Screenwriting gurus often say that the great thing about William Goldman’s script for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is that he has two central characters who work together to represent both sides of one protagonist. The same could easily be said of Peep Show.
Not to overthink a sitcom, but Mark Corrigan and Jeremy Usborne represent the darkest impulses of each side of the human mind. Their conflict is always logic versus reason. Whereas Mark is intelligent and neurotic and thinks before he acts, Jez is care-free and moronic and acts before he thinks. So, here are Jez’s 10 Most Hilarious Quotes.
10. “You realize that tinned food is just for crackheads and wars?”
Jez is misinformed about a lot of things. In some cases, it’s easy to see where his misguided opinions came from. When he expressed his belief that tinned food is just for crackheads and wars, we can sort of see where he’s coming from.
Since tinned food is long-lasting, if you were a drug addict who spent days on end in the house on benders, then it might be nice to have some tins in the kitchen cupboards. Similarly, soldiers in the midst of a war need long-lasting food that will survive the trip out to the warzone. Still, that’s not all tinned foods are for.
9. “Are you happy now, Bush?”
When Jez was trying to woo Elena, he told her that he wrote poetry. She handed him his notebook and asked him to read her one of his poems, and he read one called “F*** You, Bush.”
It goes like this: “F*** you, Bush! / It’s time to get out of Iraq, Bush! / What were you even doing there in the first place, Bush!? / You didn’t even get properly elected, Bush! / Are you happy now, Bush? / F*** you, Bush!” Elena liked how the first line of the poem was the same as the last line, which Jeremy said he did on purpose.
8. “Mummy! Coffee! F***y-hurry-uppy!”
As we learn more about Mark and Jez’s parents, we get a more rounded idea of why they are the way that they are. When we meet Jez’s mother and see how horrible he is to her, we get an idea of why Jez is so lazy and entitled.
After his dad left, Jez was all his mum had, so she spoiled him to keep him around. And that’s why, even as a grown man, when Jez is waiting for his mum to make him a cup of coffee in his own kitchen, he’ll barge in and condescendingly say, “Mummy! Coffee! F***y-hurry-uppy!”
7. “What should I do after I’ve p*d myself? F myself? Eat myself?”
Most Peep Show fans consider the season 4 finale “The Wedding” to be the best episode of the whole series. Mark has to finally decide if he’s going to marry Sophie or not after a whole season of contemplation, and he leaves it until the very last second to make that decision.
As the guests begin to enter the church, Mark takes Jez upstairs to hide from them while he continues to mull over whether or not to go through with the wedding. Meanwhile, Jez has been dying to go to the bathroom, but Mark won’t let him. In the end, he has to just do it in his pants (at Mark’s request).
6. “I don’t want to tempt fate, but I think everything is going to be totally great forever.”
This is what Jez says as soon as he realizes he’s fallen in love with Elena. Of course, as the rest of the season 6 arc would show, everything would not be totally great forever.
Elena would never tell Jez that she loved him back, she would turn out to be in a long-term relationship with someone else, she would get engaged to that person, and she would decide to move to Quebec following the wedding without even telling Jez – all the while continuing their adulterous relationship. However, haven’t we all felt like this after falling in love with someone?
5. “Mr. Bendix? Is that a joke? Maybe it’s a test. If you tell him his name makes you think of bendy d***s, he knows you need the electric?”
Jez gets a little freaked out when Mark pays to send him to therapy in the season 8 premiere episode. He ends up abandoning the first session and spending the day at an all-you-can-eat Indian restaurant, where Mark spots him. When he finally does go to see the therapist, he finds that he loves therapy and thinks that everyone should go to therapy.
At first, he feared that the therapist would have him sectioned at the first sign of psychological instability, like if he revealed that hearing the name Mr. Bendix immediately gives him a mental image of “bendy d***s.”
4. “I’m a very strong feminist, so I believe women should have whatever mad thing they want.”
The storyline involving whether Mark or Jez is the father of Sophie’s baby comes to a head in the season 6 episode “The Test.” Both Mark and Jez have a date over at the flat when Sophie has the paternity test to see who the father is.
Jez tells Elena that the baby is his, just so he can have something to tell her about his life to prove that he’s a proper person. This leads to a mix-up when he tells Mark that the baby isn’t his when it actually is. Jez tells Elena he fathered a child because his female friend wanted a baby and he’s “a very strong feminist.”
3. “Stealing things just makes everything very cheap. Plus, you know how I feel about capitalism.”
If there’s one piece of hard, black-and-white evidence that Super Hans is a bad influence on Jez, it’s in the season 2 episode “University Challenge.” In the opening scene, Jez sees Hans steal a candy bar from a supermarket and then assert that “they should paying me to eat this s***.”
Later, Jez is in a convenience store with Mark and tries to steal a candy bar, repeating Hans’ rationalization. The only difference is that Jez isn’t as smooth or adept at committing crimes as Hans, so he gets caught red-handed by the proprietor of the store before he can leave.
2. “It’d have to be a f***ing good poster to get that dog back.”
In the season 4 episode “Holiday,” Jez takes Mark out on a narrowboat on the canal for the stag party of his dreams. However, as soon as they meet a couple of women, it quickly becomes the stag party of Jez’s dreams. They spend the first night drinking with them and eat lunch with them on the second day.
Then, Jez takes the girls’ dad’s car out to fill the tank with the wrong type of gas and ends up running over their dog. He hides the corpse in his bag and then helps his new beau make “lost dog” posters, all the while knowing that the dog is dead.
1. “Love is all you need? No, actually, Beatles, you also need a person to do it with, Beatles!”
Jez doesn’t fully understand what it’s like to be in love until he meets Elena and convinces himself that he’s head over heels in love with her after just a couple of dates. She turns out to already be in a relationship with someone else and takes advantage of the fact that Jez will do anything for her.
When Elena’s girlfriend proposes to her at Mark and Jez’s party and she says yes, a defeated Jez goes to his bedroom and gets a little bitter towards the Beatles for their not entirely accurate assertion that all you need is love.
