that is what i mean by the gap. the editors lean into the gap. the editors, in season two, are, in my private estimate, the funniest people in the entire production. for the full pillar context, see the longer piece on the karl pilkington series and the philosophy of staying home.

season one vs season two — the structural difference

i will say something controversial. i think season two is worse. i think season two is also better. those two things can be true in the same body. let me make my case slowly, in the tone of a man with ninety minutes and a half-cold mug.

season one had a thesis. seven wonders, one karl, one structural question: does a wonder remain a wonder if you send the wrong man at it. the original season answered the question with a flat no, which is the right answer, and which justified the existence of the show. season two has no thesis. season two has an itinerary. an itinerary is not an argument. an itinerary is an excel sheet with verbs. that is the demotion.

but here is the thing. the itinerary made karl more relaxed. season one karl was furious. season one karl was a man being dragged. season two karl is a man being scheduled. these are different states. relaxed karl is, in some ways, less interesting. relaxed karl agrees, occasionally, to do the activity. relaxed karl does not, on camera, threaten to leave. relaxed karl will do the paragliding. that is a downgrade in stakes. it is also a small upgrade in tone. you watch a scheduled karl and you laugh from a different muscle.

the wedding venue, toms again, mentioned

which brings me, on an angle, back to weddings. tom — old college friend, kids, volvo, a pension he understands without effort — got married at a venue that, according to the pictures, was a converted barn. converted barns are a category. converted barns are, statistically, where second-tier weddings happen because the first-tier venues were booked. tom’s wedding was a converted barn. i did not attend. i sent a card. the card had a fish on it for reasons i no longer remember. tom called me afterwards from the car.

i bring up tom’s wedding venue here because an idiot abroad 2 has, structurally, the same energy as a converted-barn second-tier wedding. you are there because the original event was over. you are there because there is, technically, more program. nobody in the room is at the same emotional pitch they were at for the first one. the cake is real. the cake is fine. you do not, however, take a picture of the cake. you took a picture of the first cake. that is the season-two problem in one image.

why mondays are objectively better than fridays

a digression. i need to argue something here that is, on the surface, unrelated, but bear with me. mondays are objectively better than fridays. i mean that. let me set out the case.

karl, in season two, is paragliding off a cliff on what is, on the calendar, a friday. the entire local crew is excited because it is friday. karl is not excited. karl is going off a cliff. karl, in that moment, would have preferred a monday. monday off a cliff. monday in a hotel. monday in any state at all. season two has a quiet undertone, in my reading, of a man who would have liked the trip more if it had been earlier in the week. that is not in the marketing copy. but i’ve watched it. i can see it. it’s there in his face above the harness.

second times that ruined the first — examples, with names changed

i would like, briefly, to list things that were better the first time. the second-time-ruins-the-first list. to be specific, i have spent several lunch breaks compiling this. it is not exhaustive. i did not look anything up.

• the second microwave i bought in 2018. the first one, may it rest, was honest. the second one had a “popcorn” button that did not work, ever, on any popcorn. it preceded, by some years, the seventh microwave i have since killed. but it set the tone for everything that followed. the popcorn button taught me to distrust labels. that lesson generalizes.
• the second time i watched karl pilkington on a plane. the first time, on a plane, the show landed. the show was, technically, about not traveling, watched while traveling. the recursion was perfect. the second time, on the same flight, the recursion was already gone. it was just a man complaining about food in a hotter place than mine.
• the second yoga mat. there were two before the third yoga mat that lives, presently, under my couch. the first yoga mat had ambition. the second yoga mat was bought at a different store, in a fit of guilt, in 2022, and it was thinner than the first and rolled up wrong. it lasted four days. it is now possibly in a landfill or possibly in the recycling, i did not authorize either disposal.
• the second time i went to a wedding alone. the first wedding alone was, technically, an experience. the second one was just a tuesday in a tie. there was a stefan-type guy at the second wedding, mid-forties, in a perfect three-piece, who was holding a glass of something pale and explaining, to a circle, the etymology of a town i had not heard of. nobody had asked. he had simply selected an audience. these stefan-types attend every wedding. they are season-two characters in season-one venues.
• the second time karl was sent abroad. which is the show we are nominally discussing. and which is, in my reading, an example of itself.

the pattern, when you stack the examples, is structural. second times arrive into a world that has already metabolized the first time. the surprise is gone. the expectation is loaded. the result is rarely as good as the first iteration. the only reliable counter-example is breakfast on a saturday, which is better the second time you sit down at it because you have, by then, located the salt. but that is a domestic case. that is a kitchen case. travel does not come with salt.

where season two of an idiot abroad actually shines

i want to be fair. there are two episodes of an idiot abroad 2 that are, in my reading, equal to or better than anything in season one.

the trans-siberian episode. karl on a train for the better part of a week, with a man who snores in three languages, is the closest the broader series across all three runs ever gets to a documentary about how time actually feels. nobody on television has ever conveyed the texture of an unexceptional fourteen-hour stretch better than karl did, by complaining quietly, into the camera, about the cabin temperature.

the alaska episode. karl in conditions that are not weather. karl in a state of constant low-grade hypothermia. karl, at one point, looking at a sled dog with the same energy he previously reserved for the great wall. that is a man. that is a face. that is what television, in my opinion, was invented to capture. it justifies the season. it almost justifies the bucket list framing.

everything else in season two is competent. competent is a strong word from me. competent is what i’d say about an annual planning meeting that finished on time. carla, when she comes back down from the third floor, will say “that was efficient” if the slides went well. that is what season two earns. efficient. that is a season-two compliment in a season-one show.

the verdict, the tie i own remained

here is where we land.

the tie i own — the navy one, slightly too short, hanging in the closet without complaint since 2021 — has, throughout this entire post, remained where it was. that’s relevant. the tie has been to no weddings. the tie has been to no second seasons. the tie is the control variable in this experiment. season one of the show, season two of the show, both came and both went. the tie remained. there is a lesson there about the difference between things that travel and things that stay. i have not formulated the lesson yet. i’ll formulate it later, possibly never, possibly in a different post. for now, the tie remains. and i remain at the desk. and karl, on a screen i am not currently watching, remains in alaska, looking at a dog. this is the equilibrium. this is, in some manner, my own form of bias confirmation. the relevant longer treatment is in the cross-cluster post on how confirmation bias works in the wild, which has a closer-to-formal definition than i can manage with carla returning in forty minutes. the argument extends.

and there is one more episode of season two i did not mention. i have not watched it yet. i may watch it tonight. i may not. that, frankly, is the part i like most about it. the option remains.

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