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# Comedy Doctor — Chapter 14: Catalogs

id: comedy_doctor | owner: claude | tier: risk | trigger: flag:comic-register (reading-guide-mandated)
Stance: skeptical professional editor. Calibration: target reader wants adult romantic pressure with wit inside ordinary work (Emily Henry at ~60% banter density, Morisaki/Coffee quiet); chapter card commits Ch14 to dread inside competence — comedy must release awkwardness without blunting the catalog danger.

**INVENTORY:**

1 — "moved the clipboard to the far end of the table so that the next mistake would at least require a walk" + November 17 written three times under THURSDAY PICKUP (l.3) — mechanism: deflation via self-administered logistics penalty, riding on the kiss-date slip — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no (Nov 17 is the kiss date; the slip IS the kiss intruding) — dramatic work: opens the chapter's engine — the kiss enters through failed practical action, per packet — workshopped: no

2 — "eighty-nine cents of it, faint as a watermark" (l.5) — mechanism: specificity callback (Ch13 chicken-thigh ghost, priced) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: memory-fidelity continuity; Theo inventories value even in tenderness — workshopped: no

3 — nine-option card torn at eleven; options texted "at 11:04, as promised"; thumbs-up "at 11:05. He stopped interpreting it after midnight." (l.9) — mechanism: escalation of over-preparation + timestamp deadpan — source: character (Theo's over-competent flailing) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the card survives as a torn artifact with scribbled-out 8 and 9; it returns at l.47–57) — dramatic work: post-kiss signal anxiety rendered as logistics — workshopped: no (but see REVISION ORDER 1 for its echo at item 13)

4 — Ben: "Forty means cardstock. What weight? I am not saying 'normal' to the Queens printer on my lunch break." / Theo types "80lb matte" (l.11, 15) — mechanism: character-logic specificity; deadpan competence as the answering punchline — source: character (Ben planning-anxiety in a NEW shape — vendor-vocabulary shame, not transit/contingency; tics ledger required new stakes and this clears it) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Theo absorbs logistics so he doesn't have to look at the photo; care move under dread — workshopped: no

5 — Mara: "Don't crop them apart this time, P." / Priya: "Cropping nothing. This sells the class." (l.11) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation (Ch13 crop-into-separate-boxes) — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the kiss becomes marketing; public-proof pressure escalates without a montage — workshopped: no

6 — "He made himself look at it standing up, as if it were a delivery manifest." (l.13) — mechanism: register collision (freight posture toward the kiss photo) — source: character (shipping is literally Theo's job; not a Ch13 clerical/legal narration figure) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: logistics-as-shelter adopted and immediately failing — "they looked like a couple" gets through anyway — workshopped: no

7 — "that was the problem with it as evidence: it was good." (l.13) — mechanism: reversal — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names the cover-photo paradox; "evidence" is literal plot use (the photo is the cover), not legal figuration — workshopped: no

8 — "I'm keeping it." / "It's umber." / "It's a decent brown. Raw umber holds its value." She took the jar anyway... "For some other emergency." (l.27–31) — mechanism: deflection-deadpan in craft nouns — source: character (June's exact lexicon: decent, value; compresses when exposed) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: she keeps the kiss mark while accepting his care object; the whole post-kiss negotiation conducted through a solvent jar — workshopped: no

9 — "the alternative conversation had no agenda, no end time, and no chairs." (l.33) — mechanism: register collision (the what-are-we talk as a meeting Theo can't run) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names the avoidance AND plants the chairs motif paid twice later (item 23) — workshopped: no (third term is a literal scene object, paid off, not abstract punchline garnish)

10 — "Still the best thing in the room. Don't tell your panel I said the tape's carrying it." / "The tape knows." (l.43–45) — mechanism: teasing precise praise + two-word deadpan — source: character/relationship (her care move is exact praise; his reply admits he's been replaying it — l.7 "the tape had become something he noticed too quickly" is the setup) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (requires DECORATOR'S WHITE. FLAT. and Tuesday's praise) — dramatic work: confirms the praise landed; intimacy routed through a work object, which is this book's thesis — workshopped: no

