Character development in The Big Bang Theory

My sisters and I continue going through various television shows in order. We recently started Modern Family after finishing The Big Bang Theory.

It is not as unfailingly kind as WKRP in Cincinnati; characters do come through for each other, but they can be pretty mean to each other too. It is not as focused on empathy as Barney Miller, though they sometimes focus on empathy, especially with Sheldon trying to understand it.

One thing I have really appreciated is the character development.

There were things that I had noticed in general before. For example, it makes sense that Raj was the last one unmarried at the end. He had progressed a lot from being someone who could not even talk to women (and was a spoiled rich boy) to someone who had been able to have multiple relationships and survive breakups. 

It was emotionally a huge moment when he was first able to speak to Penny without having any alcohol, and meaningful that he had a recurrence of it with Anu but was able to discuss it with her. 

I liked his relationship with Anu, and with Emily before that, but if all of the original cast had ended the series married, that might have felt a little too neat. One could reasonably believe that as the character goes on, he would be able to find a good match and move forward.   

I am sure some people did not like Penny being pregnant and happy about it at the end, but there had been multiple times when she had indicated that having children was in her plan before. Fear of commitment was also a well-established part of her long-term character arc. So that she could develop cold feet about it, then be happy about it once it happened, makes a lot of sense.

Those were things that I had noticed from starting in season five and seeing a lot of reruns, where I had pretty much seen everything, but not in order.

Going through in order, I see that that Howard asked Leonard to set him up with one of Penny's friends after Raj and Sheldon started working together and Howard tried hanging out with Penny and Leonard and felt like a third wheel. 

Watching in order, it was clear to me that when Penny told Sheldon a story about regretting not telling someone how she felt, it was about Leonard. She could easily have had other past experiences, but that was not what she was describing.

In season 7, Sheldon wants to quit string theory, isn't allowed to, and runs away to rides the rails. The immediate catalyst seems to be someone else making a big discovery, but earlier that season there was a lot of drama over Sheldon thinking he had found a way to synthesize a new element but making a big mathematical goof. There were several episodes in between, but the way it eroded his confidence is completely logical.

It feels like the writers knew the characters really well, and were keeping track of their journeys, not leaving them static.

Of course, that means that when they did sacrifice continuity for a cheap joke, it bugged me more. Sometimes they totally did.

Also, I really hate some of their cameos. 

That being said, I do not blame them for retconning Mrs. Wolowitz into someone more beloved after the actress who portrayed her died. They were paying their tribute to Carol Ann Susi, and I think that's a good enough reason. 

I know it wasn't a perfect show, but we mostly enjoyed it. That dipped a little in the last two to three seasons, but even then there were some pretty good laughs.

It's one we can (and do) quote a lot, which always helps. 

We have not watched any of the prequel spinoffs, but have not ruled out the next one yet. Premise is important, but then it comes down to execution.

Catching up with former friends, emphasis on "former"

This post may seem like mean-spirited gossip. I am aware, but I think it may be useful for some other things I want to explore next week.

When I was posting about my concerns about being a scold, I started thinking about when people were disagreeing with me on Facebook and then unfriended me. 

For the three I was thinking of specifically, it always happened around election times. With at least two of them I think a big part of it was that I was a woman disagreeing with them, refusing to see how right they were.

Since it was mostly regarding voting and anger at the Democratic candidate, I wondered if they saw things any differently now. Would we be in agreement now?

I guess there should be a question about whether I was wrong, but since it was so much about elections, and Trump is himself, I will not concede any ground here. 

I will also not concede ground on defending the posts I made on my own Facebook page about things I strongly believed in when people were arguing points that I knew were wrong. If I had been the one arguing on their pages, that might be another issue. 

I realize this is starting off where I might be the one not open to personal growth. For these areas, yeah, I am pretty comfortable.

That leads to one more issue: I am not going to name people. I believe this is appropriate. However, when I do that (I did write about at least some of these incidents before) I frequently get messages with people wanting to verify their guesses. 

(Which I get, and if you ask I probably will tell you.)

Anyway, to eliminate some of the need to guess...

This will only cover people who deleted me after their efforts to change my mind failed. Therefore, soft deletes for posting stupid stuff that I knew would lead to a fight are not in here. 

