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"I am a man..." This article contains mature topics. |
| Jay |
- "Championship Manager? Completed it, mate."
- ―Jay in "Will's Dilemma"
Jay Cartwright is a fictional character in the E4 British coming-of-age teen comedy series, The Inbetweeners. He is the tritagonist of the series, appearing in every episode and film. He is known for his crude and vulgar behaviour he displays, often making many false claims, usually about his sex life. Part of the reason he acts the way he does could be due to the mistreatment his father gives him and potential trauma from his former neighbour.
Throughout the series, Jay is educated at Rudge Park Comprehensive, attending his A-levels there, alongside his friend group, dubbed, "The Inbetweeners". They finish their education there at the beginning of the first feature film, The Inbetweeners Movie.
Jay is portrayed by actor James Buckley and his role as Jay is what mainly made his career as an actor more infamous, due to the show being generally successful across the United Kingdom. As well as this, his portrayal as Jay led him to win several awards.[1]
Background[]
Characterisation[]
Official Description[]
- "Jay's one of those friends, right, where you...I think lots of people look back on their, y'know, earlier years and you might...Y'know maybe if you're seventeen now, you might be thinking this. You have a friend where you'll go...You will have friends when you look back and you go..."Why was I friends with him!? He was horrible!""
- ―Iain Morris
Personality[]
© John Wright Photography
Jay is the most immature and arrogant of his friendship group. He is also the most vulgar and harbours a generally misogynistic outlook. He is obsessed with sexual orientation, with almost all his comments and jokes being about the subject. He will often experiment with sexual techniques such as "The Sleeping Beauty". As shown in "Night Out in London", he is seen to have a lot of condoms lying around in a bedroom drawer. Jay constantly says he has had some sexual encounter as an attempt to raise his popularity and social life on the spot and will not admit that he is lying, despite it being obviously false. He can bring his lies to the verge of tears, like when he said the reason his former girlfriend, Chloe ended their relationship because he was "too big for her". The only person who will ever believe his claims are Neil, but even he sometimes on occasion finds it hard to believe him. He also claims to be the most sexually-experienced out of the group, but in reality, it is the opposite. With him trying to act cool, he will usually give advice, usually being sexual, but is never good at it and it will often result in disaster, also making things up on the way, saying false information, like when he said to Simon that Becky wanted to have sex with him and he believed thus, resulting with him getting in trouble with her parents. Jay frequently relies on pornography to attain gratification, as he finds it difficult to engage with girls. In The Inbetweeners 2, it was revealed that when living in a tent in his uncle's front garden, he would insert his penis into the ground. In addition to his sexual stories, Jay compulsively lies about just about anything to make himself seem interesting, no matter how unbelievable it is. Girls are often repulsed by his vulgar behaviour.
Jay can be extremely rude to people to make him feel better about himself and his confidence. He can constantly be seen mocking his friends at every given opportunity. He usually relies on several negative factors about his friends to use against them. These include disrespecting Will McKenzie, as he is considered to be fairly posh and formal and that he is also disliked by the majority of students, Simon Cooper because of his hairstyle and his passionate love for student Carli D'Amato and Neil Sutherland for his family's income, intelligence, and his father who is believed to be a homosexual by many.
Jay has extreme anger issues and is very short-tempered. When he becomes angry, he can be doing some odd and questionable things, like jumping on his new friend's car because his other friends were ridiculing him for being friends with him. Jay will often result in things like this because he does not care about consequences in the moment. He will later regret doing something after it has just happened. A good example for this is when he runs over a squirrel deliberately in the episode "Home Alone", thinking he was "mugging him off" and continued ridiculing him and then said the statement "His eyes look sad." after a few seconds of silence. Jay also usually disobeys rules, like how he was seen on his phone while exam papers were being handed-out in the episode "End of Term" to message his then girlfriend. Another example is when he took towels off of sunbeds to make room for him and his friends to move there in The Inbetweeners Movie.
Due to his abrasive and cocky nature, Jay is extremely unpopular with women. However, he has been known to be popular among the men in more ways than one, such as befriending a guy at a house party, who Jay claims he met at football trials, to the others' amusement. He often ends up saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, which damages both his and his friends' reputations. He also is the least reliable of the group as his mix of social naivety and lustful sexual desire causes him trouble in all manner of situations. Jay's insecurities and excessive lying most likely derive from the emotional abuse he suffers from his father, who frequently belittles him over his bad luck with girls and lack of intelligence. His father will also try embarrassing him in front of his friends and once in front of his former girlfriend.[2]
Jay and Neil humping books.
