Becker S6E13

Recently I watched the very last episode of the tv series Becker. It was fabulous.

(Spoilers ahead - spoilers of the finale as well as of the general continuity. However, if you don't know this yet, you should really just go watch more Becker!)

It wasn't planned or anything, it was just on tv. On thing that meant was that before the show started, I didn't know it was going to be the series finale. However, I had the feeling it was going to be the series finale in the first few minutes.

Quite often series finales are quite recognizable. Often they have the "bigger than life" plots, the plots that are supposed to feel epic and awesome, the plots that break the status quo that had been held for very long - if not the entire series. Usually they try to tie up all the loose ends. An episode being a two-parter (or more-parter) is also a good sign that it might be a series (or season) finale, because tying up all the loose ends and being epic are two things that are a lot easier when you have more time to do so.
There are good reasons for a finale to do those things. First off, the finale is the last thing people are going to see of the show - thus an important thing to remember the show by, so they need to be awesome. Also, as you no longer need to maintain the status quo for the next episode, so this is a good chance for you to break it. Secondly, people don't want to be left with questions, so tying up the loose ends makes a lot of sense as well.

Becker did none of those things. Alright, the status quo was broken, but it was done subtly. Usually breaking the status quo means real changes - like in Becker, Reggie being replaced with Chris or the moment when Becker and Chris started dating. There was no such thing here - there was no status quo change in such a sense of the word.
The episode didn't have something awesome or bigger than normal happening to the cast. No, this was an episode that just had the normal parallel plot lines. Nothing bigger or more awesome than normal.
The episode tied up some loose ends, but not all that much. The most obvious loose end was one that had been introduced a few episodes earlier - which was a great use of continuity, by the way - which actually ended tying up another end as well, but this end had so far been under the table cloth, so it was actually a surprise that it ended up being tied up.

The thing that made this episode a real finale was something entirely different. In the first few minutes Becker actually asked Chris out.

*dramatic silence*

Even Chris replied with "You're actually asking me out without me asking you to ask me out?". It wasn't normal. From that moment on, it became clear that this just wasn't the normal bitter Becker, something about him was different. The story then went on about how Chris thought this was the moment Becker was going to dump her. A pretty simple storyline and very similar to other things they have done. And even though nobody told me, I just felt that Becker was sincere and was actually not going to dump Chris - there was just something about his attitude that made me feel that way. Finally, Becker was making some progress. Finally, he was getting over his midlife crisis.
The deal was of course sealed when Margaret convinced Jake to go study with the money his nana had left him. The Bob-replacement guy had his own storyline here, where he tried to find a job by padding his cv, and turned down a job because the person who matched the cv would actually be underpaid for the job. That too is tied up nicely as he gets to take over Jake's news stand.
The last thing was that Becker and Chris have their confrontation and Becker actually tells that he doesn't want to break up with her and that his strange behavior might be related to him actually thinking he might happy. Chris plays a very strong role as she is clearly glad with this fact, but is also here to support Becker through the emotional changes - even if for the better, emotional changes may well be hard. The episode then ends on a very strong note, as Becker shouts at a guy pissing on his doorstep. There may be a huge change in Becker, but it isn't going to be instant.

Anyway, a great episode *thanks to the entire staff of Becker* which provided me with some very satisfying comedy tv, but which also taught me a lot about series finales. Don't try to overachieve, but pick the right things. It was truly fabulous.

Holidays

Holidays.

The time to work your ass off on your projects - so you can finally make some decent progress on them. At least that's what it is for me right now. Oh, mind you, I am in the mean time getting more than enough relation, so don't worry.

However, I am currently working on YuGiOh Rebirth, but I have a lot of other projects going through my mind as well, projects that want to get out, that want to get worked on. The Website Project I mentioned last post is one of them and so is Prism. The website project really wants to get its first version online, even though a lot of work needs to be done before that is a possibility. Prism knows it won't be done any time soon, but it is begging for some attention, seeing that hasn't been worked on. In the mean time, a very crude idea for a story I have had for a while suddenly evolved itself into a really good and original series outline. My ideas for a Star Trek series (oh, I didn't mention, I had one? Well, I do.) have been laying low for the last few days, but all the same, they have been going from a series outline to an actual series draft in my head, and I haven't written any of it down yet. At the same time, the one world that I made up through (as always, involuntary, it just happens in my head) world building instead of just seeing the adventures of the world needs a some restoration, since I realized that the name I spontaneously came up with was probably unconsciously stolen from a tv series (which I started really watching since I made up that name) and the name was actually worked deeply into the ideas from there, so it's not just a simple matter of renaming it. All the work lying around, spooking through my head. So much to do...

Holidays, oh boy, do I love these times

First Content Made

Hi All!
How are you guys doing?

I just wanted to let you know I have just started making some content for one of my next big projects. I won't tell much about it, so I will just dub it the "website project" for now. I can't even tell you the name of the project yet as I don't have a domain name yet. I have an eye on one, but that one has an owner, so I hope I can get it without paying too much (it is kind of for sale).