The person I deleted after a discussion on police racism after he stated he would be okay with one (Black) friend of mine being shot in a nice neighborhood, because after all, he did have a criminal record (though not for anything you should shoot someone for) would not count. However, I know his arrogance and crookedness did lead to a near nervous breakdown and rupture with his friend and business partner, so my expectations for him are low.

It also does not include the person I deleted for becoming really abusive when I was supporting Clinton over Sanders. However, I did look her up a while back to see if local measles outbreaks had softened her vaccine-cautious stance at all, and no, it had not.

Also, for the two people from school who were always correcting everybody in the most obnoxious way possible, I was never friends with the one who died (though I did talk to him at a gathering) and for the one who was always telling women how they were so cute and he always had a crush on them, I blocked him after he got nasty with me when I explained why I did not feel comfortable accepting his friend request (due to some spying). 

So it's not any of them!

That leaves three.

The one from longest ago, while I was disagreeing with him, a friend was disagreeing with him worse. He couldn't unfriend her, so he did unfriend me. (This is the one where I did not notice the gender aspect as much, but it have have just been less personal for me because of the other woman, who ended up leaving Facebook.)

He has since moved to Texas. While it is no longer his profile picture, he did at one point change it to the Marine Corps War Memorial (Iwo Jima) statue style photo of Trump with the bloody ear, with a lot of hearts all around it. 

If he hadn't unfriended me then, I suspect it still would have happened eventually.

The second one, who had previously complimented my intelligence which I think made my disagreement more bitter, has changed his name. I thought maybe there had been some mix-up, but those pictures of the kids are his. The pictures are really old, but they are his. I feel like there is a divorce in there somewhere.

Anyway, along with some anime and football, he has an angry post about Noam Chomsky endorsing Biden, a comment that something that was labeled neo-conservatism is actually grass roots conservatism, and a Rick and Morty video clip saying that gaslighting doesn't exist with the comment "true". (In that clip, it is a man telling a woman that, arrogantly correcting her, but that is probably a coincidence.)

He seems like a lot of fun. 

Finally, the third -- who could not reference Clinton without changing "Hill" to "shill", "shrill", or "kill" -- seems to only post about music now. 

That might show some change, though only at a level to avoid the issue, not fighting for anything better. 

I get being exhausted by it all, I even get a sense of futility, but hey, you were part of the harm. Suck it up and do something.

I am afraid this post feels very self-indulgent, especially since having done the review now my first thought seems to be "Good riddance!"

There is a second thought, though, of some sadness. 

Leaving aside those two that I was never friends with, these are all people that I have liked. I often liked them a lot. I remember good things about them. 

I know they would not agree, but the disagreements we had were fundamentally about the right of others to exist unmolested, and about being good to each other. That so many people who would endorse that in general couldn't live with that when it specifically conflicted with their ego and prejudices is a tragedy. 

It is not less of a tragedy that the ego and prejudices were unexamined. 

That just makes it worse. 

Related posts: 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/04/fighting-on-internet-three-stories.html  

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/06/borders-and-boundaries.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/05/two-more-down.html 

Reactions all over the place: Gavin Newsom

I haven't posted a single thing about Gavin Newsom before. 

I have wanted to respond to a few posts, which would probably really irritate the people sharing them. I have also seen enough contradictory posts that I don't know that me responding would matter, except you don't really know what other people see.

What else is there for me to do but a blog post where I can go over the different aspects? That's my jam.

You are probably aware that Gavin Newsom has started mocking Trump by imitating his communication style. This includes lots of capital letters, vainglory, and ridiculous photos. 

There are people celebrating it and criticizing it. The political alignment is not as clear as you might expect.

There can be the usual argument of whether having fun with mockery is detrimental or takes away from other issues; I wrote about that yesterday, and different opinions can be valid.

Here are some of the specific points and my thoughts on them.

It is a way to make the media deal with Trump's incoherence and the problems in his governance.

That might be worthwhile, but it doesn't seem to be happening. Morning Joe said that Newsom was embarrassing himself and that it was pointless since Trump isn't even up for election now, but he seemed to be deeply uncomfortable saying that. I think maybe Morning Joe is embarrassed at their failures, but refusing to deal with it.