Jay can be seen as unintelligent and immature. When around friends, he can be seen doing unordinary things, such as sexually humping books, making moaning voices in a high-pitched voice, ridiculing Neil's plan on how to appear smarter by reading books. In a narration line by Will, it was said that Jay took pride in the fact that he could not count up to a hundred, although this may be false and just an exaggeration to get the point across that he lacked the same intelligence level of most people.
Jay can often be somewhat offensive and discriminatory at moments. He has a dislike towards overweight people, that is until near the ending of the first film after changing his whole attitude after experiencing love from Jane, homosexuals, poor people (referring to them as "pikey"), the elderly and posh people. He makes his dislike towards people of these categories clear. Jay seems to believe in stereotypes In Night Out in London, he made a stereotypical Italian impression to Will after he mentioned his abnormally long shoes were from Italy.
From End of Term and the two films, we can see that Jay can be a genuinely nice person and he will show it when he is in a form of real romance. In "The Xmas Prom", Jay opens up to John saying how the reason he lies and exaggerates is because he thinks no one notices him and that he is afraid of that, also saying that he thinks "making a few things up at least makes them notice". After this, he felt more free and continued the act until getting distracted by a girl, then reverting to his natural self and told John to "fuck off", while calling him a "fat wanker". In "The Camping Trip, it is briefly touched upon how Jay was sexually abused as a child by his neighbour, when he used to play a game, that Neil described as "weird". In the same episode, his father reveals in a text to him about the time when he was going to be seen by a psychologist when he was younger.
Sexuality[]
It is clear to see when viewing the character of Jay that he is very attracted to woman, almost worryingly so. However, in The Rudge Park Comprehensive Yearbook, a book created by the writers of The Inbetweeners, in Jay's "A to Z of Sex" section, when trying to find a sexual term beginning with "B", the word "bi-curious" was crossed out. This may mean that Jay is bi-curious.
Appearance[]
© John Wright Photography
Jay is of average build and height, with straight, medium-length hair with blonde highlights, usually having bits of hair at the side sticking out. It could indicate this hairstyle adds to his desire to be noticed. His hair in Series 1, as well as the two films appeared more blonde was because of James Buckley having his hair dyed blonde.[3] He has a distinctive nose and a circular-shaped head, which is also commented on by Greg Davies,[4] another actor of the show. He regularly wears football shirts, jackets, jeans and trainers outside of school. When in school though, Jay will often settle for wearing just school shirts, usually with his sleeves rolled-up in Series 1-Series 2 (changing it onwards from then because of his actor's tattoos being visible on his arm)[5] with his tie hung low (which may foreshadow mentions and later appearances of his small penis). Despite this, he has been seen on some occasions wearing the school jumper as well. It is likely that Rudge Park's rules are to have shirts tucked into trousers, as most other schools have that rule. If this is indeed a rule, Jay disobeys it.
Jay can sometimes be seen to walk in a way that makes himself look "cool". This is likely shown to make Jay's insecurities visible and to make the audience grasp the idea that he is in fact not cool, but make them aware he thinks of himself of it.
Voice and Dialect[]
Jay speaks in an Essex accent and will often talk quite fast. He often uses a lot of UK slang, with most being obscure and rarely used. He will sometimes use slang recurringly, most of the time being to describe female genitalia, such as "clunge" and "snatch".
Origin[]
Buckley playing Neil.
In the unaired Inbetweeners pilot episode, "Baggy Trousers", Buckley was originally cast as Neil instead of Jay. There are only little amounts of footage of the pilot on the internet currently and is considered "lost media" by many people, but Buckley has mentioned how he was cast as Neil in it multiple times.
Initially, Jay's character was called Lee and was instead played by Darcy Thomas, who went on to play an unnamed character in The Xmas Prom.
Prominence[]
Series 1[]
The First Day[]
Jay is now on his first term of sixth form and is first seen entering the toilets with his friends Simon Cooper and Neil Sutherland, making false claims about his sex life. He stops this when seeing Mark Donovan enter.
Jay is seen in the common room with Simon and Neil, discussing the pub tradition the school is celebrating that evening for the first day of term. While this happens, Carli D'Amato, Simon's love interest, approaches him, asking if he is going to the same celebration they are talking about. Before she leaves, she notices his deodorant, then going to smell it again, which gives Simon a view of her cleavage. After she leaves, Jay notices Simon's sitting position he changed to hide his erection, changing it forcefully to reveal it. He then announces it to everyone in the hall, embarrassing him.
Jay is walking out of the gate with Simon and Neil, with Will McKenzie, a person Simon was told to look after by the head of sixth form, Mr. Gilbert, then following him. He introduces Will to them, although they just insult him instead of try and befriend him.
In a montage seen where all four of the boys are getting changed and convincing their parents to give them money, saying that they would "pay them back" without actually meaning it, Jay is in his bedroom, looking at his fake ID he will use to convince the barman he is an adult in order to get alcohol. When his mother brings him his dinner, he asks for £20.
