Romantic Comedy, the new novel by Curtis Sittenfeld, falls into a trap I like to call “the Studio 60 problem.” The characters are comedy writers, and we’re repeatedly told how hilarious they are. But they take themselves very, very seriously.
The titular romance of Romantic Comedy is the unlikely relationship between Sally Milz, a world-weary writer at a Saturday Night Live–type show called The Night Owls, and Noah Brewster, a John Mayer–esque singer-songwriter serving as host and musical guest. Over the course of a week, Sally and Noah write, they rehearse, they banter. We see some of Sally’s sketches, including a bit about a law prohibiting attractive men from dating less attractive women. It’s a meta-commentary on her (male) colleague’s hookup with a (female) global sex symbol—think: Pete and Kim, or Pete and Kaia, or Pete and Ariana—but it’s also Sally’s cri de coeur.
