# Audit: Comedy Doctor — Chapter 01 ("Goodbye to Winter Kitchen")

id: comedy_doctor | chapter: 01 | stage: drafter | output: output/critiques/claude/chapter_01.comedy_doctor.md
tracker state at audit time: `output/tics.md` — no chapters committed; no caps yet in force; counts below are proposed seed rows.

**Calibration.** The guide names no demographic but binds the reader by comps: Beth O'Leary warmth, Emily Henry at 60% banter density ("characters are allowed to answer questions sincerely"), Morisaki/*Coffee Gets Cold* quiet. That reader rewards character-true dryness and punishes sitcom rhythm, quip treadmill, and narrator wit no character generates. Style contract: "Odile is the only character licensed for high-density memorable lines"; June jokes at her own expense; Theo's comedy is competence, never zingers. All scores below are against that reader, not workshop taste.

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INVENTORY:

1 — "The plan lasted four minutes" (L3) — mechanism: deflation (plan vs. reality, clocked in her own units) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: establishes June's exit-engineering and starts the clock the whole chapter defeats — workshopped: no
2 — "had decided to stand in front of it with their backs to it" (L3) — mechanism: irony via spatial precision — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: builds her plot obstacle (the wall she can't reach) out of the joke itself — workshopped: no
3 — "because a person holding a program is excused from conversation" (L5) — mechanism: deadpan general law — source: character — funniness: 1 (the prop-as-conversation-armor observation is workshop-common; predictable) — portable: yes — dramatic work: launches the program-corner prop chain (L7, L99, L125) — workshopped: no — **BLOCKING**
4 — "PAIRS had been struck through in ink and COUPLES written above it in a hand that did not invite questions" (L5) — mechanism: characterization-by-object, deadpan personification — source: character (Odile, offstage) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: plants the premise rule and the hand-amendment reread clue (guide Q6) — workshopped: no
5 — "She squared the stack against the edge of the desk, which it did not need" (L5) — mechanism: self-betraying gesture, trailing-clause deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: nerves shown not named; opens the straightening gag — workshopped: no
6 — "'It's about absence,' he said. 'The Italian years.' Odile Marchetti had never had Italian years" (L7) — mechanism: confident-wrongness deflated by checkable fact — source: situation + June's catalog completism — funniness: 2 — portable: no (falsifiable against Odile's fictional record, which only June has read) — dramatic work: establishes her expertise and her conflict-avoidance (she retreats rather than corrects) — workshopped: no
7 — "his voice got wider when contradicted" (L7) — mechanism: deadpan diagnosis in a painter's measure (width) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: motivates the retreat as strategy, not timidity — workshopped: no
8 — "she had told enough people she was leaving New York that it had become true" (L9) — mechanism: paradox stated flat — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the wound's mechanism (performed honesty) in one clause — workshopped: no
9 — "hair cropped as if she had done it herself over a sink and been right to" (L11) — mechanism: expectation-reversal tag ("and been right to") — source: character (Odile via June's judging eye) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: authority without vanity, pre-dialogue — workshopped: no
10 — "tipped her glass toward the north wall. He went." (L11) — mechanism: cause-effect compression — source: character (Odile's command economy) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: first beat of Odile conducting through logistics; reread-consistent with her stagecraft — workshopped: no
11 — "watching the staff was what she did at openings instead of enjoying herself" (L13) — mechanism: deadpan self-diagnosis — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: positions her to witness item 12 — workshopped: no
12 — "the tray changed course for the south wall... drained off after the wine. The man in the green scarf went with it." (L13) — mechanism: competence comedy, indirect solution — source: character (Theo) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Theo's entire character introduced through method; loads "You moved my wine" — workshopped: no
13 — "Before he answered he read both cards all the way through... 'Since five o'clock.'" (L17) — mechanism: deadpan oblique admission (a timestamp instead of a defense) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: starts their shared idiom of verification-before-speech — workshopped: no
14 — "I read everything. It's that or the wine." (L23) — mechanism: self-deprecating deflection — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: smoke-screens being caught caring (voice card: "jokes as smoke screen") — workshopped: no
15 — "revised her estimate of him from staff to good staff" (L25) — mechanism: comic increment (attraction in personnel-review units) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: romance progress kept inside her professional register — workshopped: no
16 — "June. I hang shows. Other people's." (L28) — mechanism: deflation via appended qualifier — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: wound as self-introduction — workshopped: no
17 — "Forty minutes. Moving the wine was the right call." (L31) — mechanism: correction-as-deflection (precision as armor) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: pays off at L57 when she lets Odile's "An hour" stand uncorrected — workshopped: no
18 — "stood reading the corrected label of *Blue Stove* as though it were long... He never announced any of it." (L33) — mechanism: deadpan decoy performance — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: care move disguised as logistics; the book's thesis about Theo in miniature — workshopped: no
