After a lot of research, here is the best work around I’ve found to cherry-pick which clips to generate waveforms for.
“If you want the audio waveform to generate for a single clip you can right click the clip and select “audio gain” then adjust the gain and it will generate a waveform. ”
Not ideal, but if anyone has other suggestions let me know. I’d think you could just lasso a bunch of clips in a bin, and then select “generate waveform” or something. Not have to edit it all in, then do this sillyness.