phantagrae

If she didn't have any lines, she's probably not credited in the episode.

I enjoyed the episode, but I didn't like the implication that Mary may have hooked up with Alfred. Because they've made so much of a deal about Mary's beliefs and all that over the years, I kind of dislike the way they've kind of taken her down this path. What happened to, "There's no alcohol in this house..." Mary? She was drinking wine all night long and then apparently goes off to sleep with a man she just met. Makes me a little sad. I know that they've always given Mary a little edge along with her strict beliefs, but I hope they don't go that far and that there's a different explanation in the season opener. But I did enjoy it overall.

Looks like he's been having fun.

I'm not saying that people aren't allowed to want what they want and talk about it. What I'm saying is that though the question may be a valid sort of sociological question in general, as in, "Why can't there be an asexual character portrayed on TV without him/her becoming like everyone else?", but to ask why this particular character can't be portrayed as such is a different question, which then touches on the intentions of the writers. Of course viewers can choose to interpret things as they wish, but then they should realize that what they want is not necessarily going to be what the writers want, and therefore it may never be satisfying for them. Dissatisfaction is fine, but then complaining that the writers aren't writing the show/character(s) the way you want them to be seems kind of pointless after a while. And saying that the discussion is moot doesn't mean people can't continue to discuss the issue. The part that is moot is the question about "why"--the answer is that it's not the way the writers intend it to be. So that's the answer to the "why". Of course people can voice their displeasure, but the discussion going on here is more about "why can't the writers make this character be the way I want him to be?", which is different from saying they don't like a particular story line or the way Sheldon and Amy navigate their romance. What's being said, going back to the beginning of the discussion, is that the character should somehow be different than he is in order to have him represent a certain segment of society or whatever. I know that the discussion has evolved somewhat to address how the Shamy relationship is portrayed (who calls the shots, who's getting the short end of the stick, etc.), but that's not what the initial essential discussion has been. And with all your "you don't get to tell people what to talk about", I'm not doing that at all. I'm not really saying negative comments about people's opinions on the show. I'm talking about the practice of trying to force an interpretation onto the show or characters based on personal agenda, not based on the writing of the show. What I have been talking about is the writing of the show. The show and characters are written a certain way, and that's what I've been talking about.

I wonder if we'll see any Jim spottings posted online while he's down in Atlanta.

They may want or choose to see what they will, but that doesn't mean that the writers are somehow obligated, or "should" portray a certain character in a certain way in order to "represent" anyone. If it's not the writers' choice to do so, then they're not going to try to do so, and the question of why the character isn't this way or that way is essentially moot. Some people wanted JK Rowling to put Harry together with Hermione, rather that Ron and Hermione. That wasn't the story Rowling was telling, so it didn't happen that way. Whether or not one likes the story, the writer is the one who gets to tell it.

I think this is a question of what specific people want out of specific characters. Just like some people want the guys to be more nerdy, or more science-y, or more romantic, or more "manly" or whatever. People want to claim a character to represent what they want to see. The problem is that it's the writers who are deciding what story they're telling, and that includes how or when or to what degree any of the characters grow or change or mature or whatever. If they had intended, for instance, to have Sheldon be truly autistic, or asexual, or any other label or representation of a segment of the population, then they would have made that decision early on, I think. However, that would have severely limited the kinds of stories they could tell, as well as limited how they could represent his character to the wider audience. Certain things, including certain kinds of jokes, would have been off-limits, for instance, and that would have limited whatever they might have wanted to do. As it is, they can push his boundaries, and let him bounce back inside his boundaries, without violating some kind of label. It doesn't really matter, in a way, how he and Amy deal with their relationship. He has clearly come to some emotional conclusions about his feelings for her, and some physical conclusions as well. I think the writers have done a pretty good job of showing how he has progressed along those lines. Not in a fast, straight downhill slide toward something extreme, but in his own 2-steps-forward, 1-step-back kind of way. In the end, I don't think that either he or Amy is truly doing each other any great disservice just because their relationship isn't quite what some of us imagine it should be, on either end of the emotional or physical spectrum. And I don't think that Sheldon and Amy actually have a "sex problem", just because they aren't jumping into bed the way the other couples (or popular culture seems to indicate) have done. Not everyone has sex after 3 dates, or before marriage or for all the same or different reasons. Doesn't mean either of them is or should be portrayed as asexual, or that one of them is truly "suffering".

