The joke where the door slowly closes as Ted says mass derives from the writers' rule that the audience would never see Ted doing mass, or any other official church business, since it "seemed to be the stuff of other priestly sitcoms"; while other series might have routines about "a secret in confession" or "something embarrassing happening during mass", Linehan wanted to make a show about what happens between those moments. Mathews also noted that the characters hate working, so they did not want to show this. This rule was broken once, for the third-series episode "Speed 3", because they thought the idea of Ted giving mass from a tractor was too good to pass up.