# Audit: Comedy Doctor — Chapter 24: First Snow (current text)

id: comedy_doctor | chapter: 24 | owner: claude | tier: risk

Cold read of `output/chapters/chapter_24.md` as the reading guide's target reader (Beth O'Leary warmth; Emily Henry at ~60% banter — spark permitted only *after* a sincere answer; the quiet-routine register of *Days at the Morisaki Bookshop* / *Before the Coffee Gets Cold*). The committed register is "warm, precise, lightly comic — quiet interiority over quippiness, observational and character-true, never sitcom, never banter for banter's sake" (READING_GUIDE §2). This is the showcase coda, so the card's binding constraints apply: "warm embarrassment made survivable, then warmth with a clean ache"; "no group absolution speech"; "Odile few lines"; "June final voice plain"; snow and the Odile reveal land without being defused (chapter_cards ll. 684–694).

Full comic inventory below, six fields per item. Failed attempts are inventory, not omissions. Narrator-overlay is the default I hunted; I name the closest brush and quote counter-candidates for each blocking axis (portable / workshopped / overlay). Token-level pre-checks (grep): zero `which` captions survive; the only `whole` is literal "the whole week" (l. 91), not the confession/thesis template; no `load-bearing`; no resurrected sentence-quality caption ("the tone of a man filing something away," l. 31, reads Sam's *manner*, not his phrasing).

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INVENTORY:

