Funny / Derry Girls

Series One

Episode One

• The Popcultural Osmosis Failure over Macaulay Culkin divorcing his parents. Ma Mary seems to believe he's a Protestant boy Erin met through Friends Across The Barricades.
  Mary: I have nothin' against Protestants, I'm all for integration, I am. But if they're letting their weans divorce them?!
  Erin: Macaulay Culkin isn't a Protestant, Ma!
  Mary: It's only gonna give our weans ideas.
  Erin: [To herself, realising she doesn't actually know] Well... he might be. But I didn't meet him at Friends Across The Barricades!
  Mary: I don't care where you met him! You're not to see him again, understood?
  [Pause as Erin incredulously struggles with her response]
  Erin: ... Fine. [Flounces off in a snit]
• While getting ready for the first day of term, the adults reacting to the announcement of a bomb on the main bridge. Mary is concerned that the bus can't get the girls to school because Erin has been in her hair all through the summer holiday, Sarah is worried that she won't make her beauty appointment, and Joe complains that Gerry should be driving the girls to school.
• Orla on cursing:
  Orla: You shouldn't swear, Michelle. Cause when you swear, our Lady in heaven she cries her tears, then makes rain. Isn't that right, Sister Michael?
  Sister Michael: ...What age are you now, Orla?
  Orla: Fifteen?
  Sister Michael: Yeah, you might want to think about wising up.
• Outside the office, Clare says that they all must stick together when being questioned by Sister Michael. Gilligan Cut to Clare insisting everything was Michelle's fault.
  Sister Michael: Well, I think it's safe to say we all just lost a bit of respect for you there, Clare.
• Clare's doing a 24 hour fast. She starts lamenting very early into it.
  Clare: I think my body’s going into starvation mode, I think it’s starting to shut down.
  Michelle: For Christ’s sake Clare, you just basically skipped lunch
• After the detention involving the dead Sister Declan, Aunt Sarah comes in having confused the events into something quite extraordinary.
  Sarah: Why were you pissing on her dead body and making sandwiches?
  • Michelle's mother tries to invoke Never Speak Ill of the Dead when her daughter claims Sister Declan stole her lipstick. She claims she "was a woman of God!"
    Sister Michael: Actually, she was known to be a bit light-fingered.
• Speaking of Sister Declan, Erin asks how old she was and is told she would have been 98 in a few days, which explains the situation somewhat... but only to her and the other kids it seems, as the grown-ups keep treating it as if Sister Declan was still young, Erin's grandpa even saying she was "struck down in her prime."
  • Erin cracks up as the adults are suspicious of how Sister Declan could possibly have died. It's Saoirse Monica Jackson's delivery that sells it.
    Erin: She was 98! She had a heart attack! Why is everybody going ABSOLUTELY MENTAL?!
• The episode appears to be ending as it opened, with Erin's interior monologue...and then it turns out that Orla's reading out loud from Erin's diary. "I am going to ram that so far up your arse!!!"

