Audit written to `output/critiques/claude/chapter_14.comedy_doctor.md`. Full audit text follows.

---

# Comedy Doctor — Chapter 14: Catalogs

id: comedy_doctor | owner: claude | tier: risk | trigger: flag:comic-register (every-chapter mandate)
Register audited against: warm, precise, lightly comic; character/situation-sourced; Emily Henry at ~60% banter density; target reader wants adult romantic pressure with wit inside ordinary work, not sitcom banter or portable one-liners. Chapter function: 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" (¶1) — mechanism: deadpan self-management (logistics discipline applied to his own error) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the error is *November 17* three times — the kiss date invading his handwriting) — dramatic work: opens the chapter on the kiss entering through failed competence, exactly per card — workshopped: no

2 — "the tape had become something he noticed too quickly" (¶3) — mechanism: deadpan understatement — source: character (Theo interiority in his own idiom) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the DECORATOR'S WHITE. FLAT. formula tape is Ch13 inventory) — dramatic work: desire tell routed through an object, no naming — workshopped: no

3 — nine-options card torn at eleven; "She had texted back a thumbs-up at 11:05. He stopped interpreting it after midnight." (¶4) — mechanism: cringe escalation deflated by timestamped self-discipline — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (rack fit, wall math, the two promised options) — dramatic work: post-kiss anxiety rendered as over-preparation, sets up items 9–10 — workshopped: no

4 — Ben, 8:23: "What weight cardstock. Don't say 'normal.'" (¶5) — mechanism: pre-emptive exasperation — source: character (established Ben fussiness) — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (this group-chat quip could sit unchanged in any book with a flyer) — dramatic work: feeds Theo a trivial question to answer (item 5) — workshopped: no — **BLOCKING (funniness 1 + portable)**. Tracker conflict compounds it: Ch08 row caps Ben's shape at "next Ben planning beat needs new stakes"; this beat has none.

5 — "He typed *80lb matte* for Ben, sent it, and put the phone face-down" (¶7) — mechanism: deadpan displacement (answering the spec question to avoid the photo's meaning) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the flyer photo of the real kiss) — dramatic work: shows Theo metabolizing public proof as logistics; his wound and shelter per packet — workshopped: no

6 — "I'm keeping it." / "It's umber." / "It's a decent brown. Raw umber holds its value." / "For some other emergency." (¶13–16) — mechanism: deflection-via-craft-lexicon with a double meaning June does not unpack — source: character (built from her licensed word list: *decent*, *value*) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the umber cuff is the kiss's physical evidence from Ch13) — dramatic work: June keeps the mark of the kiss while refusing the conversation about it; takes the solvent "for some other emergency" = stays — workshopped: no (the double meaning is hers, not the narrator's, and Theo doesn't caption it)

7 — "the alternative conversation had no agenda, no end time, and no chairs" (¶17) — mechanism: register collision (meeting logistics mapped onto the relationship talk) — source: character (Theo's documented idiom; strongest overlay candidate I considered — cleared because "chairs" is planted here and paid twice, ¶31 and ¶74–75, making it structure rather than quotation) — funniness: 2 — portable: no once the chair payoffs exist — dramatic work: names why he chooses logistics without naming a feeling — workshopped: no, but the three-part swerve syntax is at its limit; one more list-with-comic-third in a Theo chapter and the shape is a tic

8 — "Don't tell your panel I said the tape's carrying it." / "The tape knows." (¶21–22) — mechanism: praise deflected onto an object, capped deadpan — source: character (both; June's love language is exact praise, Theo accepts it sideways) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (formula tape, Tuesday's critique) — dramatic work: the focused-check job — releases post-kiss awkwardness through the work itself; first real laugh between them since the kiss ("one breath of a laugh," priced correctly) — workshopped: no. Tracker note: this volley personifies panel and tape in *dialogue banter*; the Ch08 zero-until-rupture cap was on secret-object *narration* personification (folder/hidden panel as occupant). Different family, public object, spoken joke — log it in tics.md as a distinct dialogue instance so the narration family stays verifiably at zero.

9 — "There were nine. I cut it down." / "Nine." / "...No. I cut it down." / "Show me the dead seven sometime." (¶24–28) — mechanism: cringe confession met with repetition-as-raised-eyebrow, then June's dry adoption — source: character/situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the torn card is on the table in the scene) — dramatic work: "sometime" quietly manufactures a future; she finds the over-preparation endearing and signals it without sweetness — workshopped: no

10 — "Twelve-by-sixteen reads like a room you actually left at nine forty... Nobody gets to sprawl." (¶29) — mechanism: craft-argument with a comic cap — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (nine forty is this book's after-class clock) — dramatic work: Theo arrives with an opinion instead of a menu — the Wednesday-midnight promise paid on-page — workshopped: no

11 — "She was staying past the minimum; he noted it and declined to interpret." (¶32) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation (instance 2 of the interpretation gag, item 3) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the gag migrates from text message to physical presence; the variation is real — workshopped: no. Tracker: gag now at 2 in-chapter; one further varied use book-wide, then retire.

