Father Ted Crilly stated, "It's nice to think of them all in the house having adventures, but when you think about it, it's really cruel to Ted. It's just an awful future for him... He's not watching a sitcom, he's living this awful life." "The Independent" characterised Ted as "by turns devious, cunning and disingenuous", noting a running joke about parish funds being traced to Ted's personal account. Ardal O'Hanlon, who played Father Dougal, said that Ted was the show's only rounded, fully formed character, and that the rest of the cast were essentially playing caricatures. Ted is frequently portrayed as a natural
New Jack City (Father Ted) torments Ted and Dougal. Stack's torments include deliberately driving Ted's car into a wall and then telling him all about it and saying that all that mattered was that he liked it, insulting Ted and his friends in the priesthood, getting Dougal drunk on Jack's whiskey, drilling holes in the living room wall for no particular reason and blasting jungle music at 3 o'clock in the morning (Ted labels him "worse than Hitler", because "you wouldn't find Hitler playing jungle music at 3 in the morning"). Fed up with Father Stack, Ted and Dougal kidnap Father Jack back from Jurassic