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Context Recap / FatherTedS1E3ThePassionOfSaintTibulus

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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/father_ted_s1e3.jpg]]
2 [[caption-width-right:350:Sooo... you're saying we should go and watch the film?]]
3
4->''You know me Ted, the lights are on, but there's nobody home...''
5
6The Craggy Island parochial house is hosting a guest, Cuban priest Father Hernandez. As he plays a game of ''[[TabletopGame/{{Clue}} Cluedo]]'' with Ted and Dougal, Ted tells Hernandez about his direct superior, Bishop Len Brennan, including rumours that he got his housekeeper pregnant and secretly pays for her and their son to live in America. As coincidence would have it, Brennan calls Ted and informs him that he's coming to visit the following day. Before departing, Hernandez gives Ted and company a couple of gifts made by the simple people of his Cuban village in gratitude for their hospitality; a basic video recorder (which he apologises for only having a two-week pre-record), and a rather ... phallic fertility idol.
7
8Later that day, Brennan arrives -- freshly returned from a holiday in California, funnily enough -- and after a few awkward moments caused by the fertility idol and Dougal blabbing about Brennan's son, the bishop gets down to business; an erotic and blasphemous film named ''The Passion of Saint Tibulus'' has recently been produced, but following pressure from the Pope, it's been banned worldwide. Thanks to a loophole, however, the ban doesn't apply to the only cinema on Craggy Island, and Brennan orders Ted and Dougal to go and protest against it, in the hope of getting the film pulled. The two subsequently attend a screening, which is attended by only two other people (one of whom walks out before the film even begins after learning that it's subtitled instead of dubbed), and half-heartedly make a fuss over it.
9
10The following morning, Brennan drags Ted and Dougal down to the cinema (ignoring the slight fact that it won't open for a few more hours), where they stand around with signs reading "Careful Now" and "Down With This Sort of Thing". Following Brennan's orders, the two handcuff themselves to the railings outside the cinema and start vocally protesting the film, only for their protests and angry descriptions of the amount of nudity in the film to actually cause ''more'' people to become interested in seeing it. To the point where the cinema's manager remarks that he hasn't seen such big crowds for a film since ''Film/JurassicPark''. When Jack shows up to watch the film, Ted decides to give up and asks Dougal for the handcuff keys, only for it to turn out that Dougal didn't actually know handcuffs were meant to come with keys...
11
12When they get back to the Parochial House, still attached to a section of railing, Brennan angrily confronts them on making ''The Passion of Saint Tibulus'' the most successful film ever to be shown on Craggy Island, with people coming from all over Europe to watch it. What's more, as punishment for their colossal failure, the trio are being reassigned; Ted to an island off the coast of Surinam where the polytheistic locals have been locked in a state of perpetual civil war for centuries, Dougal to a part of the Philippines with no sewage system, and Jack to somewhere equally nasty, though Brennan makes the unwise move of waking Jack up in order to properly berate him, earning himself a broken nose for his trouble. After Brennan storms out, Jack, who it turns out stole Brennan's travel bag (in order to get the duty-free bottle of whisky), puts on a video he found in the bag, which turns out to contain footage of Brennan with his mistress and son. The trio realize they now have the leverage they need to persuade Brennan to at least keep them on Craggy Island, and decide to watch the video once more.
13
14!!Tropes featured in this episode:
15
16* ArtisticLicenseGeography: Bishop Brennan points at a spot in North America on a globe at the end, but at the time, he was talking about an island supposedly off the coast of Surinam, which (as stated by the Bishop), is in ''South'' America, not North America. Justified, as he was of unsound mind due to the unprecedented success of the film that formed so much of the conflict in the episode.
17* ArtisticLicenceLaw: The Holy See cannot ban a film being shown anywhere outside Vatican City. The closest could be forbidding Catholics to go and see it or putting pressure on national governments to ban it; in the case of the latter, it's doubtful that any governments except for those of Ireland, Italy and the Philippines would pay much attention.
18* AssShove: Mary threatens to do this to John with a butcher's knife, but fortunately for him Dougal comes in before she can make good on that threat.
19* BannedInChina: In-universe. ''The Passion of Saint Tibulus'' has been banned everywhere thanks to the influence of the Vatican, with only Craggy Island screening it.
20* BilingualDialogue: The conversation between Ted and Father Hernandez has them speaking English and Spanish respectively, yet they are able to understand each other perfectly.
21* {{Blackmail}}: Bishop Brennan draws up plans to reassign the priests to unhealthy and/or deadly places around the world. Then Father Jack goes over to the video recorder and plays a tape showing Brennan with his mistress and lovechild. Ted muses on whether they should blackmail Brennan immediately to annul the reassignment, or watch the tape again first.