Episode Two

• The episode begins with Jenny Joyce and a group of students onstage at assembly singing "Love Is All Around" by Wet Wet Wet. Clare, Erin, James, and Michelle all stare on in horror, while Orla sways along to the song. Sister Michael is a little confused:
  Sister Michael: [leaning over to Miss Mooney] Did I not ban this one?
  Miss Mooney: Let me see. Uh... "Endless Love", "The Power of Love", "All You Need Is Love", "How Deep Is Your Love", "It Must Have Been Love", "I Wanna Know What Love Is", "I Will Always Love You"... No, Sister, you didn't.
  [Sister Michael looks on as Jenny tries to hit a high note]
  Sister Michael: Put it on the list. [To Jenny and the other students] Uh, wonderful, girls. Lovely stuff.
• Sister Michael is her usual apathetic self while giving announcements:
  Sister Michael: On Monday morning, several of our Year 13s will face their GCSE maths resit. Now, I know how daunting resit examinations can be, so if anyone is feeling anxious or worried, or even if you just want to chat, please, please, do not come crying to me.
• Sister Michael again, talking about the school trip to Paris:
  "Sadly I will not be able to accompany you ... as I despise the French"
• The pure pain on the faces of everyone in the Quinn household as they listen to Uncle Colm's story about being robbed by the IRA. At one point, Erin begs Mary to make it stop.
• The girls try divvying up chores around town to earn some cash. James of course gets no respect during the assignments.
  Erin: There's also some gardening. Mowing a lawn, etc. This will require a bit of muscle, so...you should take that one, Orla.
  James: No, I should do that one. It's a man's job, Erin. I'm a man.
  Michelle: That's debatable.
  James: Well, I'm more of a man than Orla.
  Orla: I do not accept that.
• When going to do the chores, the girls meet Fionnulla, who makes it clear she knows they stole the board with the job postings. The result: the girls have to clean up the chippie while Fionnulla is away.
  • First, it turns out that James used mayonnaise instead of Windex to clean the windows.
  • They then find Michelle upstairs in the living room, blaring music and raiding Fionnulla's liquor cabinet.
  • Michelle proceeds to set fire to the room when she tries to put flame to some drinks in shot glasses.
  • The attempts to put out the fire start with alcohol (Michelle) and salt (Clare).
    Erin: [To Michelle] Are you throwing alcohol on it?! ARE YOU ACTUALLY THROWING ALCOHOL ON IT?! [To Clare] And what in under God's name are you doing?! SEASONING IT?!
  • The girls' pathetic excuse to Mary and Sarah for how the fire started was that Michelle tripped while carrying a scented candle.
  • Mary and Sarah decide to help the girls set up the scene so they can say someone broke in and started the fire... but Fionnulla arrives before they can leave. The two grown women march into the room like girls told off by a teacher. And then Mary has to explain themselves:
    Mary: What happened was—Michelle was carrying a scented candle.

Episode Three

• Erin tries to get out of sitting for an exam by invoking the Quinns' dead dog Toto, but Mary isn't having it. On the way to school, Erin starts ranting:
  Erin: It's abuse. That's what it is, it's abuse. Does anybody have 10p? I'm ringin' ChildLine.
  Michelle: You can't ring ChildLine every time your ma threatens to kill you, Erin.
  Clare: Yeah, you can't waste Esther's time like that.
• While desperately praying for help to get out of an exam, Clare starts claiming the statue of the Virgin Mary smirked at her. When Michelle and Orla start chiming in that they see it too, Erin is naturally skeptical...
  Erin: You're imagining it.
  Michelle: Three of us saw it, Erin. How do you explain that?
  Erin: [points to Clare, who looks slightly delirious] Sleep deprivation. [points to Michelle, who looks a little sheepish] Pernod. [points to Orla, who looks... like Orla] Delusional Personality Disorder.
  • Also, when the girls mock Clare for trying to pray for divine help, Clare snaps anything's worth a try...at which point the rest of them fall to their knees and join in the Hail Mary's.
  • Michelle says she won't waste time promising not to do anything wong again as "I know it's balls, you know it's balls..."
• Mary makes Erin swear on a portrait of Dolly Parton that the kids are telling the truth about seeing the weeping statue.
• When the friends dig up Toto's grave, Erin, Orla and Michelle use shovels and the grave marker, but James has to use a tiny spoon.

Episode Four

• The entire dinner conversation where Mary interrogates Joe:
  Mary: Have you any news, Da?
  Joe: Not really, no.
  Mary: Right. Shay Harkham was telling me you were in Duggan's Bakery yesterday lunchtime.
  Joe: Well, that's hardly news.
  Mary: Two buns, he said you ordered.
  Joe: Well, I often do.
  Mary: An apple turnover...and a cream horn.
  Sarah: A cream horn?
  Erin: That's not like you, Granda.
  Sarah: Sure, you couldn't pay you to eat a cream horn.
  Joe: Cream finger, it was. Apple turnover and a cream finger.
  Mary: Cream horn, Shay said. He swore on it, said he saw it being bagged up.
  Sarah: And Big Shay has eyes like a hawk, so he does.
  Mary: Shay said when you left Duggan's, you turned up Pump Street.
  Sarah: Pump Street? Who do you know on Pump Street, Da?
  Mary: What were you doing heading up Pump Street with a cream horn, Da?
  Joe: I was visiting a friend of mine.
  Mary: What friend?
  Joe: A new friend.
  Mary: A male friend, was it? (beat) Aye, I thought as much. Buying cream horns for his fancy woman, Sarah, what do you think of that?
• Mary and Sarah are both offended that Joe is seeing someone so soon after their mother has died...only for Gerry to remind them that their mother's been dead for ten years.