19 — "The ones that did things to you were always smaller than you remembered, like teachers met years later in a grocery store." (L35) — mechanism: incongruous simile riding a generalized law — source: narrator-overlay — funniness: 1 (familiar observation, familiar simile) — portable: yes (runs unchanged in any revisiting-a-formative-thing novel) — dramatic work: NONE that "smaller than she remembered" doesn't already do — workshopped: yes (aphorism + simile, composed-for-quotation symmetry) — **BLOCKING**
20 — "citing in her essay, with footnotes, a dish towel" (L37) — mechanism: register collision (scholarly apparatus vs. domestic object), mid-sentence timing — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: origin story compressed; "Eleven years. The towel held." converts the joke tender without softening it — workshopped: no
21 — "because the alternative was saying nothing all the way home" (L39) — mechanism: deadpan motive confession — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: speech as self-management; flags how rare her praise is — workshopped: no
22 — "It came out at twice the necessary speed" (L43) — mechanism: quantified overreaction — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: terror of being introduced, measured rather than named — workshopped: no
23 — "You're under a vent, for what it's worth. If you're staying at this wall, you'll want your coat in ten minutes." (L45) — mechanism: hyper-specific competence — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: care as building knowledge; loads the L95 payoff — workshopped: no
24 — "two handlers on the stair, don't let the new guy take the bottom" (L49) — mechanism: specificity overload (professional litany as coping) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: longing managed through craft; smallness-test anchor for the chapter — workshopped: no
25 — "dropped to the volume people use for eavesdropping" (L51) — mechanism: paradox-precision in general-law syntax — source: narrator-overlay — funniness: 2 alone — portable: yes (the law fits any watched room in any book) — dramatic work: announces Odile's approach — workshopped: yes (same "the X people use for/when Y" template recurs at item 35; two instances in one chapter expose the machine) — **BLOCKING**
26 — "You moved my wine." / "The corner was jammed." / "Mm." (L53–56) — mechanism: deadpan minimal interrogation — source: character (both) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Odile clocks the maneuver — reread-consistent with knowing; employer-nephew shorthand planted before the reveal — workshopped: no
27 — "There was an exit past the desk, eleven steps." → "for exactly as long as it took June to want the eleven steps" (L59, L61) — mechanism: callback; flight instinct quantified — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Odile's silence as applied pressure, measured in June's units — workshopped: no
28 — "in the tone of a woman filing a document, and June could not tell whether the labels or the evening had just been approved" (L65) — mechanism: deadpan ambiguity — source: character (Odile) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: reread plant — it is June being approved — workshopped: no
29 — "Tell me one of your couples has come to their senses and dropped out." (L67) — mechanism: comic inversion (a waitlist preying on couples' sanity) — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: dramatizes the slot's market value seconds before Odile spends it — workshopped: no
30 — "No one drops my class. People have stayed married to remain in it." (L69) — mechanism: hyperbole delivered as fact — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (fused to the couples-only conceit) — dramatic work: makes the gift enormous and foreshadows the class's marital gravity — workshopped: no (quotation-shaped, but inside Odile's explicit license; see distribution note)
31 — "'It is full,' Odile said. ... 'It was full.'" (L73) — mechanism: tense reversal — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the premise pivot executed in a verb tense; the chapter's engine fires in four words — workshopped: no
32 — "'—on the list,' Odile said. 'I know. Repair that before you leave.'" (L79–81) — mechanism: sentence-completion misdirection (she finishes "we're not—" with the wrong ending) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: forecloses the correction June was about to make; on reread, a deliberate trap — workshopped: no
33 — "a sound of pure civic delight" / "She said our marriage would not survive eight weeks of her." She said it beaming, the way people report weather. (L83) — mechanism: insult worn as trophy; deadpan tag — source: situation (with Odile as offstage author) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (Amagansett, the refused house) — dramatic work: proves both the slot's market and Odile's legend through a third party — workshopped: no
34 — "to June, to the room, to the city" (L83) — mechanism: escalation triad — source: narrator-overlay — funniness: 1 (composed flourish; the third term inflates) — portable: yes — dramatic work: broadcast scale, already dramatized better by the relay at L95 — workshopped: yes (rhetorical symmetry no character generates; "the city" also brushes the banned postcard-NYC scale) — **BLOCKING**
35 — "held their glasses at the angle people use when they are memorizing a story for dinner" (L85) — mechanism: social-law precision — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no (it is the trap: the watching room is why the sentence stays unsaid) — dramatic work: converts the room into the antagonist of the beat — workshopped: no, conditional on item 25's template being removed (one instance is observation; two is a machine)
36 — "The sentence stayed where it was." (L85) — mechanism: deflation (the unsaid correction as an object that won't move) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the lie happens by omission and the cost stays on the page — workshopped: no
