Recap / Father Ted S 2 E 2 Think Fast Father Ted

If I had a hammer...

You thought we were going to rob a bank, didn't you?

The parochial house has a leak, which happens to be over Jack's head. Ted and Dougal move him, only to have another leak start over Jack's new position. Ted decides to hold a raffle to raise money for the roof. He calls Bishop Brennan and secures permission to raffle a blue Rover 213. Ted and Dougal leave to retrieve the Rover. Upon their return, Dougal spots a small dent on the bonnet. Ted is dismayed and tries to "tap it away" with a hammer from the tool kit. However, after much time has passed, Ted has only succeeded in destroying the car's exterior.

Realising that they are in dire straits if Bishop Brennan should learn what was done to the Rover, Ted decides to procure another. The priests remember that Father Finnegan, the so-called "dancing priest", has a Rover identical to the ruined original. They travel to Finnegan's home to "borrow" the Rover, intending to set things up so that they can have the car in the raffle and return it later. Ted gets permission and the keys. As soon as Ted leaves his sight, Father Finnegan drops dead of a heart attack.

Knowing that they can't give the borrowed Rover away, Ted and Dougal rig the raffle in order for them to win and return the car. The plan involves Ted, as the Master of Ceremonies, calling the number 11. This number will be Dougal's. On the day of the event, Ted and Dougal work feverishly to sell tickets. They also secure Father Billy O'Dwyer, a.k.a. "Spinmaster", to provide music. However, he only has one record and a major gambling problem, which results in his purchase of 2000 raffle tickets. Later, the announcement that the organisers have won the raffle manages to suck the life out of the event.

Back at the parochial house, Mrs. Doyle reveals that Father Finnegan has died. Ted is relieved, realising he will be able to keep the car. However, things turn to the worse quickly. Ted discovers that an inebriated Father Jack has stolen the car in an effort to acquire more to drink. He asks Father Jack what he has done with the car. Jack explains curtly that he ran into two trucks. When Ted and Dougal inspect the damage, they discover that the rear half has been smashed beyond repair. While they are out, Father O'Dwyer steals the raffle money to pay off his debts, leaving Ted and Dougal with nothing. With the weathermen predicting rain until August, and the leak getting worse and worse, Ted, Jack, Dougal and Mrs Doyle are forced to spend the rest of the year in anoraks.

Tropes featured in this episode:

