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Steve Taylor
Steve
Ex Partner Jane Christie
Current Partner Susan Walker
Occupation Writer, Father
Seasons Season 1 to Season 4
Portrayed by Jack Davenport

Steve Taylor is one of the main characters of the show "Coupling".

According to the BBC's website, Steve "tries to be the voice of reason while talking to his mates over a pint, but more often than not he stumbles into more complex and ridiculous situations than any of them."

Season 1[]

At the start of the show Steve is dating Jane Christie and desperate to get out of that relationship. However, Jane refuses to let go, trapping Steve in the relationship. Due to Steve's inability to get rid of Jane Jeff declares her an unflushable. Steve attempts to dump Jane but Jane manipulates him into having sex with her in the women's bathroom at the bar. While popping out of the stall to buy a condom Steve encounters Susan Walker, who is a work colleague of Steve's best mate Jeff Murdock and recognises Steve from an office party he attended. She flirts with Steve and he asks her out on a date, then returns to complete the deed with Jane in the stall.

Steve wishing to dump Jane so he can attend his date as a single man calls Jane and gets her answering machine. Unfortunately in the process of leaving her a message the tape cuts out and Steve never gets to tell Jane he's dumping her, instead the message just says how great he thinks Jane is.

Steve goes to his first date with Susan with Jeff in tow as Jeff is paranoid that Susan and Steve will talk about him and his one embarrassing date with Susan some time in the past. At the restaurant they are joined by Sally Harper and Patrick Maitland, Susan's best friend and her ex-boyfriend, who are also at the restaurant on a date. Jane soon joins the group having tracked Steve down and promptly dumps him since he is going on a date with another woman.

Susan tries to get everyone else to leave and jokingly offers to show them a breast in exchange, an offer that Jeff takes seriously. The rest of the group back Jeff, including Steve who doesn't want to be a "breast behind" everyone else. ("Flushed")

Relationships[]

Jeff Murdock[]

Jeff is Steve's best friend and the two have known each other for several years.

Susan Walker[]

Steve and Susan start a relationship in the first episode of the series. They had met each other at least once before at an office party at the company that Susan and Jeff work at.

Jane Christie[]

Steve and Jane dated for four years prior to the start of the series. Steve had tried numerous times to break up with Jane with no success.

Patrick Maitland[]

Steve first meets Patrick at the start of season 1 and despite Patrick being the ex-boyfriend of Susan they become friends.

Sally Harper[]

Steve meets Sally one his first date with Susan when Sally and Patrick go on a date to the same restaurant Susan and Steve are at.

Oliver Morris[]

Steve meets Oliver at the bar while Oliver and Jane are on a blind date. Initially Steve believes that Oliver is Jane's gynecologist.

Life after Season 4[]

Writer & Creator Steven Moffat gave a closure to the lives of the characters:

Steve and Susan have two children now, and have recently completed work on a sitcom about their early lives together. They're developing a new television project, but it keeps getting delayed as he insists on writing episodes of some old kids show they recently pulled out of mothballs. She gets very cross about this, and if he says "Yeah but check out the season poll!" one more time, he will not live to write another word.

Trivia[]

  • In a DVD commentary, Moffat mentions that Steve is, like him, a writer.
  • Most of Steve's aggressive rants were done on a long take.
  • In season 4, during a usual bit of wackiness, Steve comments that this kind of thing doesn't happen as "this is not an American sitcom". In fact, there was an extremely short-lived American version of the series (Coupling) that was abhored by viewers and critics alike, resulting in the show's cancellation after only four episodes.

Quotes[]

  • I want to spend the rest of my life with the woman at the end of that table there, but that does not stop me wanting to see several thousand more naked bottoms before I die, because that's what being a bloke is.  When man invented fire, he didn't say, "Hey, let's cook."  He said, "Great, now we can see naked bottoms in the dark."  As soon as Caxton invented the printing press, we were using it to make pictures of, hey, naked bottoms!  We have turned the Internet into an enormous international database of naked bottoms.  So you see, the story of male achievement through the ages, feeble though it may have been, has been the story of our struggle to get a better look at your bottoms.
  • It is the four pillars of the male heterosexual psyche.  We like:  naked women, stockings, lesbians, and Sean Connery best as James Bond, because that is what being a boy is.
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