37 — "Then you will be behind," Odile said. "Come anyway." (L89) — mechanism: objection absorbed as a scheduling detail — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: her pedagogy in two clauses; refuses June's self-disqualification without comforting her — workshopped: no
38 — "lifted two mushroom canapés off a passing tray, put one in June's hand, ate the other, and left to be congratulated" (L91) — mechanism: action-sequence deadpan; imperial passive — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: "feeds people without comment" executed exactly per voice card, sealing the trap with food — workshopped: no
39 — "Or the place goes to someone worse." (L93) — mechanism: backhanded ranking — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: praise disguised as threat; reread: she wants June specifically — workshopped: no
40 — "June stood holding a mushroom." (L95) — mechanism: deflation-by-object — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the whole reversal lands on a canapé; timing beat after the storm — workshopped: no
41 — "the woman in red glasses was already telling it to two new arrivals, with gestures" (L95) — mechanism: escalation with terminal deflation ("with gestures") — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the lie outruns June before she leaves the room — workshopped: no
42 — "The vent came on overhead, exactly on schedule." (L95) — mechanism: callback / ironic reliability — source: situation built on Theo's character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the one predicted thing arrives while everything else derails; binds her to his reliability without a word of interiority — workshopped: no
43 — "There's a stockroom," Theo said. "It has a door." (L97) — mechanism: understatement rescue — source: character (verbatim voice-card exemplar) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: logistics as apology; scene pivot to privacy — workshopped: no
44 — "the program corner was already folded down to the thickness of a guitar pick" (L99) — mechanism: escalated callback, measured — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the evening's stress curve archived in a prop — workshopped: no
45 — "stenciled, amended by hand, which seemed to be house style" (L99) — mechanism: pattern-recognition callback (to PAIRS→COUPLES) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: threads the reread clue as a joke; June is unknowingly cataloguing the evidence — workshopped: no
46 — "I'd like to tell you nothing like that has ever happened here, but I've worked for her six years." (L101) — mechanism: implication via understatement — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: certifies Odile's pattern; confesses his complicity in the same breath — workshopped: no
47 — "you don't correct Odile Marchetti at her own opening unless the building is on fire" (L105) — mechanism: hyperbolic house rule — source: character — funniness: 1 (the escape clause is a stock idiom; the only rented phrase in Theo's mouth all chapter) — portable: yes (the idiom) — dramatic work: states his constraint and cowardice — workshopped: no — **BLOCKING**
48 — "He straightened a crate label that was already straight, and June noted it with the fellow feeling of one professional watching another" (L105) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation (her L5 gesture, handed to him) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: kinship of nervous systems, pre-romance — workshopped: no
49 — "I can ask her tomorrow whether she meant pairs." (L109) — mechanism: deadpan literalism — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps the pairs/couples question alive in-world without lampshading — workshopped: no
50 — "a work conflict for a beam, politeness for the load-bearing walls... no one inspects a boring lie; checking would be rude" (L111) — mechanism: register collision (construction nouns for evasions); deadpan systems-analysis of her own method — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names the wound's machinery without therapy-speak; sets up the refusal at L129 — workshopped: no
51 — "Is it a real class? Or a retirement party with easels?" (L115) — mechanism: dismissive comic image — source: character (her honest-warning-as-joke care move, aimed at herself) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: tests the thing before allowing herself to want it — workshopped: no
52 — "June turned the word over and found nothing wrong with it, which annoyed her" (L119) — mechanism: contrarian deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: respect arriving against her will, for both Theo and Odile — workshopped: no
53 — "She provides the wine on Tuesdays. Don't bring any. She takes it as an insult." (L131) — mechanism: absurd etiquette delivered as logistics — source: character (Theo's mode, Odile's portrait) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: world-rules of the class; extends feeds-without-comment — workshopped: no
54 — "'What do we—' June began, and abandoned the question, because every way it ended was worse than not asking." (L133) — mechanism: aposiopesis (the unfinishable couple-question) — source: character + situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: handles the fake-dating logistics without a single sitcom negotiation beat — workshopped: no
55 — "We stand where she puts us," Theo said. "We don't explain first." (L135) — mechanism: deadpan survival doctrine — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: reread gold — Odile literally arranges people; the book's covert thesis stated as a house rule by the one person who knows half the truth — workshopped: no
56 — "took the pen out of the cup before he could offer it, straightened the cup" (L139) — mechanism: gesture role-reversal (his move, performed by her, at the moment of consent) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: commitment rendered as logistics; third, varied instance of the straightening gag — workshopped: no