Realistically, the media has ignored so many reasons to cover Trump responsibly that I don't know if there is anything that could make it happen at this point. Like, maybe if there were serious personnel changes, but what we have instead is rich people buying and corrupting media sources. Changes here would be great, but that's not something Newsom can fix, even if that is his goal.

I wish our governor was doing something like that!

That's from an Oregonian. I just want to point out that you cannot read a single thing about what Tina Kotek is doing without seeing massive disrespect being thrown at her for being a lesbian. They would excoriate her for trying something like what Newsom is doing.

I don't agree with everything Kotek does, but I often can see that while something is not ideal it is trying to head off something worse. Even though there have been ICE raids in Oregon, we are being criticized already for not doing more. There are some other areas where federal persecution is going to be a real problem. I don't know the best ways of dealing with all of it, but I am positive Newsom-style mockery would not serve our state well.

Let's look at Newsom's position: he is a straight, white man who is relatively good-looking at the head of the fourth largest economy in the world. While California does have its conservative pockets, overall votes tend more reliably liberal than Oregon, where Democrats generally capture the federal but never the legislature. 

Newsom is privileged. You can argue about whether or not what he is doing is the best way of using it, but don't try and pretend that anyone could get away with it.

He could be president!

I do not in any way doubt that part of what he is doing is angling for the 2028 nomination. I do want to note that a big part of this mess that we are in is that people are so quick to jump on bandwagons. Anytime someone says something they like -- even if not particularly profound or even original -- it becomes "This is the one!"

What's really great is that it has the conflict of enemies never being allowed to be human. That means when a Cheney defends democracy -- unexpected, but not so much revolutionary as the least they should do -- you have people saying she should be the running mate on the Democrat ticket. That didn't happen, but then there are still leftists who won't forgive Kamala Harris for having Liz Cheney join her at a rally.

I mean, I guess if the electorate is going to be that fickle with that little attention span and analysis, that's how we got here, but isn't that a reason to change?

It is also worth pointing out that they won't forgive the woman with darker skin, but so easily reconcile themselves to the white guy being an ass. I mean, are we going to learn anything? 

But he is anti-trans and anti-homeless people!

I hate to keep going back to race, but one thing we really need to understand is that white men are so closely aligned to power that they very easily sympathize with it. Being elected to a high political office does nothing to discourage that sympathy. That being said, Newsom is definitely a bigger jerk, less focused on service and equity than Joe Biden. 

Newsom had his biggest opportunity to oppose Trump and Charlie Kirk on trans rights and he blew it. That should not be forgotten.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/03/newsom-takes-the-heat-for-an-unfair-trans-policy-00384037   

He actually does not seem to be doing terrible things with homelessness. That does not mean he has never cleared an encampment or done something inhumane, but he seems to be doing better, and that is worth something.

https://davisvanguard.org/2025/08/newsom-homelessness-progress-report/ 

Look, if we do indeed get to vote for president again, I do not see myself promoting Newsom or supporting him in the primaries, but if he ended up being the Democrat candidate in the general election I am positive he would still be better than any Republican candidate because their bar is that low.

Nick Fuentes likes him.

This is again something that makes a lot of sense. Newsom is imitating toxic masculinity and he does not have the brown wife and children that Vance has. 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gavin-newsom-is-being-embraced-by-some-on-the-far-right/ar-AA1La2vG?ocid=BingNewsVerp  

It's still pretty gross. 

What are some things we can learn from this?

Well, it indicates there is not a lot of intellectual depth on the far right, but we always suspected that. 

Would it translate to the general election? I doubt it. Continuing in his current vein would alienate a larger percentage of voters, unless we are campaigning specifically on the idea that some people will get the joke and others won't and that will translate to a majority. That's about as sound a political strategy as the people who believed that a tie in the electoral college would get Evan McMullin elected in 2016.

It does make me think that there actually is some harm in this type of behavior. 

I would question that anyway, like if people get all caught up and elated from pure mockery and feelings of superiority, are they going to balance that with caring for people and working toward good? 

Maybe sometimes the reason that people get so quick to jump on a bandwagon and have a hero is that then it takes responsibility off of them. 