Episode Five

• Deirdre trying to persuade Mary to take Michelle and James on holiday with them.
  Deirdre: Is it the English thing? Listen, Mary, I understand. I mean, he's my nephew and even I find it hard to get past. If I'm totally honest, there's times when I look at him and I feel... well... It's pure hatred, I'll not dress it up.
  Mary: No, no, it's not the English thing!
  Deirdre: I hope to God it's not the gay thing you're offended by!
  James: There is no gay thing!
  Deirdre: Because I'd be disappointed in you, Mary, I'll not lie!
  Mary: Of course not! If anything, the gay thing sort of cancels out the English thing!
• James snapping just a touch when the group find a stowaway IRA member in the trunk of their car.
  James: Why doesn't someone just call the police?
  Erin: That's not really how things work around here, James.
  James: Well how do things work here? How do they work?! Would one of you please explain it to me, cause sometimes I feel like I've gone through the fucking looking glass!
  Clare: Calm down, James...
  • When Mary is freaking out about not having her Irish punts (thus risking the family being stranded with nothing to eat or drink for the duration of their trip), Aunt Sarah casually says that it would be much more convenient if the Republic of Ireland used sterling as well. Mary has to remind her that they actually did before a little thing called partition happened.
  • Clare's Skewed Priorities are quite amusing for someone who's normally the Only Sane Man. After being trapped in the middle of an Orange Order parade — with armed men surrounding the car — she freaks out dramatically because she's lost her bookmark.

Episode 6

• After finding the letter written to the school paper by the lesbian, Orla remarks that she doesn't think that lesbians exist. Later, when handing out the papers to students, Orla is yelling "Lesbians really do exist!"
  • Also handing out papers is James, who says "I support the gays, even though I myself am not actually gay!"
• Erin's poor reaction to Clare's coming out is mostly a Tear Jerker but does contain one very funny exchange:
  Clare: Your arrogance is staggering.
  Erin: You know what else is staggering? Your gayness!
• Sister Michael's reaction to Jenny's Hollywood Tone-Deaf performance at the school talent show.
  Sister Michael: You know, every year I sit backstage listening to the singers and it really makes me realise just how talented the professionals who originally recorded these tracks were.

Series Two

Across the Barricade

• Orla being told to leave and staring at Erin as though she can't believe her cousin doesn't want her company; while she's in the bath.
• When Father Peter returns and Sister Michael first realises what's in store for her:
  Janet Taylor: He's one of your lot.
  Sister Michael: Not a priest? [Janet Taylor nods] Ugh.
  Janet Taylor: Quite young, Southern. Bit of an arsehole, but, my God...amazing hair.
  Sister Michael: ...for feck's sake.
  • Later on:
    Peter: As some of you may know, I took a bit of a sabbatical last year.
    Michelle: Do you mean when you shacked up with a slutty hairdresser, but then she dumped you?
    Sister Michael: Miss Mallon, please! [Beat] Raise your hand if you want to ask a question.
    [Michelle raises her hand]
    Peter: Okay, why don't we just move on?
    Sister Michael: The hairdresser certainly did.
• The Protestant boys and the Catholic girls have some... interesting preconceived notions about one another, among them being "Catholics have more freckles," "Protestants like to march and Catholics like to walk," "Catholics really buzz off statues," and "Protestants hate ABBA."
  Sister Michael: [genuinely happy for once] I do enjoy a good statue, it has to be said.
  • Although most of the stereotypes described in this scene were considered more-or-less accurate by viewers, many Protestants felt the need to state on social media that they do not, in fact, hate ABBA.
  • There was also a fierce debate on Twitter about the reasons for keeping toasters in the cupboard.
• Sister Michael might be the stand-out funniest character in the whole thing, but her reaction to Jenny Joyce’s constant snitching and arse-licking is priceless.
  Sister Michael: You will go far in life, Jenny. [Beat] But you will not be well-liked.
• The lead-up to the Catholics/athletes brawl. Clare spends much of the first half of the episode trying her hardest to befriend her Protestant counterpart to show up Jenny Joyce. However, in a one-on-one conversation with Philip, she thinks he has confessed his hatred for Catholics and spends the rest of the episode scared shitless. This culminates with her Freak Out during the abseiling exercise. Philip then has to clarify that he misheard her saying Catholics as athletes because he's deaf in one ear.

