Beth Littleford

What's similar between 'Daily Show' and 'RJ Berger' is that people are grabbing me - not quite the groovy intelligentsia Starbucks barista, but the Latina nurses at my gynecologist's office - and telling me they love the show.

The way that Dickens structured his books has a form that we most readily recognize now from, say, the great T.V. series, like 'The Wire' or 'The Sopranos.' There's one central plot line, but then from that spin off all kinds of subplots.