I was watching the "wrap up" episode of Idiot Abroad, where they all sit in the white room, on the chairs, and despite of the honest and dry hilarity of the real life Pilkington poking his rather edgy/jitterry clever head through the "Pilkington Character" in commentary I noticed Gervais still doing the "look at the camera to indicate funny moment" shtick that reoccurs will all of his characters in all the programs. And for the first time in I don't know how long I felt this was just pure cheating.
We got used to getting involved psychologically, almost like first person witness to the prank, in this "pseudo documentary" type of filming and then in a moment right prior to what you know will be completely embarrassing hilarity character looks directly at you and you start getting "twichy", you feel like you are there, you don't want to witness this embarrassing moment, you are expected to be bursting any moment now. But then, in that short moment, at the end of season 2 of Idiot Abroad it all collapsed for me.
The years of David Brent looking at the camera and Michael Scott looking at camera before both did something stupid, Tim Canterbury and Jim Halpert looking at the camera before involving you in a prank, Gareth Keenan and Dwight Schrute looking at the camera seeking your approval for something cretinous they said, all "given away" by Gervais in Idiot Abroad S02E08 looking at the camera just because he was clutching at straws and desperately searching for the scripted "one laugh every 7 minutes". And once you "see through the curtain" into the kitchen, it reveals something suprisingly desperate - you notice he force cross eyed look every time he pretends to speak as real life person - in this case - when he mocked Pilkington, and he laughs with that annoying high pitch lol on queue in many cases before the "improv" joke he's supposed to be unaware of plays out for us. And all of a sudden he's no longer master of settle comedy but instead he's just a kid who was told once too many times "this is funny" at school and managed to figure out what made his schtick funny but still couldn't master the settle art of performing it every time without giving the recipe away.
And then you realise, once you see it - you can't unsee it - it's going to be like this forever - you will now know Steve Carell was good at doing this shtick, Ed Helms is bad, Pilkington can do it, Gervais mostly can not, Mackenzie Crook was excellent, Warrick Davis is not that good. The charm is gone. You'll be judgin them now on technique of the "look at the camera, make a fool of yourself" script.