• Achievements in Ignorance: It is implied to be a long night-time drive from Finnegan's home to Ted's house, but instead of the priests stopping off somewhere, we see a morning sequence of them asleep in the car (Ted is literally asleep at the wheel) while the car drives on as if there is a driver without stopping in the middle of the road.
• Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?:
  Dougal: Wait, I'm not sure. I mean, it's a big step, and where are we going to get the guns?
• Artistic License – Cars: Two trucks crashing into a car — assuming that there actually were two trucks, and that Jack wasn't just seeing double in his drunken state — would rather create a situation where the car is pancaked by the trucks or even mangled up. Either way it would have rendered the car completed wrecked and undriveable front and back, rather than only having the rear end crushed. And if there was one truck, wouldn’t the car have been inoperable afterwards? If the episode had depicted Dougal going 'Not too bad' at the completed wrecked car in a Comically Missing the Point moment, this would have been fine.
• Artistic Licence – Geography: The priests drive overnight from Father Finnegan's house to Craggy Island. While the location of Craggy Island is never shown one can drive across Ireland (Dublin to Galway, for example) in about two hours and from north to south in about six hours. An overnight is possible but you'd have to go from one end of the country to the other.
• Beyond the Impossible: The first leak suddenly clears up before the second one opens. In the real world, this is impossible.
• The Bore: Father Austin Purcell is described by Ted as the most boring priest in the world. When we see him, he has Jack cornered in a storage room, rambling on about how he saved money on his energy bills. According to Ted, the inhabitants of a Nigerian village were so bored by him that they fled in a large boat, which sank quickly and they were subsequently eaten by alligators (despite there being no alligators in Africa!).
• Brick Joke: The car.
• Captain Oblivious: After securing Finnegan's car for the raffle, Ted excitedly goes outside and says "Bingo!" to Dougal while dangling the keys. Dougal's response is a flat "No luck then?".
• Catapult Nightmare: When Ted realizes that Bishop Brennan won't be happy when he learns about the fate of the car.
• Comical Overreacting: Double subverted to the point of Delayed Reaction:
  Ted: No, we can't give that away as a prize.
  (Later, after the priests have fallen asleep that night)
  Ted: OH JESUS, WE'RE DEAD! OH GOD ALMIGHTY!!
• Comically Missing the Point: "No luck then, Ted?"
• Cringe Comedy: The raffle scene has layers of this.
• Delayed Reaction/Double Take: Ted after seeing the damage to the first Rover.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Ted invokes this idea to bring Dougal around to the idea of rigging the raffle by saying that Bishop Brennan would actually murder them if he found out the car was wrecked.
• Doom It Yourself: Ted discovers that the car Brennan gave him for the raffle has a slight, but noticeable dent in it. He decides to try repairing the dent himself with a hammer...and after a few hours of tapping, manages to completely destroy the car.
• Dramatic Irony: We’re shown the shot of Father Finnegan dying of a heart attack well before Ted finds out that it’s happened.
• Dumbass Has a Point:
  Dougal: It's no use, Ted! You'll never get it absolutely right!
  • Also:
    Dougal: When someone wins (Finnegan's car) in the raffle, they won't want to give it back.
    Ted: Now Dougal, this is going to sound very, very immoral, and stay with me, but what if; what if we organize the raffle so that we won it? Then we could bring the car back.
    Dougal: Oh, oh, that would be terribly wrong, Ted!
• Epic Fail: The raffle.
  • Also the car repair attempt, which leaves a vehicle worth £7,000 looking worse than it had been (see the image to see why that last statement was an understatement).
• Failure Is the Only Option: The raffle.
• The Gambling Addict: Billy O'Dwyer.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: The only thing that stops Ted's panic attack is Dougal slapping him, which Ted warns never to do again.
• Gilligan Cut: Ted says he'll be alright once he gets some sleep. The next scene is of him panicking in bed.
• Hollywood Heart Attack: Finnegan the dancing priest dies this way.
• How Unscientific!: What happens with the leak when Jack gets moved counts.
• Ignored Expert: Off-screen. When Mrs. Doyle is talking about Finnegan's fatal heart attack, the following is said:
  Mrs. Doyle: [The doctors] warned him to cut it down to twelve hours a day but he couldn't stop dancing.
• Insane Troll Logic: "If Bishop Brennan finds out that we wrecked the car, he will kill us. And murder is a terrible, terrible sin. So, by committing this little sin, we'll actually be saving a bishop's soul."
• Laser-Guided Karma: As Ted rages about who would steal from a priest, Dougal points out that the raffle was, after all, rigged.
• Missed Him by That Much: More like 'Missed His Death by That Much'.
• Motor Mouth: Father Purcell. It is part of what makes him boring.
• Non Sequitur: The birds attacking the priests.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Dougal suggests the dent in the car happened because Ted hit a cyclist while they were driving along. Ted warns Dougal not to mention this, before saying he saw the cyclist getting up.
  • When Dougal suggests running away, Ted points out that they're always found when they do.
  • Ted mentions that the entire population of a village in Nigeria where Father Purcell was doing missionary work sailed to their deaths on a crocodile-infested lake rather than endure another day with him.
• Nun Too Holy: Gender-inverted with Billy.
• Offscreen Teleportation: In the shot of the house during a storm (as with all other shots), there are no large plants close to the house whatsoever; but about a minute and a half after this shot, a tree falls into the living room.
• Oh, Crap!: Ted when Jack reveals he took the car.
• Repeated Cue, Tardy Response: Happens to Ted here because Dougal failed to realise that his number (chosen specifically for the purpose of rigging the raffle) had been called.^note He was holding his ticket, 11, upside-down.
• Running Gag: The Rovers getting wrecked.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Ted during his panic attack in bed.
• Shout-Out: The writers have stated that the bird attack scene was inspired by the special effects in The Birds.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: Played with. Mrs. Doyle neglects to test her sandwiches so that they meet her standards, and only remembers it just after showing them to the priests. Just before eating one, she mentions that if just the one sandwich doesn’t pass, she bins the lot of them rather than giving them to the poor as you’d think she would. Fortunately, she okays them after eating the one sandwich (but not without exaggerating her having to force it down her throat).
• Throw It In!: Father Purcell's rambling over the end credits was entirely improvised by Ben Keaton.
• Watch the Paint Job: The Rovers.
• Wrong Song Gag: The priest DJ-ing the raffle brings along only one record (an incomplete recording of "Ghost Town" by The Specials), so at the end of the event, when Ted calls for the audience to stand for the national anthem, "Ghost Town" starts playing again.

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"This is a piece of advice my father gave to me. Now this refers not only to lagging, but all forms of insulation. He said "don't ever"...no, wait, it was "always"...no er, "never, never" - oh wait now, I've forgotten. Never mind. What's your favourite humming noise? Would it be mmm-mmmmm or would it be mmmm-MM? The first one there, now that's the sound of a fridge humming and the second one, now that's the sound of a man humming. You never hear a woman humming. I knew a woman once, but she died soon afterwards. Now if you push me to it, I'd have to say my favourite colour is grey. No, blue. A soft blue with a hint of grey. No, orange. Yes, orange. I remember now. I had an extension put on the house, and I put it on the extension, so the house is in a circle now, you see..."