I haven't really been working on the system yet, but I have been working on the Good Suit, which I intend to build the website on top of. However, what I am currently been making is something different entirely: it is the content for the website. The stuff that anyone should be able to provide, not just me. However, for now, it just resides in text files on my hard drive, ready to be submitted when I create the website. Once I get around to it, I bet that it's going to be a hit!

Lost the finals, lost my faith

For any readers who don't know - I am Dutch. For the readers who read this at a time that does not match the one at which I wrote this The Netherlands just lost the finals of the FIFA Worldcup 2010 to Spain. Let me recap: nothing interesting (but a ton of yellow cards) in the first 90 minutes and then in the second extra period, a second yellow card given to a Dutch player as a Spanish players falls after not having been touched by the Dutch player. Alright, referees can make mistakes. It's ten vs eleven now, but if we con keep the score level for a few more minutes we will be on equal footing again in the penalty shootout. The penalty shootout never came - within those few more minutes the Spanish scored from an offside position. Alright, the final pass wasn't from an offside position, but the intercepted pass that lead to that pass was to a player that was offside by meters.

So alright, I am ticked off by the fact that we lost. But more so, I have lost my faith in the FIFA. Yeah, I am not objective, nobody is. However, many of the English have probably lost their faith the 28th of June, and so have many Mexicans. Actually, that day had the events that do make the objective spectators lose their faith in the FIFA. That day held the two blunders of the referees, but that wasn't the worst of it.

The worst of it came next: the FIFA almost denying the mistakes. The FIFA removed the English goal from the official summary of the game, the FIFA stopped showing offside lines when they were afraid that the referee made a wrong call, the FIFA continued giving press conferences with but a few changes - they lead into those press conference by saying they weren't going to answer questions about anything but their chosen subject and the majority of the question just ignored this subject and were about mistakes made by the referees anyway. But the worst came just now, after I had already decided to write this rant (well, I intend to actually go somewhere, so if you want you can classify this a little more positively). I was taking a look at what team was the one in the one at the short end of the offside-goal by Argentina my results included a youtube video and a few pages that included youtube videos, however, instead of getting shown the videos I was shown a message that the FIFA had taken down the video on copyright claims (Google deserves credit for telling us why these videos were removed). Nothing else was removed, just the wrong referee calls. Really, I can't understand it.

I am starting to believe the stories that call the FIFA the maFIFA, the FIFA that truly is a mafia. That's possibly just the patriot in me speaking that has just lost the finals. However, these guys dare to demand the presence of a 92 year old living legend that has had a grand child die less than two weeks ago (with the friend of another daughter being to blame for the lethal car accident). Let's just assume they are clean; there's still quite a few things that just aren't acceptable. Things need to change.

There is but one way to bring about these changes: another worldwide football organization. They would organize their own world cup - the details still elude me, but it would probably need to be at a time that does not conflict with any major football event right now in order to be successful. A possibility would be to take the free years between a world cup and a European cup, but it's easy to make a case for running in the same year as well - we would need to find a proper moment, though.

Now there is a lot of changes that this organization would incorporate, which coincide with the reasons for this new organizations:

• A clean image
• Being focused on the future, instead of on conservatism
• Able to make their decisions on their own
• A better structure that makes the employees care about fair games rather than getting higher up in the hierarchy
• No embezzling evidence of mistakes - admitting them instead
• Giving up any copyright claims to the video material (after all, this organization will have no need to manipulate it)
• Willingness to make change
• No claiming of judicial powers in hosting countries
  

Now it may seem like I want to run the FIFA out of business, but I don't. Competition is all that's needed. Competition is healthy and the current situation is brought on by the monopoly the FIFA currently has. If they run the risk of getting competed out of business, than they will change, and if it isn't for the better they will still run out of business. I want an organization that is able to start running equipment that makes it easier to be a good referee, and thus convince the world that that is the correct path to take, and eventually force the FIFA to follow suit. Revolutionize the market and counter stagnation by introducing a competing player - it's worked before. Simply look at the improvements Microsoft made to Internet Explorer in the past few years - from the terrible IE6 we went to decent IE8 in way less years than IE6 was the newest version of the browser. And all of that was instigated by them losing a large part of their market share.

It's probable that I am not only missing the funds for this plan but some other essential ingredients as well, but this is my idea:

Get an organization competing with the FIFA into big bussiness. An alternative organization that does things right instead of wrong. I call for the NAF (New Age Footall).

Edit: just after I wrote this I realized I had forgotten to mention something. Spain earned their victory. They were the better playing team. And a single attacker against only a the goalkeeper should never result in anything but a goal, yet it did (in an attack of Robben), showing that Orange (that's what we call out national team) wasn't all that tough here. However, the referee giving unjustly awarding a goal to Spain just isn't the way things should be. And even if we have a bad history on penalty shootouts (though our most recent and thus team most like that one was positive) that is the way a game without (legitimate) goals is decided according to the rules, so don't have them decided in some other strange way! And yes, I am willing to beat a better playing team through a penalty shootout - that's nothing but the rules.