Maybe you can have both, laughing hard and then working hard, with a counterbalance, but I'm going to need to see more evidence.

So far I'm not impressed. 

Telling you what to think

I see a lot of scolding on the internet lately: You are wrong for that!

In the interests of full disclosure, while my blog focuses more on highlighting issues and contradictions and hoping it can lead to good conclusions, I am pretty contradictory at home.

It is common for my sisters to see some public figure say something trenchant and go "He's my hero!" 

I constantly reply, "He shouldn't be."

I refer to it as contradicting instead of scolding, because I am not using any sharpness or disdain. It is my tired -- and perhaps tiresome -- reminder that we have talked about the problems with this. Their most common response is that they know, though they still keep saying it.

(For various expressions of anger -- even thought it's not really productive and we have also talked about that -- I respond "That's fair," so I am not always being the contrarian.)

There are a few trends that are important. I want to get into them with a more specific example tomorrow, so am laying groundwork today.

One recent example was a guy getting mad at all the people sharing photos of the tacky gold additions to the Oval Office. That wasn't the important issue! Not like the economy or deportations or anything like that.

A lot of people will tell you that the secret to improv is going "Yes and..."; maybe the secret to putting a little nuance in your political discourse is going "Yes, but..."

This is a very stressful presidency. It is also true that this president has terrible taste. With no sophistication, all that comes through is an obsession with vulgar displays of wealth. To be fair, why would there be any area in which he isn't disgusting?

If you get some relief out of mocking him, that may be okay. People often point out -- completely fairly -- that when we focus on him being fat or wearing diapers, he won't hear that, but people we care about (or people we should care about) who are fat or incontinent will hear that and be ashamed. 

Mocking his bad taste (and probably his orangeness) is not going to apply to as many people.

It is also true that the deportations and slashing of important programs is much worse. There are so many terrible things every day... I mean, that's why I say this is a stressful presidency.

I also saw an interesting point that someone doing that much alteration does not seem like someone who is planning to leave.

That might be important. 

Would that point be better addressed by looking at election security and fighting to protect vote-by-mail? Undoubtedly, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention to things like that.

I also hope that we are capable of being aware of multiple things. Maybe in terms of the efforts we put into fighting, we need to focus, but it doesn't mean that we can't know about other areas of concern and support the people concentrating on them.

(Just as a side note, I do think the ballroom is mainly a way to allow for bribery and money laundering. It could certainly correlate with his plans to be dictator for life, but probably relates more to the total corruption and shameless greed.) 

My point is that a lot of people are going to want to tell you that you are wrong. Sometimes they will have a point, but it is not the only point. Maybe the real issue is that they are just being jerks.

This is an aspect of dominator culture, where putting down someone else through your own superior knowledge or cleverness feels like a great thing to do, even though all it really does is create bad feelings.

It doesn't get anyone fed or safe. It doesn't spread love. All it really does is serve ego.

Serving your ego is unlikely to be a weapon successfully used against Trump. 

1960 - 1958: July Daily Songs

When I was a kid I used to conflate 50s and 60s music, lumping 20 years' worth of music together. 

As I work on this, the distinctions are becoming clearer. I suspect it would be even more clear if I were working forward instead of backward.

While I have referenced the superiority of Domenico Modugno's "Volare" to Bobby Rydell's, I have both of them featured in July. 

This is the time period of my parents' courtship and marriage. It's not just that the songs my mother would talk about come up, but two of my favorite records growing up were At the Hop and Cruisin' 1956. Those albums were released in 1975 and 1970, respectively, but I understand their appeal to my parents better now.

1958 was the first year before Billboard did a hot 100. Prior to that there had been three years of a hot 50 (1956, 195, and 1958), and then just a hot 30 before that.

In my listening I just finished 1950 and for posting I just started 1955.

One change coming up is that when we get into the hot 30 years, I am only picking five songs instead of ten. That is partly an issue of availability, but also as we get less rock, the music becomes less fun. I will write about that more when I get to those posts.

For now I want to mention it because of two things. 

