# Audit: Comedy Doctor — Chapter 24: First Snow

id: comedy_doctor | chapter: 24 | owner: claude | tier: risk
trigger: flag:comic-register (reading-guide-mandated => every-chapter)

## Stance / calibration
Skeptical editor, not coach. Judged against the reading guide's target reader — the warm, character-driven contemporary reader the comps name: Beth O'Leary's found-family warmth, Emily Henry **at ~60% banter density**, the quiet of *Before the Coffee Gets Cold* / *Days at the Morisaki Bookshop*. That reader wants observational, character-true dryness (June's self-aimed jokes, Theo's over-competent flailing, Odile's brutal economy), not sitcom rhythm and not composed zingers. Register is "warm, precise, lightly comic; quiet interiority over quippiness." A line that would earn a workshop laugh but read as manufactured to that reader fails here.

This is the showcase-coda / emotional-peak / final chapter. The comedy's job is to keep the warmth from curdling into sentiment while leaving the two sharp beats — June turning the portrait (ll.89–107) and Odile's ledger reveal (ll.110–131) — un-jokes. I read once as the target reader, built the full inventory (six fields each), checked running-gag caps against `tics.md`, and ran the four distribution checks. I hunted narrator-overlay as the default. I also verified the repaired families the brief named did not resurrect, and that the two blocking line-items from the prior round were repaired as ordered rather than merely softened (see foot).

**Provenance note.** The prior committed round found two blocking items — l.7 radiator ("trying to leave the building") and l.111 Halloran epigram ("wherever collectors go to wait for permission to want a thing"). Both strings are now **absent** from the current text (grep-verified); each was re-sourced/re-welded exactly along the lines the order offered. They are re-scored below as items 2 and 18 and now pass. No new blocking item was introduced by the repair.

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## INVENTORY

1 — "She left it a tower and counted that, privately, as growth." (l.3) — mechanism: deadpan self-deprecation (compose-vs-tower) — source: character (June) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: plants June's performing-wound and the cup-arc that pays off at l.95 ("its own composed arc of cups") — workshopped: no

2 — "Sam tapped the cover once and said, 'Air in the east riser,' and she was laughing with the cup still only half full." (l.7) — mechanism: deadpan expertise / incongruity of scale (a radiator knock answered like a symptom → her disproportionate ease) — source: character (Sam's installer ear) + situation (guard-drop) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June's guard drops; the chapter's first sign she is inside the room, not stationed at the door — workshopped: no  **[REPAIRED — was prior RO1]**

3 — "in a font he'd visibly agonized over" + "It was a good flyer." (l.9) — mechanism: earnest-amateur incongruity + deadpan understatement — source: character (Ben, via June) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: empty-room/full-room theme; Ben characterization — workshopped: no

4 — "either a dog or a sofa and refused to commit" (l.11; reprise l.85) — mechanism: incongruity + object-personification — source: character (June painter-eye) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: reads Sam's canvas and June's eye; l.85 reprise varies it into a check-out-log entry ("back whenever Sam surfaced") — workshopped: no

5 — "hung so precisely you could have leveled a shelf against them" (l.11) — mechanism: precision-hyperbole — source: character (Luis, via June) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: characterizes Luis in his own level/shim idiom — workshopped: no

6 — "'I've got a level in the car. Two minutes.'" + Sam's "Huh" filing beat (ll.27, 31) — mechanism: installer-reflex incongruity (art-choice read as a defect to fix), then deadpan withdrawal — source: character (Sam) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: enacts Sam's fix-it/step-aside care move; sets up Theo's restraint — workshopped: no

7 — "'It's meant to lean,' Theo said, and left it there… Now he went to top off a water jar that didn't need it." (ll.27–29; reprise l.61) — mechanism: deflation/restraint + displacement-action — source: character (Theo) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Theo's growth — he declines "the sermon" he'd have delivered a month ago — workshopped: no

8 — "'I washed it,' June said… 'Twice. Once for no reason. Here.'" (l.37) — mechanism: deadpan self-deprecation (over-washing tells on nerves) — source: character (June) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: nerves and care riding the blue-dish handoff (Mara-tether payoff) — workshopped: no