11 — "Nine." / "...No. I cut it down." / "Show me the dead seven sometime." (l.53–57) — mechanism: repetition-as-deadpan + June compression; Theo's mid-sentence self-arrest is his restraint tell done as action — source: character (both) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: she clocks the over-preparation and converts it to a future ask; forward motion, not banter — workshopped: no

12 — "Twelve-by-sixteen reads like a room you actually left at nine forty... Nobody gets to sprawl." (l.59) — mechanism: specificity callback + deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (nine forty is the chapter's own clock) — dramatic work: Theo arrives with an opinion instead of a menu — named arc beat — and seeds joint-piece discipline — workshopped: no

13 — "She was staying past the minimum; he noted it and declined to interpret." (l.65) — mechanism: repetition of item 3's interpretation-refusal — source: narrator-overlay (a wit caption on the noticing, not the noticing) — funniness: 1 — portable: no — dramatic work: NONE beyond what item 3 already carried — workshopped: no — **BLOCKING** (also an "equivalent" under the packet's banned refusal-to-conclude family and Theo-restraint-by-negation cluster)

14 — "So now the label's going to be a refusal with my name under it" (l.69) — mechanism: self-aimed reframe — source: character (June jokes at herself, then states the want plainly — plain-speech floor honored in the same speech) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps the Ch13 title-refusal thread live and motivates the catalog request — workshopped: no

15 — Odile, entering: "Labels are not apologies." (l.71) — mechanism: diagnosis-as-entrance — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: packet-licensed line; corrects June's framing and pivots the scene to the catalogs — workshopped: no

16 — Odile: "What do I write, you are about to ask. Fewer words than you are planning." + narration cap "and that was the entire visit." (l.77–83) — mechanism: preemption + deadpan understatement — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: plant #5 — she answers the unasked question, points at the shelf, explains nothing; reads innocent forward, conducted backward. Odile aphorism count for the chapter: 2 (items 15, 16) — within the packet's one-or-two cap — workshopped: no

17 — "how it would look if June were watching: a man who knew another woman's storage by feel" (l.85) — mechanism: register collision (infidelity framing laid over the family secret) — source: character/situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter's dread made comic for exactly one beat — the secret is betrayal-shaped before June ever learns it — workshopped: no

18 — "She loans nothing. There's a sign about it in her head." (l.99) — mechanism: concretized policy hyperbole — source: character (Theo's archive knowledge; rhymes with the book's hand-amended-signage motif) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: flags the anomaly — Odile breaking her own rule IS the trap — while Theo supplies the wrong explanation two lines later — workshopped: no

19 — "*Untitled (Stove)* is a title wearing a fake mustache." / "The checklist in back still files it under Stove." (l.107–113) — mechanism: escalation duet — June's image, Theo's institutional capper — source: character (both; June's visual-analogy license, Theo's back-matter fluency) — funniness: 2 — portable: no as a unit (the mustache line alone is the chapter's most quotation-shaped sentence, but it is generated mid-task, answered with a fact rather than applause, and it carries the chapter's bomb: the back matter keeps the truth on file no matter what the front label claims — which is precisely how Theo will be exposed) — dramatic work: as stated — workshopped: no

20 — "This the famous one?" / "*Winter Kitchen.* It was on a postcard for a while." (l.119–121) — mechanism: understatement — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: sanctioned invocation 2/5, no nostalgia flood; Theo minimizes at the exact point of maximum family exposure — workshopped: no

21 — "She gave the cover the two seconds she gave anything she respected" (l.123) — mechanism: duration-measured wit caption — source: narrator-overlay — funniness: 1 — portable: no — dramatic work: NONE that "He was grateful to her for it" doesn't already do — workshopped: yes (composed caption; third instance of the measured-duration scaffold hard-capped at two in Ch05) — **BLOCKING**

22 — "You're bagging them like produce." / "I'm bagging them like nine pounds of someone's career." (l.139–141) — mechanism: simile correction / reframe — source: character (June's dry setup, Theo's reverent correction) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the heaviest line in the chapter wearing a joke — he names the stack's true weight without knowing it includes his own name; comedy sharpening the danger, not softening it — workshopped: no (asymmetric two-beat inside a literal handoff)