Jay arrives at the pub with Simon and Neil when Will follows them up. They then briefly discuss their plan for what they do when they enter the pub.
Just after, Jay and the rest of the boys enter the pub, seeing a dull setting of a short amount of people in the pub and no one looking the same age as them. Despite this, they just assume that they arrived early. Jay asks for their orders and then tries to get them with his ID. The barman confronts him on the fact that the ID was an Australian driver's license. After this, Jay changes his accent to an impression of an Australian accent. When the barman realises the other three drinks he asked for were for his friends, he would not allow him to also order them without them having IDs with them as well.
Bunk Off[]
Thorpe Park[]
Will Gets a Girlfriend[]
Caravan Club[]
The Xmas Prom[]
Series 2[]
Field Trip[]
Work Experience[]
Will's Birthday[]
Night Out in London[]
Duke of Edinburgh[]
End of Term[]
Series 3[]
The Fashion Show[]
The Gig and the Girlfriend[]
Will's Dilemma[]
The Trip to Warwick[]
Home Alone[]
The Camping Trip[]
The Inbetweeners Movie[]
The Inbetweeners 2[]
Relationships[]
Friendships[]
Neil[]
Jay and Neil.
Jay is usually seen with Neil the most out of his friends and is probably considered his best friend, as they are the closest. They can be seen doing things together, like when they decided to go on the hunt for a "sexy housewife" on a geography field trip to Swanage in the episode "The Field Trip". In a deleted scene for The Inbetweeners Movie, they even went as far to getting matching tattoos, until Jay decided not to in the end because the tattoo artist made it look like it said "Gay" instead of "Jay". Despite their strong friendship, Jay will still insult him regularly, but this is likely just because of Jay's many personality traits and short temper.
The two both share the same liking for pornography, although Jay is more interested in it.
One of the reasons Jay might spend time with Neil frequently could be the fact that Neil believes Jay's claims and this could potentially boost his confidence and feel better about himself. If this was a factor of their friendship, it would only be a minor one, as it is clear to see they do genuinely enjoy each other's company.
The most common things Jay will insult Neil on are: his family's low amounts of income, his father's alleged homosexuality, his lack of intelligence and various other aspects.
Simon[]
Jay and Simon.
Jay and Simon have "been mates since primary school" and the two have a very strong friendship. Simon can be considered as Jay's second best friend. In the episode "Bunk Off", we see them both hugging each other for a short period, then becoming distracted by Will with several bags when his objective was to just get alcohol from an off-license.
Although they are close friends, they regularly fall out and argue. Jay's selfishness and rudeness affects Simon the most out of the group, as Jay's behaviour often causes most of Simon's problems. Whilst most of the problems Jay causes for Simon are inadvertent, such as breaking his car door on a lamppost, whilst in a rush to follow girls, Jay occasionally deliberately gives Simon trouble, like when he pretended that Simon stank out the toilet at a party to diminish Simon's chances of impressing Carli because "funny". Jay and Simon clash constantly, with Jay's bragging and Simon's sexual frustration being a focal point in their friendship. Whilst on holiday in The Inbetweeners Movie, Jay and Simon have a major argument which leads to them physically fighting and creates a split in the group, though they reconcile later on. Jay sometimes shows his softer side around Simon and also revealed that he hoped that he and him could start their own business together.
As mentioned earlier, the common flaws of Simon's that Jay will often negatively comment on are: his hairstyle, with Jay comparing it to the Statue of Liberty's crown, his general ugliness Jay believes he has and his passionate love for Carli.
Will[]
Jay and Will.
Jay and Will have a complicated friendship. Initially when Will joined the group uninvitedly, Jay had always disliked him for several reasons, such as: finding him generally annoying, disliking his unpopularity as a student and disliking his nerdy traits. A reason Jay may find him more annoying than anyone else in the group did is because of him always trying to prove his claims wrong, with the other mostly just ignoring it instead. From the beginning of the series, Jay was constantly rude to him, but as it progressed, he was seen to be generally nicer to him, but not by an extent, still constantly mocking him. In The Inbetweeners 2, when introducing his friends to his uncle, he only acknowledged Neil and Simon. In the desert scene, Will & Jay's friendship has improved & are now full friends.
Despite this hatred towards him, caring moments have shown Jay's ability to like Will. An example of this is in The Inbetweeners Movie when Jay prevents Will from falling asleep in an ants' nest, like he previously had mistaken earlier, also calling him "mate" in the process.