After the 1958 songs had all been posted (so, 2 - 3 weeks ago), a song I had not chosen, "Chanson D'Amour" started playing in my head. Written by Wayne Shanklin and recorded by Art and Dotty Todd, part of the song's success was due to a lot of DJs not wanting to play rock.

They were wrong for that. They were right that the song is not rock. I like it anyway, though I guess it took a while to grow on me.

Then we ended July with "Rumble" by Link Wray & His Ray Men. It is a good song, which is reason enough to play it. However, while it did make it to number 16 on the pop charts, and number 11 on the R & B charts, it did not spend enough time there for it to be on the year-end hot 100. 

That happens to lots of songs, but in this case I can't help but think that part of it was many stations refusing to play it because the term "Rumble" was associated with street fights. 

Now, that might be interesting on its own, but let's add to the story that Link Wray originally named the song "Oddball"; Phil Everly suggested the title when he heard it, as he thought it sounded like a street fight.

Okay, he kind of has a point, but it appears he didn't do Wray any favors. 

1960 

7/1 “Stay” by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs
7/2 “Wonderful World” by Sam Cooke
7/3 “Image Of A Girl” by The Safaris & The Phantom’s Band
7/4 “Theme from A Summer Place” by Percy Faith
7/5 “Only the Lonely” by Roy Orbison
7/6 “Devil or Angel” by Bobby Vee
7/7 “Georgia On My Mind” by Ray Charles
7/8 “Tell Laura I Love Her” by Ray Peterson
7/9 “Volare” by Bobby Rydell
7/10 “Beyond the Sea” by Bobby Darin

1959

7/11 “Lonely Boy” by Paul Anka
7/12 “Sleepwalk” by Santo & Johnny
7/13 “Donna” by Ritchie Valens
7/14 “The Happy Organ” by Dave Cortez
7/15 “There Goes My Baby” by The Drifters
7/16 “A Lover’s Question” by Clyde McPhatter
7/17 “A Teenager in Love” by Dion & the Belmonts
7/18 “Only You (And You Alone)” by Franck Pourcel
7/19 “It’s Late” by Ricky Nelson
7/20 “Sorry (I Ran All The Way Home)” by The Impalas

1958 

7/21 “At the Hop” by Danny & the Juniors
7/22 “Get a Job” by The Silhouettes
7/23 “Twilight Time” by The Platters
7/24 “Yakety Yak” by The Coasters
7/25 “Rockin’ Robin” by Bobby Day
7/26 “Rebel-‘Rouser” by Duane Eddy
7/27 “The Stroll” by The Diamonds
7/28 “Endless Sleep” by Jody Reynolds
7/29 “Peggy Sue” by Buddy Holly
7/30 “Volare (Nel blu dipinto di blu)” by Domenico Modugno

7/31 “Rumble” by Link Wray*

Some health care problems, part 3

On August 5th the US Department of Health and Human Services announced it would wind down mRNA vaccine research, terminating 22 contracts.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mrna-vaccines-diseases-tech 

That was focused on infectious diseases, so there are some arguing that it will not affect cancer research. 

(I think there are signs and signals that they are going to ruin everything, but it will take more than one announcement. There's a lot of stuff to wreck, no matter how fast you go.) 

It is still worth noting that mRNA research is one of the most promising areas for cancer. I will also note that around the time of that announcement, I learned of two friends with cancer diagnoses. Two other family friends with cancer died.

I know enough people who have had cancer -- many of whom did not survive the battle -- that I did not need those four people for it to feel terrible, but I really think that news did make it worse.

Well, humans aren't always logical. I mean, the HHS decision cited many research studies that were not well-designed or even applicable while ignoring a lot of other studies that would vehemently contradicted the decision; I am not the only one going on emotion here.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/hiltzik-rfk-jr-s-cancellation-of-mrna-vaccine-research-is-even-worse-than-it-first-seemed/ar-AA1KmQ5x?ocid=BingNewsSerp 

I should also point out that mRNA was really showing promise for curing AIDS.

It is true that people can live pretty well with HIV currently due to treatments for that. It is also true that there are a lot of countries where HIV positive people do not have access to those medications. In addition, AIDS is an infectious disease where prejudice and devaluing human life did a lot to impede treatment and prevention efforts.

