No thought or body part seems too private or explicit that it can't be mined for humor.
For Erickson, the subject of abortion rights, and the way that women act as if their life and health depend on it, is a rich mine for humor.
A few of the lesser characters do possess traits that might have been mined for humor but instead are allowed to stand as signifiers of a vague intention to be funny.
Did you start with a heavier script and then mine for humor?
Dunst works at a funeral home after school, giving makeovers to corpses, a job that's mined for morbid humor.
Rather than play innocent about these dynamics, "Sherlock" mines them heavily, for humor and frisson.
Characteristically, Goldhuber mines the dynamic for humor, but even more for pathos, as the music alternates between a melancholic score by Geoff Gersh and peppy recordings of classic country by Skeeter Davis.
And Bill Haefeli, who says he "mines the cultural landscape for humor," finds a mother lode close to home, in his same-sex satire, "Gay Marriage".
While Mr. Brooks, Charlie Chaplin and others have long mined the Third Reich for humor, poking fun at Nazis has been taboo in this country.
While his story is touching and he mines the clever premise for humor, it drags a bit in the middle, then picks up at the end.
There are other shows that mine politics and the White House for humor, most notably "Veep," on HBO, which adapted a wickedly funny and seditious British comedy, "The Thick of It," to an American vice president and her staff.