Ms. De Brún and the Child of Prague

• Uncle Colm returns, this time to torment the woman manning the cinema concession stand with his story about a man choking on a boiled sweet.
• When the students are shouting out things they hate, Orla says, "my own socks" and James yells, “That the people here use the word 'wee' to describe things that aren't actually that small!”

The Concert

• The parents are refusing to let the group go to their concert in Belfast, because a polar bear has escaped from the Belfast Zoo:
  Erin: Wise up, Mammy! As if a polar bear's going to rock up at a Take That concert.
  Orla: He wouldn't get a ticket, for a start. They sold out months ago.
• The five on a bus, Clare all bundled up:
  Clare: Look, I don't want anyone recognising me, okay?!
  Michelle: No one's gonna recognise you, Clare.
  Sister Michael: Clare Devlin, is that you?
  • A few scenes later:
    Clare: I'm swelterin' here!
    Erin: Then take it off!
    Clare: I can't take it off, I've nothing underneath it.
    Erin: What, not even a bra?
    Michelle: Jesus, Clare! You've no bra on?
    Clare: Of course I've got a bra on!
    Orla: I haven't got a bra on.
    James: (deadpan and staring into the middle distance) Can everyone please stop saying "bra"?
    Clare: But I can hardly parade around in just my bra, can I? I’m not Madonna!
    Michelle: Isn't that the truth?
    Clare: What's [Sister Michael] doing now?
    James: Reading her book.....now she's looking at the woman beside her.....now she's getting up.....now she's coming this way.....now she's standing right in front of us.....
    Sister Michael: What's he doing?
    James: Now she's—
    Erin: Stop talking, James.
    Sister Michael: I want to sit here.
    Michelle: What? W-Why?
    Sister Michael: Well, you're such wonderful company, girls, what with your stimulating conversation and razor-sharp wit.
    Erin: (flattered) Really?
    Sister Michael: No, not really. The woman next to me is eating an egg-and-onion sandwich and the smell of it is enough to turn an Orange march.
• A small Freeze-Frame Bonus in the above scene: the book Sister Michael is reading (and laughing at)? The Exorcist.
• Gerry, Mary, Sarah, and Joe are discussing the escaped polar bear when there's a knock on the door and Sarah freaks out:
  Sarah: Don't answer. That might be him, that might be the polar bear!
  Gerry: Yeah, because they're known for their impeccable manners. They might come into your house and rip your throat out, but they'll knock on the door first.

The Curse

• When Clare, Michelle, and James show up at the wedding reception:
  Mary: I said you could invite one friend to the reception. One!
  Erin: They don't come separately, Mammy.
  Michelle: Aye, we're pack animals, Mary.
• Uncle Colm's next victim is Sister Michael at Aunt Bridie's wake. While he's telling his story about a bride getting blown away by the wind on her wedding day, Sister Michael openly wonders if she's died and gone to Hell.
• Gerry gets roped into making sandwiches for the wake; at first he's simply taking orders and suffering as per usual, but the next time we see him he's taken over the kitchen, barking orders and ranting about cross-contamination of Tayto crisps.
• The kids are trying to dispose of Michelle's hash scones by flushing them down the toilet. This was James's idea, as he's seen GoodFellas "like twenty times". Obviously, it doesn't work, and they end up flooding the bathroom.
  Michelle: I can't believe we're doing this. It's fuckin' heart-breaking!
  Erin: Look, Granda's had one, and now he's acting really really weird.
  Michelle: You're being paranoid, Erin.
  Erin: He was nice to Daddy.
  Michelle: (terrified) Jesus!
  Erin: Exactly. And if my ma starts asking questions...
  Michelle: Your ma won't trace it back to us.
  Erin: Are you for real?! She traces everything back to us! She traces things we haven't even done back to us!!!
  Michelle: [shreds her scone and dumps it in the toilet]
• Erin's excuse when the adults found them in the flooded bathroom was that she had an attack of "the scoots". When Gerry asked why she brought all her friends in with her, she lamely says "I panicked."

