I'm having trouble parsing response from $.ajax - json

Question

I'm trying to modify some old code of mine to include comments for photos. The photos are acquired using $.ajax and the response is in html.
My modification is to get the comments as a json object and then parse the previously attained html inserting the comments where appropriate. Here is the [latest incarnation] of my code (I've tried many different alternatives)
$.ajax({
type:"POST",
url:"<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>",
data:"ajax_loadbigthumbs=true&section=<?php echo $_GET['section']; ?>",
dataType : "html",
success: function(html){
jhtml = $(html);
$.getJSON( "/commentsjson.php?getcomments=true&section=<?php echo $_GET['section']; ?>", function( data ) {
$.each(data,function(i,item){
//alert(item.comment); <--- this works so I know the data is coming back correctly
console.log(jhtml.find('#comments_' + item.photoid).attr("id")); // this shows 'undefined'
jhtml.find('#comments_' + item.photoid).css("display","block").html("<p>" + item.name + " said " + item.comment + "</p>");
});
$("#largethumbscontainer").append(jhtml);
});
}
});
But this isn't working. The console.log line (as a test) returns 'undefined' and the following line (jhtml.find) has not found anything to modify.

Answer 1

var $comment = $('#comments_' + item.photoid, jhtml);
if ($comment.length)
$comment.css("display","block").html("<p>" + item.name + " said " + item.comment + "</p>");

Answer 2

I fixed it, buy appending the html to an already existing element, and then appending the comments to that element....
$.ajax({
type:"POST",
url:"<?php
echo htmlspecialchars($_SERVER["PHP_SELF"], ENT_QUOTES, "utf-8");
?>",
data:"ajax_loadbigthumbs=true&section=<?php echo $_GET['section']; ?>",
dataType : "html",
success: function(html){
jhtml = $(html);
$("#largethumbscontainer").append(jhtml);
largethumbs = $("#largethumbscontainer");
$.getJSON( "/commentsjson.php?getcomments=true&section=<?php
echo $_GET['section'];
?>", function( data ) {
$.each(data,function(i,item){
largethumbs
.find('#comments_' + item.photoid)
.css('display','block')
.append('<p>' +
item.name +
' said: <span style="font-style:italic;">' +
item.comment +
'</span></p>');
});
});
}
});