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## Running-gag / tracker check

Tracker is empty (no committed chapters); proposed seed rows with this chapter's counts:

| gag/device | instances (ch 01) | status |
|---|---|---|
| Straightening things that don't need it | 3 (L5, L105, L139) | varied each time (her nerves / his nerves / her adopting his idiom); healthy; cap-watch from ch 02 |
| Folded program corner | 3 (L7, L99, L125) | escalates, then closes (unfold/refold at the decision); arc complete — re-use must vary or retire |
| Hand-amended signage | 2 (L5, L99) | load-bearing reread clue; budget against Odile's "rare and meaningful" card-correction tic |
| Vent | 2 (L45, L95) | set-up/payoff, closed |
| Moved wine | 2 (L13, L53) | set-up/payoff, closed |
| June quantification (time/distance as armor) | ~7 (L3 twenty/four min, L9 ten feet, L31 forty min, L43 twice the speed, L49 six min, L59/61 eleven steps ×2) | in-chapter it reads as voice signature and each instance does different work; **open a WATCH row** — at this rate it is a tic by ch 03 |

## Distribution checks

**Density** — high, appropriate to the premise set-piece; the register's "lightly comic" commitment is exceeded but not breached because the comedy *is* the trap mechanism (the watching room, the relay, the foreclosed correction). Functional-dialogue ration holds: "Since five o'clock." / "It is." / "All right." / "The corner was jammed." are unquotable working lines, per the style rule that half of ordinary dialogue stay functional.

**Variety** — pass, with a named caveat. Deadpan-precision is the dominant family (~14 of 56), which is the register's committed house mechanism; within it, sub-mechanisms vary (tense reversal, completion misdirection, quantified overreaction, oblique admission, imperial passive). Distinct other mechanisms present: deflation (6), callback/repetition-with-variation (7), hyperbole-as-fact (2), register collision (2), specificity overload (2), escalation (2), understatement (3). Not MONOTONOUS. The one true machine-repeat is the "the X people use for/when Y" law template (items 25, 35) — addressed in orders.

**Source honesty** — narrator-overlay count: 3 of 56 (items 19, 25, 34). The LLM-default overlay layer is genuinely thin here; the chapter's wit is generated by June's measuring eye, Theo's method, and Odile's economy, in scene. Checked hardest: item 2 (backs-to-the-art is a stock gallery observation — survives because the joke is also the plot obstacle her four-minute plan dies on) and item 3 (does not survive; see orders).

**Odile's license** — five quotation-grade lines in one appearance (items 30, 31, 32, 37, 39). Within her explicit license ("the only character licensed for high-density memorable lines"; "best lines, fewest words") and every one is short, in dialogue, and answering scene pressure. Strongest counter-candidate for workshopped across the whole chapter is item 30 — it survives because the wit is hers, in voice, prompted by a question, and welded to the couples-only conceit. But this is her ceiling: chapters where she appears should not exceed this density again.

