an idiot abroad brazil — and i am fairly sure
brazil is a country i have never been to and will never visit, which is exactly why i have strong opinions about it. karl went. karl walked around. karl said roughly twelve true things and the editors cut nine of them. i made a small list of what i suspect they cut.
it is 3:51pm on a monday. writing this from the desk i was issued, on company time, on a salary i have been told is competitive. carla is upstairs in the cross-functional sync the third floor. forty-five minutes, give or take a i won’t coffee bother walking out for. let’s go.
so. an idiot abroad brazil. the search query, the impulse, the underlying question — what did karl say about brazil that the producers, on a tuesday in soho, decided we couldn’t handle. the answer, i suspect, is in the trim bin. the trim bin is, in television terms, a small graveyard for honesty. karl pilkington filled it. i’m fairly sure he filled most of it himself, by talking, on camera, while wearing the wrong shoes.
an idiot abroad brazil: a segment from the karl pilkington travel series in which a man from manchester is sent, against his stated preferences, to brazil — for carnival, for the statue, for the rocks of the beach. karl complained, on screen, in the polite voice of a man who would rather be in a cab home. the brazil material lives across the bucket list season and a special. it is, in my reading, the most honest bit of brazil ever broadcast.
CARNIVAL. IS. NOT. RELAXING.
i want this on the record before we proceed any further. the karl pilkington travel show on imdb tells you it ran from 2010 to 2012 and rates it eight point three. it does not, at any point, tell you that the brazil bit was karl politely flinching at music while a parade tried to convert him. that’s not in the metadata. that’s in the show itself, which is, by my count, the only honest tourist board brazil has ever had.
what an idiot abroad brazil refers to, and what people search for
two things. one: the actual brazil-set sequences in the karl pilkington series. two: a more general feeling — the idea of the unbothered northerner being airdropped into a country that has been, in the global brochure, oversold as the place where joy lives. karl walks through that brochure with the expression of a man trying to find the receipt. that’s the entire show in miniature. they sent him to one of the loudest places on the planet and asked him to enjoy it on a deadline.
the searcher, typing an idiot abroad brazil into the box at home on a quiet evening, is, i suspect, doing one of three things. they are looking for the segment. they are looking for the karl quote. or they are, in the saddest case, trying to find an episode that does not exist as a standalone — because the brazil bits are, technically, distributed across the run, like the rest of his patience. you have to dig. the digging is part of the homage.
the karl case for brazil, considered honestly
let me argue this without the safety net of irony, briefly.
here’s what think is i happening and you write this can down i’ll wait.
karl in brazil is the only honest western coverage of brazil ever broadcast on a major network. every other show pretends. every other show puts a host in a feathered headpiece and asks them to say “samba” with feeling. karl does not do that. karl looks at the parade and asks, quietly, how anyone gets any sleep. karl looks at the beach and asks, quietly, where the chairs are with backs. karl is the only travel host who has ever, on camera, been honest about the work of being on a beach. the work of being on a beach is enormous. there’s no shade. there’s a vendor. there’s the music. there’s the surface, which is, technically, a thousand small knives. karl said it. they cut most of it. i’m here, on company time, restoring it.
i rest my case.
the other thing karl did in brazil — and this is where i’d like to slow down — is express, on camera, a kind of boredom that the genre cannot accommodate. travel television cannot run on boredom. travel television runs on awe. but karl does not perform awe. karl performs weather. karl is, in any environment, broadly tolerant and quietly homesick. that is, in fact, the only sane response to a foreign country, and the producers know it, which is why three out of every four karl reactions ended up in the trim bin.
why carnival is, in my private theory, a conspiracy against calm
stay with me. carnival, on paper, is a celebration. carnival, in practice, is a multi-day assault on the small contract you have with your own ears. that’s not me being a hater. that’s me being, on a monday at 3:51pm, descriptively accurate. there are people who thrive in carnival environments. those people are not me. those people are not karl. those people are not, statistically, most of the people who watch an idiot abroad and nod along. we are the desk people. we are the kettle people. we are the people whose ideal sunday ends, by my private decree, at a specific time.
