Mel started to behave as if, by sitting next to a doctor in a studio every night, he had accumulated some diagnostic and therapeutic expertise. He began to speak less like the id who jokingly wants to engage in bad behavior, and more like the id who wants to tell people with problems that they're morons. Dr. Dave then had the straight man's burden, still comical, of not only dispensing real, useful information against the contrast of Mel's crude, humorous ignorance, but also of representing compassion against Mel's jaded mockery of the feeble-minded wretches who called in.