**Sweetness** — pass. The beats the book needs sharp are left unjoked: the crate ("At crate height it read like a moving date," L99), the unsaid correction ("The sentence stayed where it was," L85), and the chapter's hardest line, "She had quit so far in advance of failing that nobody ever got to watch" (L127), which gets no comic cushion before or after. The congratulation comedy keeps its sting in-frame ("June had been congratulated for less true things," L95 — the lie is named *less true* mid-laugh). Not OVERSWEETENED.

**Cringe** — pass. Riskiest items checked: the green-scarf man (stock gallery-mansplainer; survives via the falsifiable "Italian years" and the warmth-floor repair — "the man in the green scarf raised his glass to her," L95, inside the two-scene window); the red-glasses woman (gossip type; survives because her delight is civic, not malicious, and she becomes the plot's relay engine). Nearest approach to sitcom rhythm is the "What do we—" beat (item 54), which escapes by abandoning the question instead of completing the bit. Nothing embarrasses the book for the O'Leary/Morisaki reader.

No item scored 0. The floor is the four funniness-1 items, all of which are rented language rather than failed swings.

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## VERDICT: CLEAR

Majority funniness-2 (52 of 56), overwhelmingly character/situation-sourced (53 of 56), non-portable (51 of 56), mechanisms varied. Five blocking findings stand below; the chapter is not committable until they are resolved.

**Strongest item:** #31 — "'It is full,' Odile said. ... 'It was full.'" — the entire premise pivots on a verb tense, in character, in four words, with the comedy and the plot being the same event.

**Weakest surviving item:** #49 — "I can ask her tomorrow whether she meant pairs." — smile-scale, but committed, in Theo's exact register, and it keeps the book's central planted question alive without winking; it earns its row.

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REVISION ORDERS:

**RO-1 (item 3, L5 — funniness 1, portable).** "because a person holding a program is excused from conversation" — the law is generic conversation-armor wit any novel could rent. Re-source it into June's six years of gallery-sitting (already established at L9): she knows the trick from the desk side, having watched a hundred visitors deploy it at openings she was paid to sit. Rewrite the because-clause as her professional knowledge, not a universal law; June voice card — visual/craft nouns, self-aimed. Leave the prop chain (L7 fold, L99 guitar pick, L125 unfold/refold) untouched.

**RO-2 (item 19, L35 — funniness 1, portable, workshopped).** "The ones that did things to you were always smaller than you remembered, like teachers met years later in a grocery store." Cut the aphorism and the simile. If a beat is wanted at all, replace with handler arithmetic from this book's inventory: June has carried this painting's dimensions in her head since seventeen and got them wrong in the direction of importance — the corrected figure already exists in the text ("Sixty by seventy-two," L49). One June-voiced sentence, no general law. A clean cut is also valid: "*Winter Kitchen*, 1983, oil on linen." lands harder with no cushion in front of it.

**RO-3 (item 25, L51 — portable, workshopped by duplication).** Two "the X people use for/when Y" laws in one chapter (L51, L85) expose the template. Keep L85 (item 35) — it powers the dinner-relay trap and the L95 payoff. De-template L51: either plain perception ("the conversations nearby dropped") or a comparison from June's work inventory (the hush rooms make when staff carry something heavy through). No quotable-law syntax.

**RO-4 (item 34, L83 — funniness 1, portable, workshopped).** "to June, to the room, to the city" — cut "to the city." The triad is narrator flourish; the citywide broadcast is already dramatized, better, by the relay ("telling it to two new arrivals, with gestures," L95), and the third term brushes the banned postcard-NYC scale. End at "to the room."

**RO-5 (item 47, L105 — funniness 1, portable).** "unless the building is on fire" is the only rented idiom Theo speaks all chapter. Replace the escape clause with his material vocabulary (voice card: key, label, schedule, crate) — e.g., unless water is coming through the ceiling onto a painting, or a crate has opened on the stair. Keep the rest of the sentence intact: the list of reasons (four unpaid reservations, the evening going well) is the joke; only the exit phrase is generic.