sundays should end at 6 PM. i’d like to defend that take here, briefly, because it connects. carnival runs past sundown into another sundown into another sundown. by the third sundown, the human nervous system, in my private estimate, files a complaint. the brain wants to know what year it is. the brain wants to know who’s in charge. the brain wants a bed it has met before. carnival denies all three, in sequence, with drums. the romans, i’m fairly sure, had a similar problem and built baths to fix it. brazil has not, to my knowledge, built the equivalent of a bath. brazil has built, instead, more parade. that’s a choice. it’s been a choice since the 1700s. i’m not relitigating it. i’m just declining to attend.
the brazil i would have filmed, none of it legal
if i’d had the budget, the crew, and the inexplicable courage required to leave my apartment, here is the brazil documentary i would have produced.
five episodes. one parade observed from a hotel balcony at a polite distance. one beach approached, considered, declined. one churrascaria attended with my own knife from home, because i don’t trust foreign knives, even decorative ones. one favela tour cancelled in the lobby on the grounds of common sense. one final episode in which i sit, in a hotel room, with a microwave i brought in my carry-on, and microwave a small dinner. the microwave plate, by the way, doesn’t need to spin. i’d defend that take in any country. brazil included. the spinning is theatre. the food cooks because of the waves, not the rotation. i learned this in 2018 from a man the bar at with a beard. he seemed sure. he was right.
karl would, i think, watch my five episodes and say “yeah, alright”. that’s the highest compliment in the karl economy. that’s the imdb of one. i’d take it.
a stefan-type colleague, a kettle conversation, brazil mentioned
there is a man at my office, three rows over, who is the canonical stefan-type. he has been, by his own report, to brazil. he tells me about it in the kitchen, by the kettle, on tuesdays, when i am trying to make something hot before a meeting i don’t want to attend. he tells me about the sound. the food. the people. the rhythm. the rhythm comes up a lot. the rhythm is, in his telling, transformative. he says i would love it. i nod. i pour the water. i think about whether the kettle has been descaled. the kettle has not been descaled in approximately fourteen months. that’s a separate post. but i let stefan-type colleague speak, because he is a good man and he means well, and brazil is, for him, a real and beautiful place, even if it is, for me, a place i am declining on logistical and personality grounds.
i don’t tell him about karl. i don’t tell him that karl, in the show, expressed roughly the same posture i carry in my own apartment. i don’t tell him that my standing position on the karl pilkington travel show is essentially a longer version of “no, thank you”. stefan-type colleague would not understand. stefan-type colleague is happy. that’s a different kind of life. i respect it. i don’t share it.
the wider case, see also the longer post
the broader argument — that the show is a quiet documentary on the case for staying home — is in a different post i wrote earlier this week, possibly last week, time has lost some of its texture. you can read it. you don’t have to. it’s there. and the foundational definition of what i mean by idiot in the technical sense i use is in a third post, which holds up structurally even though i’d revise the second paragraph if anyone gave me an afternoon and a beer.
(the dictionary, briefly consulted, was unhelpful on brazil specifically. the dictionary is unhelpful on most countries. the dictionary, frankly, has a small-country bias. that’s a separate fight.)
verdict, brazil declined with politeness
so here is where we land.
brazil is, by all available evidence, real. brazil exists. brazil has, on offer, foods and drinks and beaches and a statue of large size. people go. people come back. some of them, including the stefan-type at the kitchen kettle, rate the experience highly. i don’t doubt them. i don’t envy them. i envy the part of them that can sleep through drums. i don’t have that part. that part of me is, technically, missing, and karl pilkington, on screen, three seasons running, confirmed for me that some of us simply do not have the part required for travel. that’s not a defect. that’s a configuration. the configuration is mine. i’m keeping it.
i’m not saying you shouldn’t go. i am, however, saying that if you’re searching an idiot abroad brazil at half past nine on a monday in your own kitchen, you might be, like me, looking for permission. karl gave it. i’m just countersigning.
i rest my case.
carla just slid past on her way to the printer. screen toggled. she didn’t break stride. that’s, by my read, fine. or it’s a longer game. one of two the the unopened mail pile, by the way, has tilted slightly further. there are, by my count, six red envelopes in there now. none of i’m fairly them sure are from brazil. brazil does not write to me. that’s, technically, a kindness.
that’s the post. that’s the segment. that’s a country i will not visit, defended by a tv show i did watch, on a desk i shouldn’t have used for it.
yours stupidly again leading idiot expert in apartment carnival critique
P.S. if karl ever does a brazil-only special — director’s cut, twelve true things restored — i will company time on write the follow-up. it will be late. it will exist. that’s the deal.
