YMMV / Drop the Dead Donkey

• Ensemble Dark Horse: Joy, the sociopathic P.A, went from having two-minute appearances in Series Two to having her own plotlines in later episodes.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In the season two episode "Baseball", Henry talks about a disturbing rumour he heard over lunch at the club, to which Damien replies, "Oh, not Jimmy Savile again?"
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Characters often insult Sarah Ferguson's book Budgie the Little Helicopter. Jeff Rawle (George) provided voices for the animated adaptation of the same book.
  • Damien tries to report next to a burning pile of drugs and gradually gets high off the fumes. In 2015, reporter Quentin Somerville encountered the same problem.
  • In episode two, a joke is made about President George H. W. Bush giving an interview about the Gulf War from his golf course. In 2002, President George W. Bush was widely mocked for giving an interview about the War on Terror in the middle of a game of golf (the notorious "watch this drive" interview shown in Fahrenheit 9/11).
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Gus is a Manipulative Bastard who annoys the staff to no end, but he is also a lonely individual with little life beyond Globelink.
  • Damien is a lying, sensationalist, arrogant, amoral reporter, but he also had a pretty lonely and depressing childhood and a neglectful and apathetic mother, and suffers one of the worst endings of any character in the series.
  • Sally is selfish, unpleasant, homophobic and egotistical, but she had neglectful parents and was raised by an abusive grandmother, and marries a man who isn't any better.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Daniel Craig as a thug, Hermione Norris
  • Dan Miller shows up as a carbon copy of Gus who works in a hospital.
  • Andrew Lincoln pretends to be Henry's son.
  • Gene Hunt goes from a tough policeman to a downright crooked one...
• The Woobie: Poor George has to deal with poor health caused by the stress of his job, his horrible wife (who eventually divorces him), and his demon of a daughter. He doesn't get the happiest of endings either, ditching his new love in favor of reconciling with his abusive ex.

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