Why is it that Sheldon and Penny playing a game together is some kind of slap in the face? So, they're friends. So, L/P have agreed to stay in 4A for now. So. Friggin. What? How does it damage anyone's relationship? Had Leonard ever cared whether or not Penny can identify a Venn Diagram? Has Penny ever cared whether or not Leonard can tell a Kardashian from anyone else? It's like Amy's made up languages or the various little Shamy games. They exist between the people who play them, but have no real bearing on the other relationships around them, for better or worse. It's simply the dichotomy between their worlds or their view of the world. Just like in the Physics Bowl episode when Penny brings in the Trivial Pursuit cards and the guys have no clue about The Brady Bunch or Van Halen. While I agree that the whole line-cutting things was not all that funny and went on too long, I don't think the other aspects were bad at all. One thing I was curious about was why Amy was "making" Sheldon go shopping with her in the first place. What kind of shopping? Like Stuart said, "Old Navy? Build-a-Bear?" Why did Sheldon "have" to go with her? To hold her purchases? To help her make shopping decisions? Was she going to be buying him underwear? Why did he have to go along in the first place? While it's true that he should have just told her he didn't want to go, I was just wondering what her reasoning was in the first place. I did like the conversation at Penny's place, with Penny feeling overlooked and insulted. While people tend to think of Beverly as a monster, in the end, she's still Leonard's mother. And while she made not have made it a priority to attend the wedding in the first place, I think she may have found that not knowing about it hit her harder than she might have thought it would. People are funny that way. You don't always know what you wanted until you realized you missed out on it. And this does come after that time when she began to question what her parenting technique might have cost her over the years. At any rate, though it wasn't the strongest episode, it still wasn't horrible. IMO

You mention the episode where Raj was considering dating both Lucy and Emily, if the situation arose. I just watched it yesterday and the WHOLE gang was telling him to date both of them. As long as he wasn't pretending to be exclusive, they even gave him permission to lie to either girl about whether or not he was out with the other the night before or whatever. So, Emily knew that he was still maybe going to see Lucy as he was beginning to date Emily and she was okay with it at the moment. Now, though Raj and Emily have gone through their relationship and BREAK-UP, their relationship is different, but it's my impression that both Emily and Claire know that he's dating (and sleeping with) both of them. I figure we'll see an episode, either here at the very end (no more than a scene or two, since it's all so busy) or at the beginning of next season, where it comes to a head. I think that Raj putting his foot in his mouth at the end is something of a harbinger of what's to come, but I don't think it's going to be much more than a typical Raj burn, like when he was "in love" with Siri and dreamed that he couldn't talk to her face-to-face either, or when the first Emily (the deaf girl) turned out to be a gold-digger. I don't think that Raj's love life is yet important to his happily ever after, so it may well be that he'll lose both of these girls and meet someone new (and I don't know if they really have time to work their way into a new character for him to meet) or he'll finally decide if one of these girls is Ms. Right. I think they took Emily too far into the "too dark" range for it to work out, unless they really address that. And so far Claire is too much of a blank slate. But I don't think Raj's boasting is making him to be a bad guy just yet. He boasts to his friends because he was always the "loser" who couldn't even talk to girls, let alone find a girlfriend. He believed that he was unlovable when Lucy broke his heart. But he's always been a braggadocio when it comes to the small successes he's had with women, and to find himself in what seems like a great position makes it hard for him to resist the gloating. It doesn't seem like he's been gloating with the girls. He brags about trying not to get their bras mixed up or whatever, but there's no evidence of what the situation is really like. I don't think either of those girls is the sort to put up with crap if they thought he was treating either of them badly.

We usually use sparkling grape juice at New Year's since we don't really drink.

I don't think it really was so much about working with Amy, in a "spend time with my girlfriend" kind of way--when she mentioned the romantic aspect of Madame Curie and her husband working together, Sheldon said that it "killed the mood". He was there for an interesting shift in science focus, emulating Feynman working in his friend's biology lab. I'm sure he'd rather spend his vacation time hanging out with a friend, or Amy, to being forced to being idle, but I think that Sheldon would probably find ways to entertain himself if he were forced to be alone. He likes his alone time, too, doesn't he? But it's true that there's no much humor to be gleaned from such a thing. What made his alone time interesting in S1 when he got fired was that they showed how he was going from project to project trying to entertain himself, etc..

Yeah, I was the only one in my family that has never had pollen allergies (I'm apparently allergic to things like adhesives on Band-Aids...), but I grew up in New Mexico. While living in Arkansas for the past 25 years, I did find I was allergic to the different pollens out there--especially on those days when you walk outside and the world is covered in green dust... I still never had the worst of it. When the pollen count was really high, I'd start to get a cough and it would often turn into a chest infection. Fortunately, that stuff hasn't seemed to follow me out to Arizona so far. My older sister has always been allergic to EVERYTHING, but she wasn't allergic to nuts--until she was... She had a bad reaction to some medication she was allergic to at one point, and shortly after that, things like sesame seeds on hamburger buns began to irritate her, and now she can't eat nuts.