Romances[]
Samantha[]
Jay and Samantha at the decks of Rudge Park's Christmas prom
As mentioned earlier, Jay and Samantha may have possibly begun a relationship together in The Xmas Prom, although it is unclear. The two met each other and Jay later stated that she had "given him a hand job outside the trousers". This claim, was likely true, despite others from him actively being false. After this, no mention of the two are visually mentioned in the series.
Samantha shares very similar traits to Jay, acting the same and even visually looking the same, sharing the same hairstyle and colour. This was likely intentional, to highlight the fact they were both similar. However, because of her giving Jay the treatment he does regularly to other people, he could not be his actual self, like how he is able to with other romantic relationships he has. This factor is only likely because Samantha may experience possible issues that Jay also does, to lead her to act this way.
Chloe[]
A picture of Jay and Chloe together on Jay's phone.
During the period of time when he was with Chloe, Jay had changed slightly when interacting with the boys. He would be in a better mood, not being as rude as he usually would. He would also get defensive over her, getting frustrated when Neil would make sexual remarks against her.
Jay claimed to his friends that he had met Chloe at a bus stop and they "just got chatting", which is what started their relationship. During the course of the relationship, Jay would act sexual at times towards her, with her not feeling the same desire, which would make her feel uncomfortable at times. As well as this, Jay would also fear that Chloe had been seeing another Rudge Park student, David Glover, due to something Neil said. Unaware of what to do to resolve this, Jay asked his father for his advice. His advice to him was to message her regularly to know where she is at all of the time to make sure she was not with David. However, this backfired when she then felt that he was being "needy" for her. Because of this, she then decided to end their relationship while at a pub, The Fox and Hounds.
After they were no longer romantic partners, Chloe did say she hoped the two could be friends, but no further mentions from Chloe are stated in the future of the series.
Jane[]
Jay and Jane.
As said previously, in The Inbetweeners Movie, Jay met Jane when attending the bar, Marco's on holiday in Malia. While there, he was temporarily living in the mindset of achieving to seduce a "little hotty outside" he was "flirting with", when she was just acting so because it was her job to convince people to go into the bar. At first with Jane's company, Jay disliked her, mainly because she was overweight and that he found the lady outside more attractive. Later as the film progressed, it seems that Jay had liked her, but was keeping it to himself because of him not wanting to be seen liking her.
Near the end of the film, Jay had learned to fully appreciate her and did not mind being seen with her and even received a blowjob from her in the toilets at an all-day boat party.
After the first film, it was mentioned off-screen that Jane had ended her relationship with Jay because he had bought her a Wii-Fit in response to her saying how she was unsatisfied with her weight. After this, Jay had been on the hunt for Jane, trying to find her and propose to her. After his proposal when being found stranded in a desert by her, Jane declined his offer, but was still kind to her, presumably becoming friends.
When Jay was with Jane, he was genuinely a nice person, being a tuned-down version of his former self, acting not as rude, but still having the same distinctive traits.
Family[]
Terry Cartwright[]
Jay with Terry
Terry is Jay's mentally-abusive father. He is usually seen either embarrassing, or insulting Jay in front of his friends. Jay and his father have a complicated relationship, due to Terry's constant insults, contradicts and undermines his son; especially in front of his friends. Terry proclaims any of Jay's attempts to stand up for himself, as womanly fits and ignores them. Terry either does not know, or does not care how damaging he is for his son and seems merciless when it comes to insulting Jay. Terry's behaviour is perhaps the reason why Jay acts the way he does. Jay, although despite his father's complicated behaviour, seems to be desperate to earn some form of approval from his father.
Benji[]
In Will Is Home Alone, Jay was extremely frustrated by Benji because he kept watching him before he was about to masturbate. At the end of the episode, he was informed that Benji was going to be put down. This made Jay cry, which proves that he does indeed have deep feelings for Benji. In Camping Trip, after being persuaded to play Monopoly, Jay insisted to play as the dog because it reminds him of Benji.
Uncle Bryan[]
Bryan is Jay's first cousin once removed who lives in Australia. He appears in The Inbetweeners 2, where Jay spends a year living with him. Bryan's personality is similar to Jay's dad's, and is revealed when he mocks Jay's tiny penis and reveals to Neil that all the things that Jay has texted to him was a complete lie. However, Bryan has been shown to stick up for Jay when he told Terry he presumed that he taught Jay how to fight like a girl which causes Terry and Bryan to brawl it out.
External Links[]
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 Characters
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References[]
- ↑ https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0118617/awards/
- ↑ In a deleted scene of End of Term, Jay's father was seen ridiculing him in the presence of his girlfriend.
- ↑ Blake Harrison (the actor for Neil) confirmed that Buckley had had his hair dyed blonde in a meet the cast DVD special feature.
- ↑ Davies said this on a DVD commentary.
- ↑ This fact was revealed on a DVD commentary for The Inbetweeners.