YMMV / Father Ted S3 E8 "Going to America"

• Angst? What Angst?: Played for Laughs. After Ted calls off his plans for America, he finally breaks the news to the others that they aren't going, only for them to be incredibly nonchalant about it, much to Ted's exasperation.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The episode originally ended with Father Ted becoming suicidal and joining Kevin on the same window ledge from the opening. Ted's actor Dermot Morgan tragically suffered a fatal heart attack the day after filming had concluded. This, and the fact that the creators didn't find the ending funny enough anyway, contributed to it being changed to a montage of funny moments from the show.
• Genius Bonus: Ted introduces Dougal as his Curate, which is a real position in the Catholic Church for junior priests who are essentially assistants to parish priests.
• Harsher in Hindsight
  • Dermot Morgan was actually having heart problems during the filming of the Shaft scene. However, Tommy Tiernan (who played Fr. Kevin, the suicidal priest) kept flubbing his lines, and the producers would not let Dermot go until it was finished. To make matters worse, Dermot had to do dance moves in this scene, and doing them repeatedly exacerbated his condition. He died less than 24 hours later. If the reshoots of the scene had been stopped and Dermot had gotten treatment, there is a chance he might have lived. However, there is equally a chance that he might have died whilst away and the rest of the episode would never have been filmed.
  • To make it worse, the episode originally ended with Ted on the window ledge, about to kill himself but after Morgan died they replaced the ending with a montage of funny moments from the show.
  • Father Cagney talks about the celebrities he met in his parish in Beverly Hills, and describes Kevin Spacey as "a nice guy". The fact that the allegations against Spacey are the same as those unearthed against a number of Catholic priests, particularly in America, just a few years after the series aired, makes hearing the line today uncomfortable on more than one level.

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