The Prom

• Seconds after boldly declaring that she'd be proud to be Clare's prom date and help her break down stigma and convention, Erin takes advantage of a breakup at the next table to immediately ask out the cute guy she thinks of as an ex despite the fact that they never dated.
  Michelle: She has no respect for herself, and coming from me...
  Clare: That is bad.
• While the rest of the gang is trying to wrestle Jenny away from the tomato juice bomb (and failing), Orla and Granda Joe stand in the audience, sharing a bag of popcorn.

The President

• Apparently, when John F. Kennedy visited Dublin, Uncle Colm got to meet him while Joe didn't. Gerry remarks, "JFK spoke to Colm? Christ, that man didn't have much luck, did he?"
• Uncle Colm recalls JFK as a "Lovely fella. Hands on him like shovels."
• The girls have somehow become convinced that not only is Chelsea Clinton coming with her parents, but she's planning to join them for a day of fun. Oh and this is because they sent her a letter just one week ago addressed "Chelsea Clinton, the White House, America." They eventually convince themselves that the only reason is that they didn't send the letter first-class.
• The girls are topped by how Joe, Jim and Colm are somehow convinced (thanks to picking up radio transmissions about "Bill in Burt") that the President of the United States is in Burt and make Gerry drive them five hours in a circle to check out places. When they find out what's going on, Jim's stupidity is so great that, for once, Joe can't possibly blame Gerry for this mess.
  Gerry: Now, Jim, would you be open to the possibility that it may not have been a CIA agent you picked up on that transmission of yours but a taxi dispatcher from Burt ordering a car to bring Bill here to mass?
  Jim: Well, he did have a strong Donegal accent now that you mention it.
  Joe: Jesus, Jim...
• Sister Michael cannot believe Jenny is the one student who actually believed her talk on no one should cut school and actually showed up.

Series Three

The Night Before

• When the gang are watching a video they've made:
  Michelle: His (James) ma sends him really expensive shit to make up for the fact that she doesn’t love him.
  James: Michelle!
  Michelle: Sorry, I meant...nope, can’t think of any other way to put that.
  • Orla makes an astute observation.
    Orla: (Pointing at the screen) That actor looks so familiar.
    Erin: That’s you, Orla.
• The gang get taken to the police station after accidentally helping two men burgle the school, and after a grand bit of back and forth with the inspector (made funnier by the fact he's played by Liam Neeson) they are told that their parents have to be called. Calling their ma's would be suicide, as would anyone's dad — "Da's are just Ma enablers!!!" — but, as Clare starts panicking about the police wearing them down and getting them to sign false confessions, Erin gets a revelation worthy of the Grinch:
  Erin: What if we wear them down first?
  Clare: Oi?
  Erin: (Grinning evilly) I know who we should call.
• Cut to Uncle Colm in full flow, a grinning gang, and two utterly agonized policemen, bored to the point that they can't even remember what they asked him. That said, his story is actually pretty wild, involving Anachronism Stew and Fake Nationality.
  Colm: Well, you say that, now, but there's a young lad up in Pennyburn called Diego. The mother, she's a Derry woman, but the father, he was Spanish. Though not on the scene, by all accounts. Diego's father, this is, well, he came over with the Spanish Armada, then cleared off, leaving her to raise the wean on her own. But that story didn't totally add up, was the thing. The problem being that the Spanish Armada landed here in 1588, and that the son — Diego, as she called him — well, he was born more than four centuries later. Made the whole thing up! As mad as a bag of cats, she was! And she had been clattering the wean in thon fake tan stuff, to make him more Spanish-y looking, you know? Which is how suspicions were raised, you see, because there was a powerful whiff off the wee critter.
• The inspector begs the constable not to leave him alone with Uncle Colm.
  Inspector: Alec, don't you dare leave me.
  Constable: It's every man for himself, sir.
• When pressed on how many Catholic officers are in the RUC, the policemen admit there are only 3... if you count the one who's Jewish. (Apparently he's a lovely fellow.)
• Erin continually speaking "for the tape" despite being told every time this isn't being recorded.

