Your points are all well taken - it is indeed my hope that having the gags spread out over the length of the edit will make it enjoyable.

I like the concept of the awkward silence version, but the execution bugs me. The scene in TPM is one single continuous shot so there's no good footage to work with. The editor used a cropped shot of Panaka, which isn't too bad, but I hate the Obi shot. He doesn't even look the same for some reason (maybe the scenes were shot a long time apart?), there's no sand blowing, etc. Also the slow motion used to extend the reactions was really obvious.

I'm well aware that you can make the same kind of complaints about many of my clips, but they don't bug me so too bad. :p