She became known for her hilarious facial expressions, seriocomic reactions, and double takes. Critical response to Harvard and Goldberg's seriocomic turn as bickering hired killers was overwhelmingly positive. She appeared on Broadway in Wendy Wasserstein's seriocomic play, "The Heidi Chronicles". Writing for "The New York Times", Vincent Canby called the film "carefully muted [and] seriocomic". Edam is a seriocomic pivot in the Australian film "Three Dollars". The ancient seriocomic genres initiated the "carnivalistic line" in Western literature. According to Bakhtin, the seriocomic genres always began with "the living "present"".