8 things an idiot abroad season 1 episode 1 taught me about my own apartment

8 things season one episode one of an idiot abroad has taught me about the apartment i pay rent for: the camera does not need to move; small spaces hold large opinions; ignorance is a form of financial therapy; a cup of tea fixes 11% of moods; eight items is enough; the rest of the list is the post.

an idiot abroad episode season 1 episode 1 — the china one, the great wall one, the famously poor toilet one — taught me, on a friday morning at 9:18am, that the apartment i already rent is, in karl pilkington terms, an undersold wonder. i’d like to walk through the eight lessons before carla comes back from the q3 planning session on the third floor.

1. setup — what an idiot abroad episode season 1 episode 1 actually is

the premise of the karl pilkington travel series — for the three of you who have not seen it — is simple. an idiot abroad on imdb describes it more politely than i would. ricky gervais and stephen merchant pay to send a man with a small head and a large reluctance to the seven wonders of the world. season 1 episode 1 sends karl to china. he sees the great wall. he is unimpressed. the wall, in his view, is a wall. a long one. but a wall.

i live in an apartment with a wall. several walls, technically. they hold up the ceiling, which is, in my private opinion, the more impressive surface. nobody travels for a ceiling. and yet the ceiling holds. that’s the first thing an idiot abroad episode season 1 episode 1 teaches you. the wonder is the thing that does its job quietly.

2. lesson one — never trust a fork

karl, in beijing, is handed chopsticks. karl wants a fork. karl persists. karl loses. karl eats, eventually, with one chopstick used as a small spear.

i do not trust forks. forks have, in my own kitchen, been responsible for at least one electrical event involving the seventh microwave i have killed in this apartment. the seventh is dead. there will be an eighth. the karl rule is: the local utensil is the correct utensil. a fork in beijing is, technically, an idiot abroad. so is a chopstick in my kitchen.

3. lesson two — the door is the problem

the most famous moment of the episode is, by the count of every group chat i’ve ever been muted in, the toilet scene. karl finds a public bathroom in beijing in which the stalls do not have doors. karl reacts the way a person from manchester would react. karl reports back to camera. ricky laughs in london. the segment goes around the world. it has been clipped, gif’d, replayed.

here is the lesson, which i’d like to underline. the door is not optional. the door is, in any apartment, the entire structure of dignity. i live alone. nobody is coming in. and yet, when i use my bathroom, the door is closed. i close it for myself. i close it on principle. that’s the karl principle. that’s the post.

4. lesson three — the dishwasher judges

karl visits a small chinese village and is shown how the locals wash dishes. by hand. in a basin. with a small brush. karl notes that this is “a lot of work for a plate.” karl is correct. it is also the same amount of work my dishwasher does internally, while pretending to be impressed by my decision to load it.

my dishwasher has been judging my plate-loading for four years. it makes a small disappointed sound. it runs anyway. it is, in karl’s framework, the village basin in machine form.

5. lesson four — mom always knew

my mom, on a sunday call last month, asked me — apropos of a thing i had not mentioned — whether i had eaten “real food” that week. i had not. i had eaten food in the technical sense. she said “i thought so.” she always thought so. mothers know. it’s their power. it cannot be defeated.

karl, in the episode, calls his girlfriend suzanne from beijing. suzanne, on the line from london, knew. suzanne knew the trip would go like this. suzanne, like my mom, did not gloat. she just confirmed. the woman on the other end of the call has, statistically, already done the math. she’s waiting for you to catch up.

6. lesson five — dave laughed for nine straight minutes

i watched the toilet scene with dave once. dave laughed for nine straight minutes. i timed it. dave was at my kitchen counter, holding a beer he had not paid for, doing the laugh he does when something confirms his entire worldview. dave still owes me $300. dave will not be paying me back. but dave, on this, was right. the scene is funny. the scene is foundational. the scene is, in my view, a documentary about why you should not leave your apartment.

dave’s review was, i quote, “this is the only travel show that’s honest.” then dave finished the beer. then dave left. the door closed behind him with the soft click of a person who has dodged, again, the conversation about the $300. the door is the negotiator.

7. lesson six through eight, fast

i’d like to do these in order, briefly, in the kind of cluster i’d write on a foolscap pad if foolscap was a thing my desk had on it.

1. lesson six — karl prefers the breakfast. karl always prefers the breakfast. karl’s wonder of the world is, in every episode, the toast. i, too, prefer the breakfast. i prefer it at 9:18am, at this desk, while carla is on the third floor explaining slides she did not make.
2. lesson seven — the locals are unbothered by your presence. the village in china is not impressed that karl is filming. the village proceeds. i am not impressed when the 4B guy leaves his door open. i proceed. there is a stefan-type colleague three rows over who speaks four languages and is, in karl’s terms, a quietly competent local; i nod at him in the kitchen. travel would not deepen the exchange.
3. lesson eight — the trip ends. every episode ends. karl returns. karl reports. karl confirms what he suspected. that’s the show. that’s also the format of every life: setup, complication, return. you don’t have to leave to do the round trip. some of us do it sitting down.

that’s eight. i’d suggest you re-watch an idiot abroad episode season 1 episode 1, ideally on a friday morning while someone else is in a meeting you weren’t invited to. it changes the texture of the rest of your day.

8. verdict on an idiot abroad episode season 1 episode 1 — ignorance is, in this case, financial therapy

here’s the take from an idiot abroad episode season 1 episode 1, and you can put it in serif font on a printed PDF if you’d like. ignorance is, in this case, financial therapy. i don’t know what a flight to beijing costs in june. i’d like to keep it that way. the not-knowing is the saving. the not-knowing is the policy. the karl pilkington show, watched at home, in the same chair, with a half-cold drink, costs nothing and provides, by my fair estimate, 92% of the trip’s emotional content with 0% of the airport.

i carry, in a paper sleeve in the second drawer, an idiot type certificate i printed myself. it specifies, in serif, that i am the karl-pilkington-recognizer subtype, domestic-only division. the document is only official to me. it would not clear customs. that’s fine. it lives next to a tie i own — one tie, navy, slightly too short — that has not left the closet since 2021. the tie is ready. the tie is staying.

once, before any of this, i sat in a coffee shop and tried to imagine booking a real trip. i looked at flights for fourteen minutes. i closed the tab. i ordered a second coffee i did not need. that was the whole expedition. the trip was, on paper, eleven dollars and a moderate caffeine event.

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