Comedy Analytics, Read Out Loud
Deep dives, methodology updates, fan-theory autopsies, and show-launch analyses — every post backed by the same data that powers the index.
86.8
Debuts at #1 — the new funniest show
All 50 episodes, 3,737 jokes. Broad City debuts at #1 with a Humor Index of 86.8 — the first show to clear 86, knocking Chappelle's Show off the top. It's the densest live-action show on the board (3.52 jokes/min) at near-top craft, and the rare show whose highest-scoring season is its last.
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The Archive
26 more dispatches — show launches, methodology audits, leaderboards, retractions, the lot.
77.6
Futurama Humor Index (#12)
June 14, 2026 · 4 min read
All 170 episodes, 1999–2025, 11,042 jokes. Futurama lands at 77.6 (#12 of 19) — and the Hulu revival held up almost perfectly (craft 6.79 vs 6.82). Its most-quoted joke roasts Friends, the show it now outranks.
17.2%
Escalation share — highest on the index
June 11, 2026 · 6 min read
All 120 episodes, 6,538 jokes. Curb debuts at #4 (80.8), the highest-ranked HBO show on the board — and 17.2% of its jokes are escalations, the highest share of any show we've measured, ahead of the Seinfeld Larry David co-created.
85.6
Debuts tied for #1
June 10, 2026 · 7 min read
All 27 episodes of Chappelle's Show, our first sketch show — 1,148 jokes. It enters tied for #1 at 85.6 with the highest per-joke craft and impact on the board, despite one of the lowest joke densities we've measured. Dave Chappelle owns the most lopsided WAR chart we've published.
81.5
Season 6 — the peak season
June 9, 2026 · 7 min read
All 441 episodes and 28,170 jokes, scored. The golden age is statistically real — Season 6 peaks at 81.5 — but the post-classic decline is gentler than the memes: seasons 11–20 never drop below 75, and the single highest-scoring episode is from Season 16.
1.85
Jokes per minute (among the lowest)
June 9, 2026 · 6 min read
All 18 episodes, 1,231 jokes. Freaks and Geeks lands at 70.4 — one of the lowest on the board — because it's among the least joke-dense shows we've measured. But its highest-rated moments are gut-punches, not laughs: the show where funniest and saddest are the same scene.
+0.30
Geoffrey's vs-castmates edge (best in cast)
June 7, 2026 · 8 min read
We scored all 148 episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Will Smith leads the cast in total Comedy WAR — but only because he says four times as many jokes as anyone else. Per joke, the funniest Banks-household voice is Geoffrey, the butler with 14 lines an episode and the sharpest one in the room.
338 vs 322
Artie vs Larry, career WAR
June 5, 2026 · 9 min read
We scored all 90 episodes of The Larry Sanders Show, the first HBO comedy in the dataset. It ran cringe at The Office's rate a decade before The Office existed, its best player wasn't its star, and one of its episodes technically didn't exist until this week. Hey now.
+3.5
S13–S17 vs S1–S7 (HI points)
May 31, 2026 · 8 min read
Fan consensus says peak Sunny is the original FX run. The Humor Index disagrees. We scored all 177 episodes across 17 seasons; the last five (S13–S17) outscore the first seven (S1–S7) by 3.5 points. Sunny didn't decline. It got meaner — and the dialogue craft followed.
5
fan theories, tested
May 25, 2026 · 5 min read
Our new Explorer lets you rebuild any sitcom and see how funny that cut scores. The Arrested Development revival really was worse — but The Office didn't fall off after Steve Carell, and the Schitt's Creek glow-up doesn't show up in the jokes.
77.9
Community Humor Index (#5)
May 24, 2026 · 8 min read
We scored all 110 episodes of Community. It lands at Humor Index 77.9 — fifth of nine shows. But the real story is the season curve: it tracks the show's behind-the-scenes history almost to the decimal. The gas-leak year is real, the Harmon rebound is real, and the season everyone defends is quietly the weakest.
6 / 80
HI ∩ IMDb top-10 across catalog
May 16, 2026 · 8 min read
Our April post reported r = -0.005 between the Humor Index and IMDb. We dug back in. Within-show correlations span -0.115 to +0.392. The show-level correlation is -0.287. HI's top 10 and IMDb's top 10 overlap 6 of 80 across the catalog — exactly chance.
