This page is for quotes from The Critic televison series on ABC (1994 - 1995), then on the Fox Network (1995 - 1996); then again on the internet in 2001; created by Al Jean and Mike Reiss of The Simpsons.

Quotes of the recurring characters: Jay Sherman - Marty Sherman - Margo Sherman - Eleanor Sherman - Franklin Sherman - Duke Philips - Doris Grossman - Jeremy Hawke - Vlada - Alice Tompkins - Penny Tompkins

Jay Sherman

"At last, I've found my biological mother, I can finally undo years of psychological scarring! All that's left now is my failed marriage, my blood curdling senior prom, and the trauma of my ill-conceived canoe trip through hillbilly country."

"And that's me on the set of Dances With Wolves. They gave me a small part; I played Throws Like a Girl. "

"Now for the part that you love most and I find humiliating, on the Shermometer, this film rates an "absolute zero!" Brrr!"

Well, I can sink a 50 million-dollar musical using only the word "Crap"!

Son, if there's one thing I know, it's how to read a woman. For example, that woman over there thinks I'm disguisting, and that woman thinks I'm Bigfoot! And that woman is wondering if she should call the cops to have me thrown out of the school...

Now, I'm about to take off my shirt. A feeling of mild nausea is normal.

So you see, looking back, I think the other kids always picked me last for sports because I was smarter than them, not because of my unpredictable bladder.

Alright...I do have a way with women...over 60....

My shrink was right. God does hate me!

This film gets my highest rating: 7 out of 10.

I am a movie critic by trade and until recently, I got paid to tell you people which movies merely stink and which ones you shouldn’t screen near an open flame. Well, I’m putting the burden of lousy movie back on you. It’s very simple: if you stop going to bad movies, they’ll stop making bad movies. If the movie used to be a TV show, just don’t go. After Roman numeral II, give it a rest. If the movie is a remake of a classic, rent the classic. Tell them you want stories about people, not a hundred million dollars of stunts and explosives. People, it’s up to you. If the movie stinks, just don’t go.

Nothing turns on the chicks like The Human Fly...or was that Spanish Fly?

I can't die like this! I have holes in my Little Mermaid underwear!

So you're not good at sports, we'll just have to find out what you are good at. In my case, it's complaining about movies that bring happiness to idiots.

Well, that's all for our show tonight. If you want to read more about trucking, I'm sorry but there just aren't any trucking books out there.

Goodnight, Critic fans! And a special goodnight to those just tuning in for Home Improvement!

I did it! Oh, I'm a doc, a happy sneezy doc! (yawns) Ooh, I'm a sleepy happy sneezy doc. If I don't get to bed, I'll be a grumpy dopey sleepy happy sneezy doc. (pause) Bashful.

I promised Alice I'd get her little girl into preschool, and I haven't had any luck. I ate a cheesecake, I took a nap, what more can one man do?

(after being pepper sprayed) Mmmm, jalapeno!

(a speaking cardboard figure of Jay waving a book) Buy my book! Buy my book! Buy my book!

Hi, I'm Jay Sherman, the critic. I used to have a big show on ABC... for about a week.

Dialogues with Jay

Jay Sherman: Lady, don't take this the wrong way, but you're nuts!

Old Lady (thinking he is her cat): Oh, you sound just like the toaster.

Jay: Now Son, you may just have noticed there was a beautiful woman in my bed.

Marty: I won't tell anyone.

Jay: Actually, I wish you would tell everyone. Particularly, your mother and her personal trainer, Alberto.

Jay: I'm not going to stop loving you after I've been decaying in the ground for 200 years.

Eleanor: (angrily) Can't one dinner go by where we don't talk about your rotting corpse?

Projectionist: They treated me pretty bad (in prison) at first, but then they found out I tried to kill a film critic. You know, in Texas it's not even a crime.

Jay: I'm well aware. At the Houston film festival, only half of us got out alive.

Vlada: I love you too

Jay: You just love my money.

Vlada: That is true but it is a love that will never die.

Eleanor: Jay, sit on my lap. (Jay sits on her lap and her bones crunch.) Get off my lap!

Jay: But it's so comfortable!

Jay Sherman: Hey Rush, race you to the lobby!

Rush Limbaugh: I accept your challenge you liberal cream puff! Mmmmmmmmm, liberal cream puff.

Jay Sherman: Hey look mom you and Hoover came out on the same day.

Eleanor Sherman: Don't you say that about your Uncle Edgar.

Margo Sherman

This is the ride where all my brother's girlfriends admit they're just using him.

Great, welcome to our crappy family.

(to Johnny) Before you left I wanted to say Get Bent.

Eleanor Sherman

(on the phone)"Jay, this is your mother. Your father and I are taking you out of our will. We feel you already have enough money. Oh yes, and happy birthday."

The debutantes' ball is a Wigglesworth tradition! To starve yourself to fit into a dress, to dance with boys who feel you up and to drink so much you fall into a well. It's a magical night.