The Affair

• During the gang's performance of "Who Do You Think You Are?" by the Spice Girls for charity, a quick cutaway to Father Peter (who's emceeing the show) shows him to be absolutely jamming behind Sister Michael, who is watching the gang's performance with confusion.
• Jenny Joyce and Aisling's performance starts with Aisling solo, and Sister Michael is genuinely surprised by the fact that she's actually good... and then Jenny joins in.
• After Mary clarifies that she's not having an affair with the plumber but taking lessons in English literature so she can go to university, Erin remains furious... because she wanted to be the first person in their family to go to university, and now Mary's stealing all of her thunder.

The Haunting

• The episode opens with yet another awful Jenny Joyce singing performance. The girls, who believe Jenny stole the song she sang from them, barge in to Sister Michael's office to report the performance as a crime, only for her to tell them that being a dreadful singer isn't against the law.
• James furiously begging Michelle to pull the handbrake on the van as it slides back along the lane.
• Sister Michael's requisite entrance depicting her as having by far the most interesting life of any of the characters offscreen has her pull up in a DeLorean and wearing flip-up sunglasses before reprimanding the Irish speaking old lady from the gang's arrival.
  Sister Michael: You did not see the devil that night.
• The gang arm themselves when they believe they're being attacked by the ghost of Robert. Erin grabs a tray, Clare gets two spoons to form a cross, and Orla balances a cardboard box on her head. She somehow turns around without it moving.
• Michelle calling Erin and James kissing "incest", while making absolutely no attempt to justify this claim. The heartwarming subtext being that the friends are like family.
  Michelle: This is incest!
  James: No, it's not.
  Michelle: Yes, it is, James.
  James: We're not related.
  Michelle: Oh, and that makes it okay, I suppose?
  James: Well, it makes it not incest.
• Carlos the psychic claims to see the spirit of a woman, just before an old woman begins shouting for "Kevin." He gamely tries to continue the seance until he gives up and starts shouting back about green scarves (he keeps stealing his mother's to wear as a turban) and whose bingo habit is being supported by his "readings."

The Reunion

• Ma Mary and Aunt Sarah decide to diet and exercise in order to drop a dress size for their twenty-year high school reunion... six hours before said reunion. Gerry's reaction sums it up:
  Mary: Is there another way we can shift half a stone before eight o'clock??
  Gerry: Cut off a leg?
• To add to the above, the fact that even Orla seems to find the diet plan ridiculous.
• Janette Joyce, formerly O'Shea.
• When discussing the surgeon Joyce, Sarah mentions that he took out Orla's tonsils.
  Orla: And is point blank refusin' to give them back!
• Gerry seems already unenthused with his new suit from Dunnes (there was a sale), but then Ciaran walks in wearing an identical one, followed by Clare's father.
  Sean Devlin: Does every bastard in Derry own this thing??

Halloween

• Michelle brazenly informs Clare that the girl manning the ticket booth is also a lesbian, to which Clare huffily responds that she's not desperate. But then:
  Laurie: Hi there.
  Clare: HI, I'M A LESBIAN.
  Laurie:... Congratulations.

The Agreement

• Colm refuses to room with Eammon as "I find him a bit boring to be honest." Gerry can only walk away in frustration.
• In one of the best examples of the Brick Joke ever, the Distant Finale has Chelsea Clinton finally reading the letter the girls sent her back in the Season 2 finale with the mailman explaining it's been "bouncing around the mail system since 1995."