Strips like this make me nervous, because it’s a long setup to a single punchline.  I realize that the vast majority of three-panel humor strips do it this way, but I prefer to have some support gags, throwaway gags, echo punchlines, character humor…anything I can throw in there to increase the chance that the reader will actually laugh.  In short, this strip lacks the solidly engineered joke-redundancy you’ve come to expect from your weekly PartiallyClips.  I’m left hoping that one gag can carry the load.