1 — "A tower said nothing about her. She left it a tower and counted that, privately, as growth." (l. 3) — mechanism: deflation + ironized self-therapy-word, against the fanned-arc-vs-tower incongruity — source: character (June, self-aimed) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (anchored to the cups-as-composition arc; pays off against *After Class*'s "composed arc of cups," l. 95) — dramatic work: opens June's not-composing-a-room-she's-inside arc — workshopped: no
2 — "The radiator knocked. 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 specificity / register (installer diagnoses the building by reflex) — source: character (Sam) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (east riser, this cohort's installer) — dramatic work: June's weekend-built dread dissolves in one line; cohort ease established — workshopped: no
3 — "in a font he'd visibly agonized over, he'd run a photograph of the studio in daylight, empty … It was a good flyer." (l. 9) — mechanism: character-detail incongruity (empty-room photo for a full-room showcase) capped by deadpan verdict — source: character (Ben's planning-as-love; June's compression) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Ben characterization + the empty/full ache (she sets it back down) — workshopped: no
4 — "Sam's big loose canvas that was either a dog or a sofa and refused to commit" (l. 11) — mechanism: incongruity + light personification — source: situation/character (the amateur canvas seen through June's painter-eye) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (this canvas) — dramatic work: cohort amateur texture; June's optical read — workshopped: no
5 — "Luis's three small studies hung so precisely you could have leveled a shelf against them." (l. 11) — mechanism: hyperbole borrowed from Luis's own tool-world (level/shelf) — source: character (Luis) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the image is built from Luis's diction) — dramatic work: Luis characterization — workshopped: no
6 — "'You've got a lean in the wall up here,' … 'I've got a level in the car. Two minutes.'" (l. 27) — mechanism: register collision (installer treats an intentional painterly lean as an install defect to remedy) — source: character (Sam) + situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: sets up Theo's declined sermon; the lean-as-record — workshopped: no
7 — "He'd have built Sam an explanation a month ago: pentimento … the sermon. Now he went to top off a water jar that didn't need it." (l. 29; recurs l. 61) — mechanism: restraint-comedy (the loaded sermon declined) + displacement-activity running beat — source: character (Theo) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Theo's stop-explaining arc; the unneeded water jar as recurring tell — workshopped: no
8 — "said 'Huh' in the tone of a man filing something away." (l. 31) — mechanism: deadpan / deflation — source: character (Sam) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: closes the lean beat; the installer concedes the art is deliberate without a word — workshopped: no
9 — "'There,' Luis said. He'd put the food where the traffic was and told the room he'd done it, and Mara had already opened her mouth. She closed it and let the dish sit there, exactly where Luis had wanted it." (ll. 41–43) — mechanism: wordless-competence comedy / role beat (Luis acts before Mara can route him) — source: character (Luis's carded delayed punchline; Mara's arc of speaking over the form Luis is visible in) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the specific Mara/Luis dynamic + sightline logistics) — dramatic work: Mara's arc-break (she lets him be visible); Luis's care-by-placement vs. Theo's care-by-fixing — workshopped: no
10 — "'You want that,' she said. June took it. It had too much milk." (l. 45) — mechanism: deflation button + care-as-control incongruity — source: character (Priya's discharge-planning care; June's dry acceptance) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (Priya's carded move) — dramatic work: characterizes Priya's manage-the-conditions love and June's wry tolerance — workshopped: no
11 — "left it a half-degree off level on purpose, and walked away. For Ben, practically skywriting." (l. 47) — mechanism: hyperbole (a tiny loosening measured as flamboyance) — source: character (Ben's over-control), delivered as a June/narrator overlay button — funniness: 2 — portable: no (anchored to Ben's precision arc) — dramatic work: marks Ben's loosening arc without a speech — workshopped: no — **NEAREST EDGE (overlay/portability): see WATCH-A**
12 — "'I've been carrying paragraphs around in my pocket all night and not saying them. It's exhausting.'" (l. 73) — mechanism: character self-image / comic metaphor (the suppressed explainer) — source: character (Theo) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: couple's-aftermath; Theo's not-explaining arc named from inside — workshopped: no
13 — "'Practice,' June said. 'And I say mine to myself later. Worse for you, better for the party.'" (l. 75) — mechanism: deadpan antithesis / deflecting tag arriving *after* a sincere answer — source: character (June, carded "one clean observation plus a deflecting tag") — funniness: 2 — portable: no (anchored to the paragraphs-you-don't-say exchange + the party) — dramatic work: reframes June's lifelong compression as competence, tender toward Theo — workshopped: no — **NEAREST EDGE (workshopped): see WATCH-B**
14 — "'Bring it whenever,' Mara said. 'That's why dishes exist.'" (l. 79) — mechanism: deflation of the no-more-Tuesdays ache into practical warmth — source: character (Mara) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the blue-dish tether, planted Ch18) — dramatic work: the dish as a standing reason to meet; end-of-class poignancy — workshopped: no — **NEAREST EDGE (aphorism/slogan): see WATCH-C**
15 — "neither of them looking eleven minutes apart tonight." (l. 81) — mechanism: motif callback (the Ben/Priya timing gag, inverted) — source: character (Ben/Priya arc) — funniness: 2 (warm recognition for the finale reader; low as a standalone laugh — its intent is arc-note, and it lands as that) — portable: no (their specific eleven-minutes motif) — dramatic work: their arc resolving on their own feet — workshopped: no
16 — "there was a decent bar on Orchard that would hold them for twenty minutes. … He came back up alone." (l. 83) — mechanism: dry competence / understatement — source: character (Theo) + situation — funniness: 2 (low comic charge; functions mostly as plot and lands as dry texture, not a reached-for laugh) — portable: no — dramatic work: Theo buys the room its last hour — workshopped: no
17 — "'Sign yourself out too,' she said. 'You're work that left the building. I keep a record.'" (l. 115) — mechanism: register collision (person filed as inventory) / insult-as-logistics — source: character (Odile) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: opens the ledger reveal — workshopped: no
18 — "'I wanted to know what you'd make if I made you. I'm retiring, not dead.'" (l. 127) — mechanism: deadpan deflation (owns selfish curiosity; refuses apology) — source: character (Odile) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the reveal's texture — *sharpens* the manipulation instead of softening it — workshopped: no
19 — "she watched it cost him and watched him pay it, and she liked him so much in that second it was faintly annoying." (l. 153) — mechanism: deflation of affection into dry annoyance (feeling named sideways) — source: character (June) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: renders June's love through her carded deflection; keeps the beat unsentimental — workshopped: no
20 — "'And then you get on your train and I come back and hand two rich people some drawings. That's it. I'm not carrying anything.'" (l. 165) — mechanism: self-deprecating deflation (the Halloran transaction reduced to "two rich people some drawings") + self-correcting reflex ("walk you to the—" → "To the corner") — source: character (Theo) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the Hallorans; his walls are Odile's) — dramatic work: Theo relinquishing the usefulness reflex; the class's economics; stays self-deprecating, not art-world contempt — workshopped: no
21 — "The warm coat was a February problem, a Kessler-in-March problem, an eight-hundred-dollars-by-Thursday problem." (l. 163) — mechanism: escalation / list-with-variation (rising specificity and urgency) — source: character (June's material precarity, technician-dry) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (Kessler; the $800 Thursday) — dramatic work: grounds the ending in money — *protects* the earned-stay from going soft/romantic — workshopped: no
22 — "'You're not carrying anything,' June said. His hand had already started toward the portfolio strap. He saw it a half-second after she did and let it drop … 'Right,' he said." (ll. 167–171) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation + physical undercut (his reflex betrays his own denial) — source: character (Theo's usefulness-trap) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June reclaims her own load (earned-stay, self-carry) — workshopped: no

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## Distribution checks (per-criterion evidence)

