"New York's third most popular early-morning cable-TV film critic", 37-year-old Jay Prescott Sherman is the host of Phillips Broadcasting's Coming Attractions.
Jay is the adopted son of wealthy New-England socialites Franklin and Eleanor Sherman, who originally thought he was a monkey.
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.
He also begins a long-term relationship with Alice Tompkins, a Tennessee woman living in New York whom Jay meets on the street and later hires as his personal assistant.
The sequence ends at night with him watching the day's Coming Attractions episode at home, then turning off the television and going to sleep.
At the end, he is seen sitting in a movie theater, eating popcorn and drinking soda as the closing credits are shown on the screen.
He was, however, elected eighth-grade student body president thanks to a speech written by his father, dated Fidel Castro's granddaughter (even stowing away on her plane back to Cuba on in order to see her again), and discovered he has a gift for belly-dancing (he has great muscle control in his belly).
They spent their wedding night playing The Newlywed Game, which they won (Jay correctly guessed Ardeth compared his sex appeal to a dead mackerel).
She once attempted put a voodoo hex on Jay's girlfriend Alice, despite the divorce settlement specifically forbidding such actions.
In the second-season episode "A Song for Margo", she briefly dated grunge rock singer Johnny Wrath (real name: Jonathan Rathberg) after he moved next door to the Shermans, and even considered losing her virginity to him, but discovers he was cheating on her and breaks up with him.
Jay's adoptive father and Eleanor's husband who speaks with a thick "Locust Valley lockjaw", wears slippers and always has a glass of brandy in his hand no matter where he goes.
A few of his oddities include burning down the house (this is explained by him forgetting to turn the oven off), becoming stuck to an ice sculpture, gluing the dog and silverware to the ceiling, dressing up as the Energizer Bunny, rubbing his behind on the dinner plates, wearing underpants on his head at the dinner table, and sticking a banana in his ear which he claimed was an attempt to lure the monkey out of his head.
Also in the episode "Frankie and Ellie Get Lost", much to his wife's surprise, Franklin proves that he can be a problem-solver and an apt handyman by building a shelter, a signal fire (to demand more rum from passing pilots), and training an ape as a butler.
It was also revealed during a period newsreel from "Frankie and Ellie Get Lost" that he was completely sane and had never had a drop to drink in his life until Ted Kennedy spiked the punch at his wedding.
She seeks to have all poor people shot into space, and when she wrote a children's book about Jay called The Fat Little Pig, she promised to put all the profits toward that goal.
He somewhat resembles Ted Turner and has a virtually superhuman constitution (he's able to lift Jay with relative ease and walk through concrete walls).
When asked about religion, Duke commented that he, along with the rest of America's cultural elite, worships Pan, the goat god.
He is a combination spoof of Australians Paul Hogan in terms of the exaggerated accent, and Mel Gibson with his luck with the ladies as well as his action film roles.
His hidden shames: he's 43, uses elevator shoes to give the illusion of height, had allegedly fired a caterer for bringing the wrong kind of biscuit and has had extensive plastic surgery.
In the episode "Every Doris Has Her Day", there was a possibility that she was Jay's biological mother (there are many similarities between his circumstances and her own son whom she gave up for adoption), but was proven not to be from a DNA test.
Doris lives in a very spacious and luxurious apartment, affordable to her since it has been "rent controlled since 1946", and also for the fact that Duke pays her $300,000 per annum, believing that this was what average people earned.
She was once a Commercial actress for Phleghm Fatale Cigarettes, but her career in acting ended after she "got knocked up by the Fruit of the Loom banana."
As a consequence, Alice moves to New York from Knoxville, Tennessee, to show her 5-year-old daughter Penny that a woman can make it without a man.
Alice was originally an artist and is capable of perfectly replicating art masterworks on the walls of her apartment (such as Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam and Georges-Pierre Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte).
When he and Alice are unable to get her admitted into any of the top preschools in New York, Duke Phillips founds one exclusively for her, staffed by Jimmy Breslin, Sean Young, and Prince Charles.
Vlada, who is a 40-year-old Eastern-European immigrant, runs a restaurant called L'ane Riche (French for "The Wealthy Jackass"), which Jay and Jeremy both frequent.
Vlada frequently makes insulting remarks about Jay to the restaurant staff or quietly directs them to give him a bad table and poor-quality food.
Humphrey's unseen pals are parodies themselves of real-life personalities, including Rabbit De Niro, Burt Baccaracoon, and Robin the Bloodsucking Leech.
Voiced by Maurice LaMarche Appearing in several episodes, Jay blames him for many of Hollywood's problems (such as unnecessary sequels and Cher winning an Oscar, although he's only the reason Marisa Tomei won).
"[1][2] Other famous media personalities voicing themselves included Geraldo Rivera, Adam West, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jimmy Breslin, Bob Costas, Rod Steiger, Steve Allen, Ricki Lake, Queen Latifah, June Lockhart, and Milton Berle.