9 — Luis's four-inch placement + "'There,' Luis said." + Mara declining to translate (ll.39–43) — mechanism: character-precision comedy + arc-restraint payoff — source: character (Luis/Mara) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: two cohort payoffs at once — Luis's placement care; Mara's arc (she "closed her mouth and let the dish sit there") — workshopped: no

10 — "It had too much milk." (l.45) — mechanism: care-as-projection + deadpan — source: character (Priya/June) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Priya's care-becoming-projection; June learning to be handed things — workshopped: no

11 — "For Ben, practically skywriting." (l.47) — mechanism: deadpan hyperbole (tiny gesture = huge for this person) — source: character (June about Ben) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Ben's loosening (leaving the flyer off-level *on purpose*) — workshopped: no  *(watch: the "for X, practically Y" frame is a portable template; single instance — do not let it recur)*

12 — "No. That's the point of Ruth." (l.67) — mechanism: deadpan understatement — source: character (June) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: characterizes Ruth's discretion in four words — workshopped: no

13 — "I've been carrying paragraphs around in my pocket all night and not saying them. It's exhausting. I don't know how you've done it your entire life." (l.73) — mechanism: self-image comedy in Theo's carrying-idiom — source: character (Theo) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: restraint costing him; opens his vulnerability — workshopped: no

14 — "'Practice,' June said. 'And I say mine to myself later. Worse for you, better for the party.'" (l.75) — mechanism: deadpan deflection — source: character (June) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names her lifelong compression while deflecting it — workshopped: no

15 — "'Bring it whenever,' Mara said. 'That's why dishes exist.'" (l.79) — mechanism: warm care-logic + slip/recovery ("Bring it Tuesday" → no more Tuesdays) — source: character (Mara) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: dish-tether payoff; the ache of the last Tuesday — workshopped: no  *(sweetness watch — cleared: welded to the concrete dish, not a free-floating slogan)*

16 — "neither of them looking eleven minutes apart tonight." (l.81) — mechanism: callback specificity — source: character/situation (Priya/Ben) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: their distance closing; "April was a real place" — workshopped: no

17 — "a decent bar on Orchard that would hold them for twenty minutes" (l.83) — mechanism: situational deflation (host repels early collectors) — source: character (Theo host reflex) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: buys the cohort its last hour — workshopped: no

18 — "the Hallorans standing by Odile's office door with their gloves still on, not touching the wrapped drawings." (l.111) — mechanism: deflation + incongruity (art-market power rendered as childlike deference) — source: situation/character (the Hallorans, set up early/hovering) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: collector-deference; rhymes with June's own permission-to-want arc; sets up Odile's "none of my time" — workshopped: no  **[REPAIRED — was prior RO2: the class-generalization epigram is now a specific observed action]**

19 — "'Sign yourself out too,' she said. 'You're work that left the building. I keep a record.'" (l.113) — mechanism: Odile economy (inventory metaphor) — source: character (Odile) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: care disguised as logistics; opens the ledger reveal — workshopped: no

20 — "I'm retiring, not dead." (l.125) — mechanism: deadpan / Odile economy — source: character (Odile) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps Odile appetitive and un-sainted; states her real motive so the reveal isn't sentimental — workshopped: no

21 — "Give them the drawings and the wine and none of my time." (l.137) — mechanism: Odile economy (cutting tricolon) — source: character (Odile) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: her retirement stance and disdain, from inside character — workshopped: no

22 — "she liked him so much in that second it was faintly annoying." (l.145) — mechanism: self-aware warmth / deadpan — source: character (June) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: renders feeling through deflection (interiority discipline held; no weather report) — workshopped: no

23 — "The warm coat was a February problem, a Kessler-in-March problem, an eight-hundred-dollars-by-Thursday problem." + "she was in training" (l.155) — mechanism: escalation/list (vague → brutally dated) + deadpan — source: character (June's money-cognition) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: lands the precarity stakes and her chosen-hard-life — workshopped: no  *(watch: rising anaphoric tricolon is a composed shape; keep it a one-off, per the three-part-cadence watch in tics.md)*

