Romantic Comedy

The Danny Horst Rule is a symbolic rule developed by Sally to highlight a sexist double standard. Named after TNO writer Danny Horst, this rule dictates that average men are attractive to extraordinary women, but average women are not attractive to extraordinary men. This hypothetical rule implies that women are not just interested in or attracted to physical appearance; they’re drawn to intellect, humor, and emotional intelligence as well, whereas men only care about a woman’s beauty and sensuality. The more famous a man is, the more likely he is to date a woman with the most social capital—beauty, wealth, and fame. As Sally observes Danny’s relationship with Annabel, she notes a pattern: Several other men whom she deems average have also dated or married beautiful and famous women that have guest-hosted TNO. Sally obsesses over this phenomenon throughout the novel, grappling with its implications for nonfamous women of average appearance as they search for romantic partnership. The Danny Horst Rule is, in part, a projection of Sally’s internalized sexism and reveals her internal anxiety about ways she perceives herself to be lacking. As Sally’s arc develops, she begins to separate her personal insecurities from the reality of systemic misogyny, which allows her to see Noah as a person on his own terms and accept his love, attraction to her, and desire for commitment as genuine.

In Romantic Comedy, both romantic leads struggle with careers that are deeply subject to other people’s whims and desires rather than their own. In her comedy sketches, Sally is sharply observant of the world, using her writing to critique social problems that matter to her. If she can make a joke about, for example, average-looking women, then she can feel as though she is making a space for women like her in the public cultural consciousness. When it is just her alone with the page, writing allows Sally to edit and revise her ideas, sharpening them until they’re exactly how she wants them. She has full control over her writing—something she doesn’t have in almost any other area of her life. Writing emails to one another allows Sally and Noah to communicate openly and freely in ways that they couldn’t when they spent time in person together. They’re both more expressive and more direct in their writing than they felt safe to be in their first meeting, which helps them build a relationship. Though they both felt a connection and an attraction to one another when they met in person before becoming pen pals, it’s through writing that they fall in love.

Writing gives the writer distance between subject, object, and truth. Sally enjoys the distance writing gives her in her correspondence with Noah because it’s a space in which she feels comfortable and safe. Writing emails allows her to experiment with vulnerability without feeling the full pressure of doing so. As a woman struggling to grow into the next version of herself, it makes sense that she leads with her writing. Songwriting is more outwardly intimate than comedy writing, but Noah and Sally are united by how vulnerable it is to release writing into the world for public consumption and judgment. This email exchange keeps the relationship very much in the contemporary world; most people communicate almost solely through online mediums or text messaging, and the COVID-19 pandemic isolated people further into their computers. But their emails also evoke love stories that were built through love-letter writing, giving their love story a more classic feel.