Louis Quinn II
English 110
Dr. Koelher
Critical Analysis Paper
Colin Quinn: The New York Story
In Colin Quinn’s Netflix special a “The New York Story” he begins the show by
differentiating or clearly distinguishing New York people from other types of people in the
country and world. Throughout the show Colin Quinn had everything planned historically and
chronologically. But when analyzing the work of Quinn’s humor in this special the audience can
find some interesting theories at work. When analyzing humor, we turn to the work of John C.
Meyer’s “Humor as a Double–Edged Sword.” and here we find three major theories of how to
analyze humor with the relief theory, incongruity method, and the superiority method. These
methods of analyzing humor come with four major function on how to better understand the
humor. Those being Identification, clarification, enforcement, and differentiation. These
functions give the person analyzing comedic work more insight into what the theory of humor
might be. And with Colin Quinn’s Netflix show “The New York Story” we can truly see all these
theories of Humor at work. We can find that he uses the relief, incongruity, and Superiority
theories all at play to give him a show that is as informative as possible to portray “The New
York Story”.
Throughout the show Quinn’s main theory of humor at work would have to be
Incongruity. The theory of Incongruity emphasizes cognition and that people laugh at what
surprises them, it is unexpected or is odd in a non-threatening way. This theory also has the
functions of being clarifying and differentiating. Colin meets these Guidelines throughout his
show. For example, in the very beginning of his show he mentions a pizza place and has
multiple jokes that are incongruous in accordance with the New York Pizza. The first joke
mentioning pizza was about how when ordering pizza you have to be quick and straight to the
point about it and not having a full length conversation with the owner like telling him “wow it
look hot back there and how was your day” to a New Yorker this is rude Quinn’s states. The
second joke is about how these pizza establishments do not have many tables and/or chairs this is
because they want these people to be quick and eat their food. Quinn jokes that the New Yorkers
even fold their food and walk to where they need to be because they are always in a hurry. This
is incongruous because the audience knows of these tendencies with the average new yorker but
the way it has been explained through the form that is humor made it come to light with these
individuals and they began to understand the normal patterns as Meyer’s puts it.