22* TheCasanova:
23** Father Hernandez, who despite (apparently) keeping to his vows of celibacy, frequently talks about his admiration for women. Mrs. Doyle included.
24** Bishop Brennan would seem to be this as well, given that he has a son and mistress in California.
25* ChekhovsGun: The video recorder that Ted gets from Father Hernandez seems to be a throwaway gag at first, but it comes in handy as a way of watching Brennan's holiday video at the end of the episode.
26* ComicallyMissingThePoint: Instead of being outraged by the blasphemous content of ''The Passion of Saint Tibulus'', Ted and Dougal complain about the film's historical inaccuracies, pointing out that the titular saint would have probably worn more clothes, since he was from Norway and it's very cold there.
27* CringeComedy: One could say the protest ended up this way, making for a VERY interested local populace.
28* TheDeterminator: While it was briefly shown in "Good Luck, Father Ted", this is the episode that really establishes the insane lengths that Mrs. Doyle will go to in order to force her guests (in this case, Brennan) to accept tea.
29* DidntThinkThisThrough: Brennan's (and by extension the Vatican's) decision to make Ted and Dougal protest against the film only results in it becoming incredibly popular. Seeing as the film had already been banned worldwide and nobody on the island seemed particularly interested in it, if Brennan had simply done nothing then the film would've flopped and likely been completely forgotten about.
30* DisproportionateRetribution: Ted and Dougal were doomed to fail from the start, but despite following Bishop Brennan's orders in their own foolish way, he plans to punish them all by assigning them to new parishes on the other side of the Earth that were more than likely to kill them.
31* DirtyOldMonk: Saint Tibulus, according to the film. And Jack, of course, who goes to see the film and enjoys it to the point where his smiling face is shown on the publicity posters.
32--> '''Dougal''': Do you remember that bit when Saint Tibulus, he tried to take that banana off the other lad?
33--> '''Ted''': That wasn't a banana, Dougal.
34* DisruptingTheTheater: Bishop Brennan tells Ted and Dougal to intentionally do this for ''The Passion of Saint Tibulus'' as a way of dissuading people from watching it. When they go to do so, there are only two other people in the cinema, and one of them leaves when he learns that this film has subtitles. Still, the manager comes by and tells them they're disturbing the guests.
35* EpicFail: The priests' protests.
36* FailureIsTheOnlyOption: The vague nature of Ted and Dougal's protests just gets people to go and watch the film out of curiosity, and when Ted tries graphically describing the film's obscene and blasphemous content, it only gets people ''even more interested'' in going to see it.
37* FelonyMisdemeanor: Ted and Dougal fail in deterring interest in a blasphemous film. Bishop Brennan's response? Trying to arrange their deaths by assigning them to dangerous and remote parishes.
38* FriendlyEnemy: Well, "enemy" might be overstating it, but the manager of the cinema which is showing ''The Passion of St. Tibulus'' reacts to Ted and Dougal's protest with friendly good humour and a reasonable request that they can keep the shouting down so as to avoid annoying other patrons (or, rather, the ''only other patron'' in the place); in addition, he is happy to let the priests have what appears to be their usual discount on the ticket price. It probably helps that their protest is clearly half-hearted and reluctant. The fact that the protest ends up generating loads of publicity for the film, causing punters to come from all over to see it (thus making the cinema a tidy profit) is a welcome bonus as far as he's concerned.
39* KavorkaMan: Bishop Brennan has a young family.
40* LeFilmArtistique: ''The Passion of Saint Tibulus'' is a subtitled French film. Judging from Ted and Dougal's bewildered conversation after seeing it, it features copious nudity and a plot that makes absolutely no sense. Ted is most puzzled by Saint Tibulus wearing so little clothing, noting that "he was from Norway or somewhere, he'd have frozen to death!"
41* LoopholeAbuse: Why the film is showing only on Craggy Island.
42* MindScrew: In-universe. God help these people going to see the movie if they came out not understanding the plot.
43* MoralGuardians: Ted and Dougal are tasked by Bishop Brennan to hold a dignified protest against the titular film, which, due to a legal loophole, is showing only in their (tiny, sparsely populated, and hard to reach) parish. Not only do they go and see the film themselves, their protest is an abortive farce (they handcuff themselves to the railings and subsequently lose the key), and because of the controversy caused by an "official" condemnation and protest by the Catholic Church, the film becomes the cinema's biggest seller ever, a cult classic, and reaches an audience of millions.
44-->'''Bishop Brennan:''' People are coming all the way from ''Gdansk'' to see the film!