24 — "hand two rich people some drawings. That's it. I'm not carrying anything." (l.157) — mechanism: self-correction/deflation — source: character (Theo) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: his carrying-arc growth ("I'm going to walk you to the--" caught mid-reflex) + deflates the collectors from inside character; frames June's independence — workshopped: no

25 — "'You're not carrying anything,' June agreed, and shifted the jar to her other hand and hooked the portfolio into the crook of the same arm." (l.159) — mechanism: callback/echo + demonstration — source: character (June) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the earned-stay thesis — her own water, her own work, her own cold walk — workshopped: no

**Running-gag / cap notes.** Dog-or-sofa 2× (l.11 / l.85; reprise varies into an admin entry). Water-jar-that-didn't-need-filling 2× (l.29 / l.61) — Theo's displacement, deliberate; distinct from June's own rinse-water jar she carries home (ll.155–161), so no conflation. "Not carrying anything" is a closed 2-beat volley (l.157 / l.159). Collector-deflation now runs 3× across three positions but only 2 of them are *jokes*, both character-sourced (Odile "none of my time," l.137; Theo "two rich people some drawings," l.157), with l.111 now a quiet observed image rather than the prior overlay epigram — no longer the weak member of the cluster. Odile carries 3 aphorism-grade lines (19/20/21), inside her licensed "best lines, fewest words" ceiling; her "He was handy" (l.121) is a nephew-guardrail beat with a dry edge, not a fourth aphorism.

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## DISTRIBUTION CHECKS (per-criterion evidence)

- **Density (vs. register).** Appropriate for "lightly comic." Warm-dry beats are spread through every scene *except* the portrait-turning scene (ll.89–107), which is correctly joke-free — that is the emotional core (June turning the study; the ache of being "painted not knowing she was seen"). Named reason present. Not DRY, not THIN. Strongest DRY counter-candidate: the Odile ledger reveal (ll.110–131) could have read as under-comic, but items 19–21 keep her voice alive without puncturing the reveal — a deliberate, not accidental, restraint.

- **Mechanism variety.** Deadpan is the dominant *register* (correct — June, Theo, and Odile are all constitutionally dry), but the mechanisms underneath vary: personification, incongruity, precision-hyperbole, installer-reflex, restraint/deflation, character-precision, care-as-projection, deadpan hyperbole, self-image comedy, warm care-logic + slip/recovery, callback specificity, situational deflation, deference-deflation, Odile inventory-metaphor, escalation/list, self-correction, echo/demonstration. Not MONOTONOUS. Strongest MONOTONOUS counter-candidate: three collector-deflations in one chapter (18/21/24) — survives, because they run across three different sources and two different mechanisms (deference-image vs. cutting-tricolon vs. self-correction), not one move repeated.

- **Source (narrator-overlay hunt).** Overwhelmingly character-sourced; situation is minor (the radiator guard-drop, the early-collectors beat). Genuine narrator-overlay is now essentially **zero** — the one prior overlay member (l.111) is repaired into an observed action. Strongest surviving overlay-candidate: "For Ben, practically skywriting" (item 11) — it is June's dry read *of another character*, which leans overlay-adjacent, but it is welded to Ben's established over-caution and to the specific on-purpose-off-level flyer, so it reads as June's character-voice, not a detachable wit-layer. Survives; frame-watch logged.

- **Sweetness (OVERSWEETENED?).** No. The sharp beats stay sharp: the portrait scene takes no joke, and Odile's "It wasn't yours to run." / "No… It wasn't." is not softened by wit. The snow close is deliberately anti-sentimental — the money-list (item 23) and "two rich people some drawings" (item 24) hold the sweetness *off*, and the final image is sober ("a long cold way to go and eight hundred dollars due Thursday, and she went"). Cohort warmth is delivered through action (placement, coffee, off-level flyer, the dish left on purpose), not a group-absolution speech or found-family slogan. Closest slogan-approach: "That's why dishes exist" (item 15), cleared because it is welded to the concrete dish as a reason to return. **Adjacent note (not a comedy item, flagged for the Narrator-Publicist lane, not an order here):** l.57 "She told no one anything, because it wasn't hers to tell and she knew the difference" is a narrator-certification of Ruth's virtue — it is warmth, not comedy, and it is not a group speech, but it is the chapter's nearest approach to stated-virtue and belongs to that audit's jurisdiction, not this one.

