Sometimes the joke lands immediately and you don’t need it spelled out, or an attempt to cap it.
Here they aren’t strictly speaking separate panels, but the effect is the same.
Here, the name “Fading Sunset” in the first panel is much funnier than the predictable punchline in panel 3.
Comics I Don't Understand 
In my experience the names of senior living places are more often given misleading names, like Sunrise.
Ugh, second attempt to make a comment! Why does it get harder and harder?!
My issue with the Amanda would not be that the first version of the joke could stand without the second. It’s rather that the first version is not quite well-formed . The “what do you call” has a tendency to attach to the “in law school”. But that blocks “in law school” from its intended function.
Yes, and also the first version skips over grade B. The second version itself would be better if all three items could say “become” instead of one being stuck written as “are” — and to make it worse it’s the first one, so we get a wrong word before establishing the pattern with the right word.
Nonetheless, if we imagine those problems fixed (including supplying a B choice in first version), we can still ask which is the better joke solely on the basis of choice of future professions. And I guess I would go with the second version.
What do you call the guy who finishes last in his medical school class?
“Doctor”
I still don’t think the first panel of the first strip works on it own. It needs some sort of “tickler” to make the reader realize that the comparison can be read in two different ways, and the gag about “peeling monkeys” is an excellent solution.
P.S. The law student joke reminded me of a more generalized comparison:
1) Those who can: do;
2) Those who won’t: teach;
3) Those who can’t: work on Capitol Hill.
Those who can, do.
Those who can’t, teach.
Those who can’t teach, administrate.
And of course the Woody Allen version ends with:”Those who can’t teach, teach gym.”
…offending gym teachers everywhere. But it USED to be at least somewhat accurate, I think, based on my experience 50+ years ago.
My father was a professor of Education, so he taught teachers. I always wondered how that works out with the old saw. I never mentioned it to him.
When I was in high school, one of the teachers was taking graduate classes from him. She once handed me a paper and asked me to give it to him. I asked when it was due, and she confessed that it was late.
I took it and let my dad assume it was my fault it was late. I told her she better hope I never had a class with her, as I would turn in stuff whenever I felt like it.
I didn’t really find this out until long after college, but:
The A students spend all their time studying and working.
The C students spend all their time doing what we called back then “partying” but might better be called “networking”.
The C students graduate knowing a lot of people who spread out all over the country, sometimes all over the world, many of whom even in college were in influential positions because of family or connections. They keep in touch with those people. They connect C students with other C students. They help raise capital for each other’s ventures while the A students are looking for jobs within walking distance.
Since we’re offending professionals, I still like this old chestnut:
What do you call 100 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?
A good start.
Ted D – Rule is not always true.
In my husband’s case he was made the administrator (director) of a children’s mental health program and their day school . This was not because he not teach – he was there from the mental health part of the facility – but because he was the only one at the agency who could run the place when the long time executive director walked out.
Their ratings increased while he ran it. Sometime after he left they ended changing the program completely to only counseling and same for a different population, so the children who needed the facility were dumped into lesser program which were not as comprehensive.
I laughed out loud at the monkeys one. The pickleball one was especially appropriate here, though, because many people come at weird o’clock in the morning and leave about the time I get there. (I have never been a morning person.)
Meryl A –
Congrats to your husband for being a successful administrator. Not every humorous saying is intended to be 100% accurate in all situations. There are plenty that “can”, but choose to teach.
Ted D – :-)
By the way, we have a lot of “Ted D”s in our house as in Ted D. Bear.
(There is a family of 4 bears who are Theodore David Bear the first, then the second, then the third and then the fourth and “all write their names as Ted D. Bear. Yes it is a joke about a family of stuffed bears – father and sons – in my teddy bear collection. ) I hope you take no offense that they use a similar name.