12 — "So now the label's going to be a refusal with my name under it" (¶33) — mechanism: self-diagnosing reframe — source: character — funniness: 2 (rueful register, lands as wit-inside-vulnerability) — portable: no (Odile wrote *The room after class* because June refused to) — dramatic work: opens the label thread that motivates the entire catalog trap — workshopped: no

13 — "Labels are not apologies." / "That's roughly what I was saying." / "Then you were roughly right." (¶35–38) — mechanism: economy + echo-turn (Odile re-prices June's hedge) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (continuous with Ch07's *apology* critique vocabulary, which June adopted; Odile is grading the hedge, not coining a maxim) — dramatic work: Odile inserts herself at exactly the moment the trap needs her; reads innocent forward, conducted backward — workshopped: no

14 — "What do I write, you are about to ask. Fewer words than you are planning." (¶38) — mechanism: anticipatory deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: considered (a writing teacher anywhere could say the second sentence) — cleared because the first sentence is the mechanism: Odile answering before the question is asked is the book's reread engine, S-ODILE-01 — dramatic work: plant #5 behavior; she moves the scene to the stockroom without explaining — workshopped: no

15 — "She picked her box back up and went out the way she'd come, and that was the entire visit." (¶40) — mechanism: deflation (narration matching Odile's economy) — source: situation — funniness: 2, at the low end — portable: no — dramatic work: marks the intervention's brevity as strange, feeding Theo's wrong-explanation beat — workshopped: no

16 — "a man who knew another woman's storage by feel" (¶42) — mechanism: register collision (infidelity framing on a stockroom shelf) — source: character/situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the joke-shape is the secret: the intimacy he can't explain is family) — dramatic work: dread carrier; the comedy sharpens the lie instead of softening it — workshopped: no

17 — "She loans nothing. There's a sign about it in her head." (¶48) — mechanism: invented signage deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: considered (could describe any strict person) — cleared because it riffs the book's hand-amended-signage motif (Ch01, tics row) and does the chapter's most important comic-dramatic job: flags the loan as anomalous, arming the trap inside a laugh — dramatic work: yes, load named above — workshopped: no

18 — "*Untitled (Stove)* is a title wearing a fake mustache." with "The parenthesis was probably Odile's condition." / "The checklist in back still files it under Stove." (¶53–55) — mechanism: incongruity image inside an escalation volley — source: character (June's visual idiom) — funniness: 2 — portable: considered hard; the mustache line alone is the most lift-out-able sentence in the chapter — cleared as a unit: the volley depends on Odile's-parenthesis lore and the checklist, and the joke is June reading her own situation (a refusal filed under a title anyway; a disguise that fools no one) without knowing it — dramatic work: theme work plus reread plant (Odile permits no true untitled) — workshopped: no, but this is the chapter's quotation-risk ceiling; do not add another image-cap of this wattage to the same scene in revision

19 — Winter Kitchen given "the two seconds she gave anything she respected... That was the whole ceremony, and he was grateful to her for it." (¶60) — mechanism: deflation of expected reverence — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: sanctioned invocation 2/5 executed without nostalgia flooding; June's changed relationship to her origin painting shown in two seconds — workshopped: no

20 — "What he said instead was, 'There's a bag.'" (¶65) — mechanism: timing reversal (the rejected ten-minute alternative stated first, then the three-word self-betrayal) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter's hinge; the deadpan reads as dread because the narration has already priced the safe option — workshopped: no

21 — "You're bagging them like produce." / "I'm bagging them like nine pounds of someone's career." (¶68–69) — mechanism: simile escalation-correction — source: character (both) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the strongest comedy-dread coincidence in the chapter: the punchline names the actual weight of what he is handing her while staying inside a tote joke; checked against the capped June-caps-Theo-optionality volley — different shape (tease → escalation, not option-list capping), no conflict — workshopped: no

22 — "Six p.m. chairs or nine forty chairs?" / "Both. I'll count both before Tuesday." (¶74–75) — mechanism: callback (chairs, instances 3–4) with the joke doubling as a promise — source: character/situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps the joint piece unsolved-but-alive and makes "more Thursdays" a spoken commitment; adult romantic pressure inside ordinary work, precisely the target register — workshopped: no

