an idiot abroad series 3 — and i am fairly sure i found it in aisle 3

in aisle three of the supermarket, somewhere between the cereal and the regret, i remembered that ice cream is, structurally, breakfast. season three of the show is a similar argument. nobody asked for it, everyone consumed it, the calories landed exactly where you expected. predictable. comforting. dairy-adjacent.

i am writing this from the desk at 7:42am on a wednesday, with a cart-shaped dent in my left forearm and the receipt from the supermarket folded under the keyboard like evidence. carla is on the third floor, in a vendor walkthrough that started at ten and shows no signs of generosity. that gives me, by the count i keep running, the rest of the morning to file this. the tie i own is on the chair, doing nothing for the investigation.

what an idiot abroad series 3 actually refers to

an idiot abroad series 3 is the third and final season of the show, the bucket-list season, the one where karl is sent to do things a person on a list once said were worth doing. eight episodes. 2012. the season where the conceit fully eats itself, which is the only honest direction a third season can go. you can confirm the season exists, at length, on the show’s imdb page for the bucket list season, which is a website that knows things and lists them in order.

it is also, and i mean this with affection, the season i watched in the kitchen with the microwave humming behind me, eating store-brand cereal at 9:08am on a saturday, which is the breakfast a hot take defends. as i have said before, and as i will defend in court if needed, ice cream is breakfast. it contains milk. the rest is paperwork.

karl is not abroad in the literal sense any more than i am abroad in the supermarket. he is somewhere else, being a version of himself that the show has taught him to be, which is what travel is for most people including me. for the longer cluster on this whole bit, see my pillar on the idiot-abroad framework, top to bottom, where the karl-pilkington reverence lives in full.

the aisle 3 theory of season three, a complete defense

here is what i think is happening, and i will wait while you write it down. every third installment of every good thing happens in aisle three of a supermarket. metaphorically. occasionally physically. the first season is the produce, the second is the meat counter, the third is the long aisle with the cereal and the regret and the off-brand chocolate and the question of what you are doing with your life at 11 in the morning on a weekday.

aisle three is where stefan, the friend of a friend who knows about wine and possibly cheese, would absolutely tell you the season peaks. stefan is wrong about wine, on the audit, but stefan is the kind of authority who would hold a box of breakfast cereal up to the light and say “this is the third act.” i have watched stefan do this with a wedge of cheese. the wedge of cheese was fine.

why ice cream is breakfast and other related findings

i’m fairly sure there is a study somewhere, possibly in a serious magazine, about the ratio of dairy to dignity in the average adult morning, but the study is me, in aisle three, holding a tub of vanilla and reading the ingredients like a contract. the ingredients are: milk, sugar, breakfast.

here is my ice cream is breakfast position, which i have arrived at after many mornings and one supermarket. it contains milk. milk is a breakfast staple. by transitive logic, which is a logic, the tub is a bowl with attitude. cereal, by the same reasoning, is soup with rules, but that is a separate investigation and i do not want to litigate it on a wednesday.

karl, in the bucket-list season, eats things that violate every breakfast rule he has. he is asked to. that is the show. season three is the season where the show admits that the format is the meal, and the meal is karl, and the breakfast is whatever the producers fly in. i salute the format. i would not eat the meal. but i would, and have, eaten the ice cream at 9:08am, and i would do it again.

examples of thirds that ended things, ordered by how loudly i remember them

the third yoga mat lives beneath the couch since 2023, evolving in ways i decline to investigate. the third microwave i ever owned exploded a fork in a way that hank, the dog from 1B that the lady leaves with me when she travels too much, would have barked at if hank had been there. hank was not there. hank is a fantasma in my building, which is to say a presence that affects me without ever being in the room, which is also what season three of any show is.

the seventh microwave, in the running ledger of this household, is the current microwave. it works. i do not test it. the count is monotonic and the count is unkind.

the third of anything is the part that tells you whether you actually wanted the thing or whether you were doing a bit. season three is the season the show finds out. aisle three is the aisle the supermarket finds out. the third yoga mat is the yoga mat the body finds out. i have, in this respect, been informed.

verdict, the receipt was poetic

my verdict on an idiot abroad series 3, after the supermarket and before the vendor walkthrough ends and carla returns, is that it is the season where karl, the show, and the audience all agree on what the show is, and proceed anyway. it is also the season i would put on while microwaving ice cream, which i have not done, but which i could. that’s the season. that’s the kind of show it is. you can find karl’s general posture, including the original season where he is sent to china, indexed under the broader word “moron” and its long quiet rehabilitation, which i have written about elsewhere; karl is the patron saint of the moron-as-thinker move.

related to the supermarket question and the idiot-as-traveler question, the dostoevsky angle is in the cluster too — see the unread copy of the idiot on my shelf, which is the most accurate description i have of myself in season three of my own life.

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