- **Cringe.** None. No sitcom rhythm, no reader-embarrassing zinger. The art-world needle ("none of my time," "two rich people some drawings," the gloved Hallorans) is gentle deflation, not contempt — inside the guide's "gentle comedy fine; contempt off-register" line. The warmth floor holds: June's showcase dread is comically survivable within the first scene (she "expected to mind it more").

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## CHAPTER VERDICT

**CLEAR** — comedy lands in register: all 25 inventoried items are funniness-2, character/situation-sourced, non-portable, and non-workshopped; mechanisms are varied; the two sharp beats (portrait turn, Odile reveal) are protected from jokes; the snow close uses comedy to hold sentiment off rather than to puncture the image; and cohort warmth arrives as action, never as slogan or forgiveness speech.

- **Strongest surviving item:** "hand two rich people some drawings. That's it. I'm not carrying anything." (item 24, l.157) — funny, fully welded to Theo's carrying-arc (the reflex "I'm going to walk you to the--" caught and corrected), and doing the most dramatic work in the chapter — his growth and June's independence in one deflection, with the collector-satire generated from inside a character in dialogue.
- **Weakest surviving item:** "hung so precisely you could have leveled a shelf against them" (item 5, l.11) — a mild precision-hyperbole that only fully pays for a reader tracking Luis-the-level-man. It lands and is character-tied and committed (not under-committed), so it is a genuine, if quiet, 2 — but it is the closest survivor to a 1. Leave it; do not inflate it.

## REVISION ORDERS

**None.** No item scores funniness-1, portable:yes, or workshopped:yes; there is no verdict-level problem (not DRY/THIN, not MONOTONOUS, not OVERSWEETENED, not CRINGE). The two blocking line-items from the prior round are verified repaired below rather than merely softened, so no order carries forward.

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## Repair-hold verification (families the brief named)

- **Prior RO1 — l.7 radiator ("trying to leave the building").** Repaired as ordered by re-sourcing to Sam's installer ear: "Air in the east riser" (item 2). The stock machine-tries-to-escape personification is gone; the new read is a specific mechanical diagnosis a generic character could not make, and the guard-drop beat (June laughing half-full) is preserved, not cut. String grep-confirmed absent. **Cleared, not softened.**
- **Prior RO2 — l.111 Halloran epigram ("wherever collectors go to wait for permission to want a thing").** Repaired as ordered by replacing the class-generalization with a specific observed action: the Hallorans "standing by Odile's office door with their gloves still on, not touching the wrapped drawings" (item 18). The overlay/epigram shape is gone; the permission-to-want thematic rhyme survives, now welded to the scene. String grep-confirmed absent. **Cleared, not softened.**
- **Deflecting-tag family (Ch22, frozen).** Not refilled. No "for no defensible reason" / "which was not a plan" / "as suspected" shapes. l.3 "counted that, privately, as growth" and l.89 "an errand-shaped decision before she'd finished shaping it" do genuine self-knowledge work and are not of that family.
- **Over-workshopped deadpan.** No composed-for-quotation zinger detached from a character. Strongest workshopped-candidate considered: "Worse for you, better for the party" (item 14) — mild antithesis, but speakable, in June's carded deflection-by-joke register, following Theo's vulnerable line; survives.
- **`which` captions.** Zero. Grep for evaluative ", which" / " which " returns nothing. l.43's "Mara, who two months ago would have translated…" is character-arc narration, not an evaluative caption.
- **`whole` templates.** None. The sole `whole` is "the single move he'd built the whole week to leave to her" (l.91) — literal duration, not the banned `whole ___` summary/confession template.
- **Sentence-quality / dialogue-diagnosis jokes.** None resurrected. No joke rates how anyone phrased something; independently corroborated by the Ch24 Dialogue Doctor (round 2) OVERALL: CLEAN. No `load-bearing`, no smirk/chuckle/"a beat" (grep-confirmed).
- **Sharp-beat protection.** Portrait scene (ll.89–107) and Odile reveal (ll.110–131) verified joke-free at the moment of impact; snow close (ll.147–161) verified un-undercut — the final image is the sober "eight hundred dollars due Thursday, and she went," not a joke.