45* NeverMyFault: Brennan tries to have the trio of Craggy Island priests punished for unwittingly making the film a huge success. At no point is it mentioned that they were actually following Brennan's direct instructions every step of the way, meaning that the only one of the trio who should really have anything to answer for is Jack, who didn't take part in the protest and went to watch the film of his own accord.
46* NoodleIncident: Jack has been sent to Craggy Island as punishment for apparently doing something horrible at a wedding in Athlone (judging by his reaction, it was probably something to with Jack's alcoholism, lecherous nature, or both), while Dougal was responsible for something called the "Blackrock incident", in which he managed to severely damage the lives of a number of people (though Dougal claims they were "only nuns"), and Brennan was forced to call in personal favours to stop the Vatican from getting involved. The incident that saw Ted sent to the island isn't fully explained, but is indicated to be a more straightforward case of embezzlement -- he appears to have stolen money meant to send a sick child to Lourdes to go on a bender in Las Vegas.
47* ReassignedToAntarctica: Ted's, Dougal's and Jack's being on Craggy Island is revealed to already be an example of this, and it nearly gets turned up to eleven after their protests against ''The Passion of Saint Tibulus'' have the opposite effect of what was intended.
48* RippedFromTheHeadlines:
49** The plot of the Church's opposition to a blasphemous film was inspired by the reaction to several real-world films, including ''Film/{{Sebastiane}}'', ''Hail Mary'' and ''Film/LifeOfBrian''; the latter was banned in Ireland upon its release, so Graham Linehan joined a film club specifically to get a chance to watch it.
50** Bishop Brennan's scandal mirrors that of Eamonn Casey in the 1990s.
51* SkewedPriorities: A man whose wife died mere hours ago decides to go and watch ''The Passion of Saint Tibulus'', despite Ted's attempts to tell him that there are more important things he should be doing, given his situation.
52* ShoutOut: Brennan refers to Dougal as "Film/ForrestGump", while the cinema manager comments that thanks to Ted and Dougal's protest, ''The Passion of Saint Tibulus'' has become more popular than ''Film/JurassicPark''.
53* [[ShowWithinAShow Story Within A Story]]: ''The Passion of Saint Tibulus'', a subtitled French film with an incomprehensible plot and copious nudity, and which the Vatican wants to ban.
54* StreisandEffect: In-universe; prior to Bishop Brennan ordering Ted and Dougal to get involved, ''The Passion of Saint Tibulus'' was playing ''in one cinema'' to virtually non-existent audiences. Afterwards, people come from as far as Gdansk to see it.
55* SubbingVsDubbing: In-universe, it turns out that one of the original two people who decided to watch ''The Passion of St. Tibulus'' appears to have Very Strong Opinions on this subject:
56-->'''Patron:''' Is it subtitled?\
57'''Cinema Manager:''' Excuse me?\
58'''Patron:''' Is it subtitled, or is it dubbed?\
59'''Cinema Manager:''' ''[Slightly bemused]'' It's subtitled.\
60'''Patron:''' ''[Genuinely ''livid'']'' ''Jesus!'' ''[Gets up and storms off]''
61* TemptingFate: Brennan insists on waking up Jack just to gloat about the horrible new parish he's going to be sent to, despite Ted's warnings that he should really leave Jack alone. This ends up landing the bishop with a broken nose.
62* TrueArtIsIncomprehensible: In-universe; Ted and Dougal have trouble comprehending what exactly ''The Passion of Saint Tibulus'' was meant to be about, other than showcasing a lot of nudity.
63* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory:
64** The idea of the Church protesting against a film and unwittingly creating publicity for it is actually a somewhat common occurrence in Ireland, as bans aren't always practical to enforce nationwide, resulting in the few cinemas that do get away with showing said films raking it in. The main example in the writers' mind when making the episode was ''Film/LifeOfBrian'', though they point out in the series' script book that there was usually at least one film a year that had this happen to it.
65** Bishop Brennan getting his housekeeper pregnant was inspired by a then-recent scandal involving bishop Eamonn Casey, who got an American woman pregnant and tried to pressure her into giving the baby up for adoption. The main differences are that Casey's son was 19 by the time the scandal broke, whereas Brennan's son doesn't look to be much more then 6 or 7 years old, and Brennan is apparently still in a relationship with his mistress, unlike Casey.
66* VoiceoverTranslation: Father Hernandez, a priest visiting from Cuba, converses with Ted in his native Spanish while a voiceover provides an English translation. This even extends as far as the voiceover translating Hernandez's bawdy laughter into a dry "heh heh heh".
67* WavingSignsAround: Ted and Dougal do this outside the cinema.
68----
69->''"Down With These Sort of Tropes!"''\
70''"Careful, now!"''

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