- **Density vs. register — HEALTHY, not a treadmill.** Twenty-two low-wattage items spread evenly across a finale that also carries a public reveal and a goodbye — this is "lightly comic, quiet interiority over quippiness," not stacked zingers. The five items the prompt named as treadmill risks stay warm and low: radiator (#2), Ben flyer (#3/#11), dog-or-sofa (#4), empanada/dish logistics (#9/#10), "two rich people some drawings" (#20). None is a punchline reaching over the scene; each is doing character or plot work while it amuses. Not DRY, not THIN.
- **Mechanism variety — VARIED, not MONOTONOUS.** Deflation, register collision, hyperbole, restraint-comedy, wordless-competence, personification, self-correction reflex, escalation, repetition-with-variation, motif-callback. Deflation is the most frequent single mechanism (#1, #3, #10, #13, #16, #18, #19, #20) because it is June's carded house style and the book's dry register — but it is interleaved with the others and multi-sourced (June, Theo, Odile, Mara all deflect differently), so it does not recur item-after-item. Counts do not tip to MONOTONOUS.
- **Source — CHARACTER-DOMINANT (the strongest source).** Every item is character-sourced or character+situation; not one is pure narrator-overlay. The single closest brush is #11 (WATCH-A). The comedy is generated *inside* the book by named people, not painted *at* it by a wit-layer.
- **Sweetness — NOT OVERSWEETENED. The two protected beats hold.** The Odile reveal (ll. 115–133) is not defused by its comedy: "I'm retiring, not dead" (#18) and "You're work that left the building" (#17) *sharpen* the manipulation — she refuses to apologize, June refuses to supply one, the shame "came up fast enough that she could have torn the page," and June tears it. The final snow (ll. 155–175) is un-joked at the image itself ("It won't stick," "I know," and the snow "landing on nothing anyone could see" carry no punchline); the one comic beat near it, the money tricolon (#21), *grounds* the earned-stay and guards it against going romantic-soft. Cohort warmth stays action-carried (the dish, the flyer, logging the work): no group absolution speech, no forgiveness speech, no found-family slogan — the closest is "That's why dishes exist" (#14, WATCH-C), which stays practical logistics, not sentiment.
- **Cringe — NONE.** Warm, in-register, no sitcom rhythm; the art-world material (Sam's install reflex, "two rich people some drawings") is gentle self-deprecation, never the contempt the guide bans (§6).

## Strongest and weakest surviving items (required for CLEAR)

- **Strongest (register exemplar): #2, the radiator** — "Air in the east riser," and she was laughing with the cup still only half full. Pure character source (Sam's installer reflex), non-portable (the east riser, this room), zero workshop, and it does the chapter's warmest dramatic work: an apartment's worth of weekend dread dissolves in one unglossed line. This is the "warm and low" the prompt is protecting.
- **Strongest high-wattage line: #18** — "I'm retiring, not dead." The best-line-fewest-words Odile card, and the least workshoppable because it is pure economy that *hardens* the book's sharpest beat rather than softening it.
- **Weakest surviving item: #11** — "For Ben, practically skywriting." It lands for the finale reader because Ben's over-control is established and the deliberately-off-level flyer is a real arc beat, but it is the chapter's only button delivered as a June/narrator overlay rather than something a character generates, and its frame ("For X, practically [grand thing]") is the nearest brush with a portable comic template. It clears — the anchoring clause ("left it a half-degree off level on purpose") and Ben's arc make the *item* non-portable — but it is the one to watch (WATCH-A).

## Named edges (non-blocking; recorded so a later warmth or line edit cannot tip them silently)

- **WATCH-A (#11, l. 47) — overlay/portability.** The button rides on its setup clause and on Ben's established precision. If a future edit trims "left it a half-degree off level on purpose" or moves the line off Ben, "practically skywriting" reverts to portable narrator-overlay filler and becomes blocking. Keep it anchored to the specific gesture.
- **WATCH-B (#13, l. 75) — workshopped.** "Worse for you, better for the party." is the chapter's most epigrammatic line (symmetrical antithesis, punchline syntax). It clears *only* because June answers sincerely first ("Practice." / "And I say mine to myself later.") — the deflecting tag arrives after two plain answers, which is the sanctioned ~60%-banter shape (§2). If the sincere setup is ever cut, this becomes a free-floating zinger arriving where June should be quiet, and blocks. Do not strip the setup.
- **WATCH-C (#14, l. 79) — aphorism/slogan.** "That's why dishes exist." is the closest the cohort warmth comes to a portable warmth-slogan. It clears because it stays practical (a dish is a reason to meet again, said as logistics) rather than found-family sentiment. Do not let a future pass sentimentalize it into a stated togetherness-thesis (card: "no group absolution speech").
- **Deflecting-tag density (June).** June's dry deflections (#1, #3, #10, #13, #19) are on-register and differently shaped (a flat verdict, a milk note, an antithesis, "faintly annoying"), and none resurrects the Ch22 frozen family ("for no defensible reason," "which was not a plan," etc. — grep-confirmed absent). At cap for the register, not over it. Do not add a sixth June deflection in any revision touch.

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## CHAPTER VERDICT

**CLEAR** — comedy lands in register: all twenty-two items score funniness-2, every one is character- or character+situation-sourced (zero pure narrator-overlay), all are non-portable, and the mechanisms are varied (no single mechanism recurs item-after-item). The two protected beats hold: the Odile reveal and the first snow are grounded and sharpened by their comedy, not softened by it, and cohort warmth stays action-carried with no absolution/forgiveness speech or found-family slogan. The prompt's five treadmill-risk items (radiator, Ben flyer, dog-or-sofa, dish logistics, "two rich people some drawings") stay warm and low, each doing dramatic work. Strongest: #2 (radiator) and #18 ("I'm retiring, not dead."). Weakest: #11 ("practically skywriting"). No item is funniness-1, portable:yes, or workshopped:yes; the three nearest edges (WATCH-A/B/C) are named against silent future drift but sit inside their speakers' carded license on the current text.

REVISION ORDERS: none. (No blocking finding and no verdict-level problem. WATCH-A/B/C are drift guards, not orders.)
