Kicking Bishop Brennan up the Arse

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“Kicking Bishop Brennan up the Arse”
Father Ted episode

Ted carries out his forfeit
Episode no. Season 3
Episode 6
Written by Graham Linehan, Arthur Mathews
Directed by Andy DeEmmony
Guest stars Jim Norton (Bishop Brennan)
Ian Fitzgibbon (Fr. Jessup)
Original airdate 10 April 1998
Episode chronology
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"Escape from Victory" "Night of the Nearly Dead"
List of Father Ted episodes

"Kicking Bishop Brennan up the Arse" is the 6th episode of the third series of Channel 4 sitcom Father Ted and the 23rd episode overall.

The story continues from the previous episode, "Escape from Victory".

[edit] Synopsis

Ted is extremely worried about the forfeit that Father Dick Byrne has set him; in fact, Ted is already resigned to thinking about his next parish, one much worse than Craggy Island, where Bishop Brennan will inevitably send Ted after he kicks him up the arse. Dougal will have to take a photograph of the act as proof for Dick, and Dick also calls Bishop Brennan, telling him that the perfect outline of the bishop's face has miraculously appeared in the skirting board of the Craggy Island parochial house, so the bishop arranges to visit Ted as soon as possible.

After Ted nervously talks (to himself) all night, he and Dougal are surprised by Bishop Brennan's early arrival, with his assistant, Father Jessup, the most sarcastic priest in Ireland. The bishop cannot stay for long, because he is attending An Audience with the Pope the following day.

They all proceed to the guest bedroom (Dougal clutching a camera, pretending that photography is a hobby of his), and when Bishop Brennan bends over to look at the skirting board, Ted is about to kick him up the arse, but when Fr. Jessup looks up, Ted panics and jumps through the window instead. He pretends this was because of the shock at seeing the image of Bishop Brennan, but everyone else agrees there was nothing there.

Downstairs, Brennan and Jessup are about to leave when Mrs Doyle announces that "they've taken the roads in" (Craggy Island's roads are stored in a warehouse in bad weather), and they will have to stay the night, giving Ted another chance to perform his forfeit. Mrs Doyle does not understand Fr. Jessup's sarcasm, taking him at face value until Ted tells her to "just do the opposite of whatever he says"; so when Jessup finally says he does want a cup of tea, she takes it away from him.

That night, Ted says Bishop Brennan is too scary to kick up the arse, but Dougal tells Ted that he could get away with it, if he did it, then acted like nothing happened, because the bishop wouldn't believe Ted would ever do that. The following day, with Fr. Jessup busy trying to unhand Jack of the bishop's whiskey, and Bishop Brennan distracted by Dougal's very crude watercolour painting of a bishop on the skirting board, Ted kicks the Bishop Brennan up the arse, and Dougal takes the photograph to prove it.

As soon as this happens, Bishop Brennan becomes somewhat paralysed, his face fixed in an astonished expression and unable to utter anything more than monosyllables. Ted and Dougal put him in a taxi to the airport, and are triumphant that they got away with it, celebrating with sparkling wine.

Meanwhile, Fr. Jessup has been locked inside Jack's underpants hamper. When Mrs Doyle discovers him, he desperately asks to be let out; she thinks for a minute, and then does the opposite of what he says. On the plane to Rome, Bishop Brennan is still barely reacting to anyone. Ted gets drunk on wine, and tells Dougal to have 200 copies of the photograph made for all his friends, and an enlarged "ten by ten" version for himself.

When Bishop Brennan meets the pope, he suddenly comes out of his shocked trance, and angrily shouts "he did kick me up the arse!" before pushing the pope over, and phoning to demand a plane ticket back to Ireland instantly. The following morning, Ted wakes up, hung over, and finds Bishop Brennan breaking into the house, enraged. When confronted, however, Ted swears that he would never do something like kicking the bishop up the arse, and Brennan starts to believe him, accepting that he has perhaps been imagining things and needs a holiday. As the bishop is leaving, Dougal comes up to Ted with the copied photos. Brennan then turns around to wave goodbye to Ted, but then freezes again. As Ted didn't specify that he wanted a 10x10 inch photo, Dougal had a giant 10x10 feet version made instead, which clearly shows the moment when Ted kicked Brennan. Even angrier than before, the bishop chases Ted through the garden and, when Ted slips over, he is kicked up the arse by Brennan, so powerfully that he goes flying through the air.

As the episode ends, we see Fr. Jessup still inside the hamper, apparently having been there several days. In a plaintive attempt to be released, he meekly shouts "I'm really enjoying this..."

[edit] Trivia

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
  • When Jack stirs from his sleep, Bishop Brennan says "Ah, the Kraken awakes!". The Kraken is a mythological sea monster, and the subject of a Tennyson poem.

[edit] External links

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