There's a BIG difference between fainting (losing consciousness) and getting dizzy/falling over. Have you ever done either? I've never fainting, though I've come close to passing out on occasion with a blood sugar issue. But I have a tumor that has affected my vestibular nerve, which means that I can get disoriented (not necessarily dizzy) very easily--like if I look up or around while I'm walking. It tends to wax and wane a bit, but I don't know if I'd be able to pass a field sobriety test because I can't really walk heel-to-toe or stand on one foot. If I were looking at some spinning, rotating gizmo that was already making the other guys feel dizzy, I'd probably fall over, too. Not faint, fall over. And how many times has Sheldon actually fainted? In the one with the award. And yeah, they do seem to have Jim/Sheldon drop his pants at least once a season, but I think that there are probably running jokes for the other characters as well, it's just that Sheldon is the one with fewer boundaries when it comes to that sort of thing and is the one who either deliberately or accidentally ends up in that position, but it's usually for a different reason each time. I really don't understand why you have a problem with the Star Wars toast joke. Again, how often have they made a joke like that? The last time I recall was season 2(?), with the Cylon Toast thing when Leonard went to Penny's football party. Is one Star Wars toast joke really too much for you that you consider it falling into the toast category joke too much of a lame sci-fi reference? Some people keep claiming that they no longer reference enough sci-fi stuff because of all the "romance". What would you have them reference instead, especially with Sheldon coming up with stuff to entertain Bernadette? Picking out baby names? I just don't get all the nitpicking over what are essentially typically harmless jokes and humor. I don't think the show needs to be a soap opera, or have a constant ongoing plot like in LOST or whatever. Being a sitcom with a determination to move the characters forward in a pretty slow manner, they're more concerned, it seems to me, with just coming up with the "situations" from which to glean the "comedy". So, the situation--everyone wants to go to the wine-tasting, but Sheldon and Bernie don't/can't. Raj wants to bring Claire, but isn't ready to talk about the status of their relationship. Zack shows up and throws a bit of a monkey wrench in there. Comedy ensues from the conversations and interactions that arise.

So now that we're totally overthinking the mall train thing, the train that runs through one of the malls I've been to has kind of big cars, some with little doors, etc., and parents often ride with their kids, no matter the age. If Sheldon is a regular there, which I imagine he would be, they know that he's just a harmless goof who's still stuck on his childhood. I don't think people would be looking at him askance as long as he's not trying to pick up strange kids. He doesn't want to meet kids on the train. He just wants to ride the train the same way the other kids do. And I don't think it's meant to be some kind of major social issue or whatever. It's just another illustration of the difference between what he values (riding the train) and what others value at the mall. And I don't think that the conversation between Sheldon and Amy over the ride/massage is any big deal. Just an illustration of the different things they prefer, just like the conversations between Bernie/Howard and Leonard/Penny. "I don't have to like everything you like." And I think the train mention of course led into how the train discussion became part of the "Hardly Party" night.

I finally got to see the new episode just this afternoon. I got a temp job working setting up some stuff for a conference, so I was working until 9pm last night. I had seen several clips, but finally got to watch the whole episode. I'm amazed at some of the things people take so seriously. The bathroom scene? Really? It's not as if we were actually seeing anything--maybe I just don't think to much about what's "unseen". I ain't trying to imagine anyone's "junk". Just the dialog and the idea of the ongoing conversation. And the whole thing about whether or not the guys' invention, whether or not it's plausible, whether or not it's a violation of law, etc... I don't think the show is trying to get into all that technicality because A) it wouldn't be funny and B ), it really wouldn't be funny. As for Claire not getting to say something or react to the revelation of Raj's situation, I think that was kind of the point. Was she supposed to get mad? Scream at him? Break up with him? I think the sort of stunned reaction is better because it focused on Raj realizing that he had just outed himself. Too much reaction would have taken that away. And I don't know who said that the show wants us to root for Raj. Yeah, Leonard is still kind of stunned at Raj's situation, but I don't think that's what the writers are wanting us to take from it. I think it's obvious that Raj trying to keep from committing to Claire and then outing himself, which was the funny part, is what the writers want us to see. They want us to laugh at Raj finally being revealed. And Claire is a barely developed character, so it makes sense to me that she wouldn't get some kind of big scene or dramatic statement or whatever. She's been in how many scenes/episode? 2 or 3? If it had been Emily in the scene, it might have made sense to have a strong reaction, but even if it had been her, the punchline was really Raj's realization that his big ol' foot was securely in his mouth. Zack's "Mike DeGrasse Tyson" line cracked me up when I saw the preview the other day because I knew the name was wrong, but it took me a while to remember the guy's real name... Someone mentioned Sheldon "fainting", but he didn't faint. He got dizzy and fell. They were talking about how the movement was making them dizzy and while Sheldon was taking the video, he also got dizzy. That's all it was. I liked the stuff that Sheldon did for Bernadette. I think that one of the reasons he went all out is that it was a new sort of "adventure" for him, which, as he said, focused on his love of "restrictions". He has played games and hung out with pretty much everyone in the gang in one way or combination before, including Amy, BTW ("Fun with Flags", etc.), but he hasn't really had much time with Bernie. So, here's a new way for him to interact with her, and he makes the most of it for both of them. I really enjoyed this episode!!