That seems relevant in COVID times; it would matter on its own, but we should acknowledge these patterns.

Now, you can reasonably say that before this accursed administration pharmaceutical companies focused their efforts on long-term treatments rather than cures. That is one reason that having government and academic research was so important.

About those terminated contracts...

I already tend toward tired, but this cycle of rage and despair is really not helping with that.

I don't have anything useful to say here. I could spend a lot more time on health problems, so I will probably get back to it, maybe with better post titles. There are other bad areas that I will probably address first.

What I want to stress is that this is bad, but also that we don't get here without devaluing people first. 

That's what we need to keep fighting, over and over again.  

Some health care problems, part 2

One of the most frustrating thing about this time politically is knowing that there are people who chose it and are gleeful about it. Yes, there are also people who are starting to have bitter regrets about choosing it, but still that they could have chosen it in the first place is very discouraging.

Yesterday I wrote about COVID reducing the work force. That temporarily gave some people better work options, and we are seeing a serious backlash against that now.

That backlash -- which I will get to at a different time -- is partly about a rejection to valuing people. That had been around for a while, but things that happened during COVID reinforced it.

I will also spend more time on dominator culture later, but one thing about it is that it works better if you have different forces that can play off of each other. I think that is because when you face it head-on it becomes very hard to maintain any illusions about how wrong it is. However, when you have capitalism reinforced by ageism or racism, it's like the different forces blunt the awareness.

Therefore, while there was always the capitalistic desire to get back to business as usual, the path to enabling that included Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick saying seniors were willing to die for it and white people becoming less vigilant about the virus as they found it was affecting Black and Latinx people more:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-lt-gov-dan-patrick-suggests-he-other-seniors-willing-n1167341  

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/study-covids-racial-disparities-made-white-people-less-vigilant-virus-rcna22613 

(Let me just throw in a reminder that racial disparities are rooted in structural inequalities in access to work opportunities, health care, and environmental stressors. So, that's an indictment.)

I am never not thinking about COVID, but I am thinking of it more now.

I have already been thinking about how having such an anti-vaccine person in charge of health, I expect COVID rates to rise and a worse than usual flu season that will probably also see spikes of measles. whooping cough, and other diseases.

That was in the back of my mind as I was putting on my mask before entering my mother's memory care facility Sunday. 

I could get a lot more flak for mask wearing, but I do get some. Regardless, I was thinking that for all the things that I can't control I will not carry disease to my mother.

Then I had a flashback to a conversation I had with one of the workers, about how there is a COVID outbreak after every holiday.

Well, I had already noticed; that's why we were talking about it. Sure, it's kind of true with 4th of July, but you really see it around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's.

It suddenly occurred to me that my mother is probably not going to outlive this holiday season. 

There are things that could be worse about that. Her cognition has deteriorated a lot, and it could be around then anyway. There is a real way in which it could be a release and actually allow the start of some emotional healing.

It still makes me mad. 

Maybe she would not be quite as deteriorated yet if she had not already been infected every year. 

Losing her will be hard no matter what, but if instead of passing peacefully her passing is wracked with coughing or fever, I am going to be really angry about that.

For whoever it is who brings it back there each time, okay, the families that have the big gatherings without taking precautions may very well not even know my mother or have any reason to think about the effects on her. I have chatted with some of the other residents and sometimes their family members, but we don't all know each other.

Maybe they are okay with their loved one getting it; probably they just aren't thinking about the risks and ignoring that kind of information, but hey, maybe there is a part of them that wants the end hastened.

A problem with that is that while you can influence things, that is not the same as controlling them. In the same way that you don't control whether my mother gets it, you don't control whether other family members get it. You can't control whether the care staff gets it, leading to staff shortages that affect the quality of care.

Yes, back when it started old people died and Black and Latinx people died, but a lot of young people did too. 

A lot of white people died. 

A lot of essential workers died, with ripple effects beyond the grief of their families. 

And the majority are apparently still in denial about it, because wearing a mask is itchy and having to think about other people sucks.

That commitment to denial (ignorance) and not caring is not something that can be harnessed to save democracy.  

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/12/wear-damn-mask.html  

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/02/im-not-swearing-at-you-this-time-but.html