77.4
Taxi Humor Index (#7)
May 16, 2026 · 9 min read
We just scored all 114 episodes of Taxi. It lands at Humor Index 77.4 — statistically indistinguishable from Seinfeld, Friends, and Schitt's Creek. The format we used to penalize for is the format every modern character comedy descends from. And Louie De Palma cracks the top 10 cross-show.
8 of 10
AD characters in the craft top 10
May 15, 2026 · 8 min read
Of the ten characters with the highest per-joke Craft scores on our index, eight come from one show. The Bluth family owns the craft leaderboard. The other two outliers — Ron Swanson and Creed Bratton — are revealing in their own right.
1,181.9
George Costanza's career WAR
May 12, 2026 · 8 min read
We finally have six shows scored under v2 consensus. George Costanza tops the cross-show WAR leaderboard at 1,181.9 — narrowly edging Jerry Seinfeld. Ron Swanson has the highest per-joke Craft score of any character on the index. Here's the top 25.
69.1%
Schitt's character comedy share
May 3, 2026 · 7 min read
Across 6 fully-scored shows, character_comedy is the most variable axis in our taxonomy — a 45-point spread. Schitt's Creek tells more character-driven jokes than Seinfeld. By a factor of nearly three.
78.3
Schitt's Creek HI (#5)
May 2, 2026 · 7 min read
Schitt's Creek scored the lowest of the five published shows when it debuted — but ranks #1 on Impact and #2 on Craft. One of the cleanest demonstrations our methodology has of why joke count alone is the wrong question.
85.2
AD Humor Index (#1)
May 4, 2026 · 8 min read
Arrested Development debuts at 85.2 — 4.65 points clear of Parks. That's twice the size of the gaps between #2 and #6 combined. Here's what's actually inside the gap.
80.55
Parks Humor Index (#1)
April 30, 2026 · 7 min read
After scoring all 126 Parks and Rec episodes, Pawnee edges Scranton 80.55 to 80.22. The margin is inside our noise floor — but every secondary metric points the same direction, and Ron Swanson is now the highest-quality lead character on the site.
ICC 0.28
Single-run reliability
April 17, 2026 · 9 min read
A test-retest study on 30 episodes. Show-identity bias is tiny (not significant). But the scorer is noisier than we thought — individual episode Humor Indexes are only 28% signal, 72% run-to-run variance. Here's what we're doing about it.
7.9%
Variance between shows
April 17, 2026 · 8 min read
A hierarchical Bayesian model of joke impact on 15,000 jokes. Format effect: statistically zero. Top-tier shows' credible intervals all overlap. 64% of joke-level variance is unexplained within-joke noise.
1,181.9
George's current WAR (#1)
April 16, 2026 · 7 min read
Our April 16 analysis of Comedy WAR. Post includes an April 19 update: after fixing a standup-weighting bug, George Costanza overtook Jerry for #1.
78.6 vs 77.8
Office vs Seinfeld (current)
April 16, 2026 · 6 min read
Our April 16 analysis of removing the multi-cam penalty. Post includes an April 19 update: after a standup-aware rescore, Office retook the top spot at 80.2 vs Seinfeld 79.1.
r = −0.005
Pooled correlation
April 12, 2026 · 7 min read
We compared 591 episodes across The Office, Seinfeld, and Friends against IMDb. Pooled correlation: r = −0.005. Audience ratings and comedy craft are essentially unrelated.
186
Episodes Analyzed
April 10, 2026 · 8 min read
We ran all 186 episodes of The Office through our AI comedy analyst. The results surprised us — some "classic" episodes aren't as funny as you think.
5
Dimensions
April 10, 2026 · 6 min read
Peak density, effective craft, memorability bonus — here's the complete breakdown of how we turn thousands of joke scores into a single number.
Retracted
See update note in post
April 10, 2026 · 5 min read
Our original April 10 argument for a laugh-track penalty — and why we removed it a week later when a Bayesian audit showed the effect was indistinguishable from zero.