an idiot abroad series 2 — and i am fairly sure the fridge knows

the digital fridge knows. it always knows. mostly empty, occasionally heroic, never lying. season two of an idiot abroad has the same quality: it knows what it is, it does not pretend, it skips the parsley. honesty in low resolution is, in my opinion, still honesty.

i am writing this at 11:47am on a wednesday from the desk, while carla sits through an all-hands two floors above me, which buys me approximately fifty quiet minutes and one very loud radiator. the radiator does not skip parsley. the radiator commits. i respect the radiator.

what an idiot abroad series 2 refers to

here is the cleanest version i can give you. an idiot abroad series 2 is the follow-up to the first run, made by the same people, with the same victim, sent to the same kind of places he visibly does not want to be. ricky and steve still cackle off-camera like two men who finally found a real toy. karl still arrives, looks at the toy, and decides the toy is the problem. it is, by the count i keep running, one of the most honest pieces of television i own opinions about, and i have opinions about everything from showers to the show itself on imdb, where it sits with a rating that surprised nobody who watched it.

the eight episodes ship karl across continents. he climbs. he refuses to climb. he eats something that should not be eaten in that order. the show is not a travel show. the show is a man being himself with a passport, which the genre apparently cannot legally tolerate. for the wider story of how this thing started, the cast around it, and why it kept working, see my main an idiot abroad pillar investigation, which is the long version of what i am compressing here.

secondary kw count check, the way i think of it from the desk: people search for karl pilkington an idiot abroad 2, an idiot abroad season 3 episode 2, an idiot abroad season 2 episode 8, an idiot abroad season 2 episode 2. those are real people typing real things into a search bar at 11:14pm. i salute them. i was them last november.

the digital fridge audit, again

i have a metaphor for this show and the metaphor is my fridge. specifically the digital fridge — the inventory of what is in there that lives, allegedly, in my head. the digital fridge is mostly empty. occasionally it contains something heroic, like an unopened jar of olives or a slice of cake i forgot about and now must eat for moral reasons. mostly it contains the suggestion of food.

karl, in series 2, is a digital fridge. you open the door, you find what you find, you close the door. there is no garnish. there is no plating. there is the contents and there is karl looking at the contents and saying the obvious thing about the contents. this is, technically, a public service.

my own fridge, which i call schrodingers fridge for reasons i can no longer defend, currently contains: half an onion, three things in foil i will not investigate today, and a bottle of wine stefan brought over and never finished. stefan is the kind of guy who brings a wine he wants you to try and then watches your face. stefan would hate karl pilkington. stefan would, in fact, be the first to explain why karl is wrong, using a vocabulary he learned on a podcast. stefan is part of why this show works for me. anything stefan would correct is, by the maths of my apartment, probably right.

why parsley can be skipped — and why series 2 proves it

which brings us to the rule. if a recipe calls for parsley, you can leave it on the shelf and the dish will continue to be the dish. the dish does not need the green confetti. the dish needs salt, heat, and someone willing to commit to the dish. parsley is the part of the recipe that exists to make the cookbook photograph well.

series 2 of an idiot abroad is the same idea applied to television. the parsley of a travel show is the wonder. the awe. the line where the host stares at a sunset and says something a copywriter wrote. karl skips the parsley. karl looks at the sunset and says it is alright, and then mentions he is cold. the dish is still the dish. the dish, in fact, is better.

i had this argument once with a man at the corner who insisted that without the wonder you do not have travel. i told him you have something more useful — you have a person. he told me i was being difficult. i told him being difficult is a hobby for the wealthy and i could not afford it. then i ordered another beer and we agreed to never speak of it.

examples of fridges that judged me, and one show that did not

a short list of things that have judged me from inside my own kitchen this calendar year, in no particular order, because the particular order would be embarrassing:

the seventh microwave, which arrived in march and has already developed an attitude. it hums when i open the door. it is not supposed to hum when i open the door. i am pretending this is normal. the third yoga mat, which i have written about elsewhere and which lives a quiet life under the couch, where it has, over time, become part of the couch. an air fryer i used once. a good knife i have never used. a dishwasher i do not load on principle, because the dishwasher gives me a look, and the look is unearned given that the dishwasher does one job and i do approximately fourteen.

none of these objects make me feel as understood as karl pilkington in episode four of series 2 making a face at a meal. that face is the entire investigation. that face is what an honest reaction looks like when you have not been trained out of it. it is also, if we are being technical, the opposite of the classic confidence-without-skill curve. karl knows exactly how much he does not know about the country he is in, and refuses to pretend otherwise. there is no kruger ascent here. there is just a man and a meal and the meal losing.

for the related episodes specifically — the mexico run, which is one of the cleaner showcases of this exact dynamic, see my notes on the mexico episode. for the later film treatment of the same character logic, see the film entry i wrote in march. they are all part of the same investigation, viewed from different desks.

verdict from the desk, signed

my position, after watching series 2 again last weekend on a laptop balanced on the unopened mail pile: karl pilkington in season two is the digital fridge of television. he tells you what is there. he does not pretend there is more. when the producers add parsley — a goal, a ceremony, a bucket-list item — he removes the parsley by ignoring it, which is a more elegant rejection than an argument.

the show is not for everybody. people who like their travel served with a smile will find it cold. people who like their travel served with a face will find it sacred. i am, predictably, in the second camp, mostly because the first camp has too many sunset photographs and not enough commentary on the temperature of the sand.

so: an idiot abroad series 2, in conclusion, with the radiator still committing in the background and carla still upstairs being agreeable on my behalf, is worth your eight episodes. it is worth them more than the parsley you are currently chopping for the dish that did not require it. that is, by my measure, a fairly significant endorsement.

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