DISTRIBUTION CHECKS:

- **Density:** 22 items across ~2,900 words, clustered in the June/Theo work passages and correctly absent from the stockroom dread paragraph (¶42–44) and the final inventory-failure page. The register's "lightly comic" commitment is met without crowding the danger.
- **Source:** character 16, situation 6, narrator-overlay 0. I hunted overlay; the interiority items (1, 2, 7, 16) all run in Theo's documented logistics idiom with later structural payoffs, which is character-sourced interiority, not a wit-layer. The strongest overlay candidate ("no agenda, no end time, and no chairs") is cleared at item 7 with its plant-and-payoff shown.
- **Mechanism variety:** deadpan family 6 (items 1, 2, 5, 8, 15, 20) is the dominant strain — acceptable for a Theo-POV dread chapter where deadpan *is* the competence under strain, but Ch15 should not inherit it as default; remaining mechanisms span cringe-escalation, anticipatory deflation, echo-turn, register collision, repetition-with-variation, deflation-of-reverence, timing reversal, escalation-correction. Not MONOTONOUS.
- **Ch13 logistics-inheritance check (focused):** every reused logistics material carries new mechanism or new pressure — Thursday pickup returns as the wrong-date error (kiss intrusion); panel sizes return as the torn nine-option card (promise to arrive with an opinion); the Ch13 sleeve/solvent beat returns inverted (June refuses the fix and keeps the mark); the flyer photo returns as cardstock mundanity (public proof treated as ordinary, which is worse, per packet). No spent-texture inheritance found except item 4, ordered below.
- **Sweetness:** not OVERSWEETENED. The two beats that must stay sharp stay sharp: the handoff (items 20–21 make the comedy name the danger, not pad it) and the ending (joke-free; the failed inventory and blank *returned* column stand uncushioned). "The tape knows" releases awkwardness as assigned without touching the catalog thread.
- **Cringe:** none. Nothing misjudges the target reader; no sitcom rhythm, no zinger detached from stakes.
- **Tracker/cap state:** *Winter Kitchen* named exactly once (line 121) — book count moves to 2/5 as sanctioned. Odile sharp lines: ~3 ("Labels are not apologies," "Fewer words than you are planning," "Then you were roughly right") — within the post-Ch03 ceiling. Recognitional "the way a person/people" simile: 0 as ordered (line 85's "the way it went to light switches" is a self-habit literal, not the capped family; log as adjacent, not an instance). Chairs gag at 4 in-chapter instances, escalating and closed on a promise — cap forward: it must pay into the joint piece or rest; no Ch15 instance without new variation. Interpretation gag at 2, varied; one more book-wide, then retire. "Ran the math" / "do her own math" (lines 91, 129) — two arithmetic-colloquial figures; not the spent clerical/legal family, but trim awareness applies: do not add a third math figure. "The bad ones teach the fence line" (line 129) is June justification, not comedy; flagging as maxim-adjacent for Plain Translation's eye, no comic finding.

VERDICT: **CLEAR**

21 of 22 items at funniness 2, zero narrator-overlay, mechanisms varied, comedy placed to release awkwardness while the dread passages stay dry. Strongest item: #21 — "I'm bagging them like nine pounds of someone's career" — the laugh and the trap are the same sentence. Weakest surviving item: #15 — "and that was the entire visit" — low-wattage deflation that earns its place only because it marks Odile's intervention as strange.

One blocking finding stands (item 4); the chapter is not committable until it is resolved.

REVISION ORDERS:

1. **Item 4 — Ben, 8:23: "What weight cardstock. Don't say 'normal.'"** — funniness 1 (smile-shaped, predictable fussy-friend group-chat humor) and portable (sits unchanged in any book with a flyer), in direct conflict with the Ch08 tracker order that Ben's next planning beat needs new stakes. Order: keep the beat's function — Theo must receive a trivial spec question so "*80lb matte*" and the phone-face-down displacement (item 5) survive intact — but rebuild Ben's line so the fussiness carries chapter-specific stakes from this print job's material world (per Ben's voice card: route/cost/backup language, never polished zingers; the retired "not a personality" syntax is off the table). Source the stakes from the scene's own inventory: the forty copies, the Queens print shop, the showcase date, or money Ben is fronting — e.g., a question shaped by Ben having already found and held a paper option he now needs validated before a cutoff. Alternatively, cut Ben from the thread and give the spec question to Priya, who is printing. Do not soften the line into politeness; replace its engine.