I was just going to give you some rubber bands to play with...but if you want to, you can come.

Franklin Sherman

Keep it down son I'm trying to make it rain Harvey's Bristol Cream.

Drinkin!

Franklin the sailor song: I punch like a comet then drink till I vomit, I'm Franklin the sailor man!

48 hours and still going!

As the first black,woman leader of the Ku Klux Klan I would just like to say America stinks!

(driving through a Picaso painting) Take that Guernica!

(crashing through the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in a helecopter) Take that Birth of Man!

Kabong!

(preparing for the vice presidential debate) Now let's rob that bank(puts a stocking on his head)

(to a penguin pilot when their planes going down) No I will not pray with you!

(goes to the cockpit of a plane and sees the pilot's a penguin) A penguin! And he's been drinking! Wait a minute... penguins can't fly... Penguins can't fly!

Oh, son. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times... who are all you people?

I didn't ask to be secretary of balloon doggies, the balloon doggies demanded it!

I was the head of a trucker's union once. That reminds me, there's a lot of money and some dead bodies buried in the back yard!

Forget the rivets, darling, Crazy Glue will hold any surface together! It's crazy!!!

I've been there too. Usually there's a midget making googly eyes at me. I call him Mr. Pickalini.

Duke Philips

(on the phone)"Hello Jay, this is your boss. I've just obtained legal permission to hunt men for sport and I wondered if you'd like to come to my ranch tomorrow. Bring your jogging shoes."

Jay, you've got a very valid point. But on the other hand, shut up.

I came here to swallow my pride, admit I was wrong, and beg you to come back to work for me again. But then I figured I'd take a moral shortcut and write you a check.

(about his new movie) Do you know how much it costs to get Saddam Hussein to play himself?

If I want Citizen Kane's last word to be "schwing" then "schwing" it's gonna be!

Rosebud... I mean "schwing"!

That's it! I'll run for president! Drop a whole mess a' bombs and put Merle Haggard on the Supreme Court!

What a Duke-tastrophe.

Doris Grossman

Mmmm... smoke.

(in a room on fire) Looks like Hell but smells like Heaven.

Jeremy Hawke

"Jay, bubbeleh, never date an actress, and never do blackface at the NAACP Image awards. Two things I've learned from experience."

Vlada

(seeing Jay and his trucker friends) Vlada takes all deliveries in the rear.

Sorry pretty lady. Vlada's souffle hasn't risen in years.

Alice Tompkins

Sorry. I hate not being friendly, but this is New York.

(Jay introduces Alice to Duke Phillips)It's nice to meet you, sir. I'll never forget the speech you gave at my high school graduation: "I just drank two bottles of tequila, my wife doesn't know I'm here. Any of you girls over 18?"

Shackleford

Good to see you, adopted Master Jay.

I'm sorry, Master Jay, I did so want to scrub your dainties, but they somehow caught fire. Why do they burn so long?

(Watching the mansion on fire) Burn, baby, burn.

Ending

• Jay: Celebrity voices are impersonated. No celebrities were harmed in the filming of this episode.
• The manager: Excuse me, sir, the show's over.
• Jay: Is the snack bar still open?

Other Responses

• Jay: I'm stuck to the chair.
• Jay: Get away zitface!
• Jay: But I have nowhere to go.
• Alice: Get away pipsqueak! Jay: That's why I love her!

Extras

"But Mr. Sherman! If the Children don't have cigarettes, what will they do after sex!?"--Tobacco Company Executive

"I said questions, not wishes! I'm a priest not a genie!"

(Jay's "inner child" on phone) Jay, this is your inner child. I escaped and I just robbed a liquor store.

Cuban TV Announcer: We'll be back after this word from toilet paper, now in "rough" and "not-so-rough."

Humphrey the Hippo: Please, kids, my philosophy is "love and dance" not "hate and not dance."

Adolph Hitmaker: If you want the world to love you, you must be big and jolly like Santa Clause, or Rush Limbaugh.

Brown Acres Theme Song
Brown Acres is the place to be
Tent living is the life for me
Sand spreading out so hot and white
The temperature's 105 a night
The cultures!
The vultures!
Fresh figs!
Uh... no pigs!
You are my wives,
Good bye, city lives!
Brown acres, we are there!

Celebrities

"Rosebud... Yes, Rosebud frozen peas! Filled with country goodness and green pea-ness... wait, that's terrible, I quit!"--Orson Welles

"Hath not a dude eyes? If you prick us, do we not get bummed? If we eat bad guacamole, do we not blow chunks?"--Keanu Reeves in The Merchant of Venice Beach

Adam West: Well Jay, one of my most amazing films is The Happy Hooker Goes To Hollywood. It came out in 1980, it's one I'm sure you enjoyed all the way to the end.

Dan Quayle: I'm Dan Quayle...I gotta go boom-boom.

Ronald Reagan: I do solemnly swear that as your president, I will goof off and eat candy.