Jay Sherman

**Jay Sherman** is a movie critic who was the main character of The Critic. Jay's full name is; Jay Prescott Sherman IV (the fourth). He is voiced by actor Jon Lovitz. He made a one of appearance in The Simpsons as a main character in one episode.

## Appearance

Jay is a short man in the episode Uneasy Rider we see his driver license, he is 5'6" (five feet six inches tall) and is very obese. The same license also tells us that Jay's date of birth is "January 26 1958" making jay in the show 36-37 years old since the show takes place between 1994 and 1995. Jay is also rapidly balding, and sometimes wears a toupee to compensate for it. Jay's hair is fake, and must be sprayed onto his head. In The Simpsons he has yellow skin like the rest of the cast and a more visible upper lip.

## Personality

Jay is highly critical of many movies, and is considered to be cynical. Because of this, he is looked down upon by others. He runs a TV show called Coming Attractions, which is dubbed into seven different languages.

Jay has a limited pool of friends, one being Jeremy Hawke. In other countries, his show hosts disclaimers, such as "Jay Sherman is an escape patient from a mental hospital" as a result of his lack of socialization.

## History

Jay is the adopted son of wealthy New-England socialites Franklin and Eleanor Sherman, who originally thought he was a monkey. He is Jewish despite his WASP upbringing. In preschool, he was given LSD-laced Kool-Aid by guest speaker Timothy Leary (he claimed afterwards, he "was down at the hungry i, jamming with Dylan"), and was mistakenly sent to Attica Prison instead of summer camp as a child in the summer of 1972. He has a teenage sister named Margo and a young son named Marty who visits often when not staying with Jay's ex-wife Ardeth.

Jay has also held several other jobs in his time, including a truck driver, speech writer for Duke Phillips' presidential campaign and a writer for the film Ghostchasers III (renamed Ghostbusters III during the final episode clip show.)

Jay has won a string of prestigious awards for his career: two Pulitzer Prizes for criticism, a People's Choice Award, five Golden Globes, an Emmy Award, a PhD in film, and a B'nai B'rith Award.

In 1991, Jay accidentally got caught up in the First Gulf War where he ended up getting captured by Saddam's forces only to escape with a group of American soldiers.

Jay blames his weight problem on the fictional disorder "vitilardo", a word-play on the skin pigmentation disorder vitiligo. His weight is suggested to be greater than a tank, as a helicopter that was originally designed to lift tanks was unable to even get him off the ground. He was also shown in a file photo on a news report as "weighing more than the entire band Los Lobos," in which he is sitting on a see-saw, lifting the entire band into the air. When he exercises, Duke often uses Jay in place of a set of dumbbells when lifting weights. His weight led to the death of a horse when he was a child, crushing it to death when Jay lied to the horse trainer about his weight so he could sit on it. Jay's stomach seems to have a mind of its own, often giving him commands that he obeys out of fear, going so far as to call it "Master." Acting on the advice of a quack public-relations expert, Jay once gained so much weight that he had to have several months' worth of liposuction.

Duke frequently makes patronizing comments to suggest that Jay is gay; Jay maintains that he is straight. It is also strongly hinted in the episode "Eyes on the Prize" that Jay has Bipolar Disorder, when he tells a class of cab drivers that the only thing that gets him through the day is lithium.

He also has an alter-ego in "Ethel." His Ethel persona is an elderly woman, whom he often pretends is his assistant, and therefore assumes her persona when answering the phone. "Ethel" only appears in the first season.

In the second first-season episode "Marty's First Date," in desperation to retrieve his son from Cuba, Jay goes to Mexico City's "Linda Ronstadt International Airport" and marries a Mexican woman in order to travel there. She then admits to him that she is only marrying him "for citizenship" and then openly states "I plan to divorce him and take half his money." It is a possibility that this may be the "second divorce" Jay mentioned in the first webisode, but was never made clear.

In the second season, Jay's character was given a renovation. He received a rounder head, bigger pupils for his eyes and a warmer personality. He also begins a long-term relationship with Alice Tompkins, a Tennessee single mother living in New York whom Jay meets on the street and later hires as his personal assistant.

He appeared in a third mini series on the internet where he'd review films and interview people.

In The Simpsons, In "A Star is Burns", he came to Springfield to be a judge during the film festival where he became good friends with Homer Simpson and his family. In Hurricane Neddy, he was a patient at the Calmwood Mental Hospital. He also apparently became a regular patron to Moe's Tavern.