23 — chairs run: "the chairs got stacked in fours, in case the chairs mattered" (l.63) → "Six p.m. chairs or nine forty chairs?" / "Both. I'll count both before Tuesday." (l.149–151) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation; private code — source: character/relationship — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: converts the unsolved joint piece into a shared language and a promised Tuesday; the couple's what-are-we encrypted as furniture inventory — workshopped: no

**DISTRIBUTION CHECKS:**

- **Density:** 23 items across ~2,900 words; in register for a lightly comic book. The comedy deliberately thins where the dread peaks — the stockroom rationalization (l.85–91), the handoff itself ("There's a bag." carries no joke, l.131–143), and the closing inventory failure (l.155–157) are played straight. That is correct calibration for a dread-inside-competence chapter, not a DRY gap.
- **Mechanism variety:** deadpan leads (~7) but is the book's committed dryness; also present: repetition-with-variation (4), register collision (3), escalation duet (2), specificity callback (2), understatement (2), reversal, preemption, deflation, hyperbole. Not MONOTONOUS.
- **Source split:** character 18, situation 3, narrator-overlay 2 — and both overlay items are the two blocking findings. The funny is being generated by the people, not painted over them.
- **Sweetness:** the catalog danger is never joked away. Item 22 makes the transfer heavier, not lighter; Theo's faster alternative (photograph the pages, books back by lunch, l.131) is narrated without wit and then overridden. Not OVERSWEETENED.
- **Cringe:** none. No sitcom volley runs past two beats; every exchange is embedded in a task; no zinger detached from stakes.
- **Ch13 inheritance check (ordered):** the logistics jokes that reappear all carry new mechanism or new pressure — pickup sheet (kiss-date slip + penalty walk), panel sizes (torn-card artifact, "dead seven"), solvent (June refuses it to keep the mark — inverts Ch13's care), flyer photo (cardstock/Queens printer). The two actual Ch13/Ch05 inheritances are not logistics jokes but narration-caption tics: items 13 and 21, blocked below. Other guardrails verified: zero new evaluative ", which" captions; zero recognitional "the way a person/people" similes; zero room personification; one deliberate hand beat (the held tote seam, l.143, literal blocking); *Winter Kitchen* at sanctioned 2/5; Odile at two sharp lines.

**CHAPTER VERDICT: CLEAR** — 21 of 23 items at funniness 2, character/situation-sourced 21 of 23, zero portable, mechanisms varied, and the comedy releases post-kiss awkwardness while the catalog handoff stays sharp. Strongest item: #22 — "I'm bagging them like nine pounds of someone's career." Weakest surviving item: #2 — "eighty-nine cents of it, faint as a watermark," which earns its smile only through Ch13 investment and does continuity work more than comic work.

Blocking rule applies regardless of verdict: items 13 and 21 (both funniness-1, both narrator-overlay; 21 also workshopped and over a hard cap) stand unresolved. The chapter is not committable until the two orders below are executed.

**REVISION ORDERS:**

1. **Item 13** — "She was staying past the minimum; he noted it and declined to interpret." (l.65). Failure: funniness-1 repeat of item 3's interpretation-refusal mechanism within the same chapter, and an "equivalent" under the packet's banned refusal-to-conclude family ("leave it alone / let it stand / stayed where it was, equivalents") plus the Theo-restraint-by-negation cluster the packet orders replaced with positive action. Fix: end the sentence at "he noted it" and let the next beat carry the restraint as action — Theo already does this at l.115 (pulls the legal pad, starts the pickup confirmations); pulling that action forward to follow the noting is the clean repair. Do not paraphrase the refusal ("chose not to read it," "left it unread") — that is the same tic in new clothes. Item 3's "He stopped interpreting it after midnight" survives as the family's single sanctioned instance.

2. **Item 21** — "She gave the cover the two seconds she gave anything she respected" (l.123). Failure: funniness-1 narrator-overlay caption; workshopped (composed-for-quotation duration wit); third instance of the measured-duration scaffold the tics ledger hard-capped at two in Ch05 ("length of time it deserved," "length of time it takes to lose an argument"). Fix: cut the caption and render the respect as plain action in June's established idiom: she looks at the cover, turns it back over, and goes straight to the back matter hunting columns — the sentence's remaining clause already does this, and "He was grateful to her for it" (l.123) already converts it to Theo's feeling. No replacement joke needed; the beat is stronger silent.

**CLEAR**
