This Explains So, So Much

of what's wrong with comedy these days:

"“In the rewrite room,” she finally said, “we used to say, ‘It smells like a joke.’ That’s the scourge of comedy these days. It smells like a joke, but there’s no actual joke there. I’m not the comedy police, but you watch a movie, and everyone’s laughing, and then you shake it out and you realize, ‘There’s no joke there!’ ” But in Handey’s novel, she said, “I don’t think four lines go by without a killer joke. These are real jokes, man. They don’t just smell like jokes.”"