Right, this one may be a bit off-topic…

I love Ian Holloway. He has been absolute gold for the Premier League this season, with Blackpool playing attacking football in the face of complete textbook adversity. By rights, on paper, the Seasiders should have been sent packing back off to the Championship weeks ago. But this season has had its fair share of twists and turns and ups and downs, and it’s ultimately to the benefit of us, the onlookers, the fans of footy, that Holloway and his golden gang have given every team a run for their money at some point.

But this isn’t a blog post to really wax lyrical about how Blackpool and their manager have breathed life into England’s footballing top flight, but rather to address something Holloway highlighted today: Why can’t the Premier League just let managers manage?

Holloway’s been pre-emptively hit by suggestions that Blackpool can only stay up if Man Utd, who they will play in their final game of the season, field a sub-standard side. With the Champions League coming up, Sir Alex could be forgiven for looking to Europe rather than prioritising a game for a league he and his team have already claimed for themselves but, as Holloway notes, isn’t it a bit insulting to Ferguson as well as Holloway, to suggest that Man Utd won’t want to end their league season on the highest possible note in front of the fans at Old Trafford?

Of course, the question of fielding weakened sides has cropped up before. Holloway himself was fines £25k earlier this season and Mick McCarthy (another opinionated manager the Premier League would do well to retain) will remember the trials of battling against bureaucrats last season all too well.

This season, more than any other, has proven that points can’t be taken for granted, matches can’t be thrown aside. Mighty teams have been soundly beaten by minnows and upsets have been the order of the day. But managers have to have long-term plans. Players are precious commodities and, the English game being the physically demanding, pacey battlefield that it is, injuries are serious concerns.

Let’s be honest here, when it comes to the PL, we fans couldn’t give two shits about the team list, not really. We want results, we want managers to be thinking long-term. We want to be down the pub at the end of the season laughing in the faces of our rivals. I can understand the PL’s desire to advertise themselves, to proclaim the PL as the world’s greatest league, and pump up the pomp and spectacle, but enough with the interference.

Who are the pencil-pushers to decide that a team in the field is too weak, or that the manager isn’t doing his job? Who are the bureaucrats to make the calls for a team in retrospect when whatever ‘damage’ (and I use that term lightly) might have been done, has been done? Teams have members of staff trained to make those calls, people who spend every waking minute living and breathing their jobs for the teams they represent. They’re called managers. How about the Premier League let’s them get on with it, eh?

Abolish the stupid fucking rule and look to lining your pockets by other duplicitous means such as sucking Murdoch’s cock.

Almost made it through there without profanity, but the rage bubbled up there at the end. Blame the ad for Sky HD.

I love HIMYM. I really do. The first three seasons (before Stella ruined everything) were some prime examples of a classic formula, tarted up a little bit for the twenty-first century twentysomethings, offering excellent comedy, and excellent comedy writing. Seriously. Look at that pilot episode. It’s a technical masterclass in how to write a comedy pilot. It’s funny, it establishes all of the main characters, sets up the show’s premise, adds in a glorious psyche twist at the end and, oh yes, it’s really funny. Worth saying twice, it’s a comedy after all.

But the first season impressed me most with its focused writing. Even though there were some standout episodes (‘The Pineapple Incident’), there were also plenty of story arcs. Lily’s crisis of faith, the Ted and Robyn dynamic, Ted and Victoria, wedding pressures from outside the group, Marshall’s principles vs employment battle. This is not to say that later seasons don’t have this, but they were handled with far greater deftness and slick ability in this season than they were in later years. Consistency is the key, and although the series has made me laugh in recent seasons, it has not done it every week. More often than not there’ll be a giggle, a sigh, and a shrug.

Which brings me to season six. They tried, they really did. But I didn’t really care about the Arcadian. And, let’s face it, Zoe was possibly the least interesting character that Ted has gone out with. Sure the story dragged on a fair bit, but it didn’t particularly entertain once they’d gotten together. At least, though, we had some time to come to a conclusion about Zoe. Good to see Nora back. Or is it? I have no idea. I literally haven’t seen enough of her to formulate an opinion which rather means that any emotional significance that her return was supposed to have was largely wasted.

And then there’s the shoehorned wedding at the end. That’s great. Rub our noses in the fact that you couldn’t give a flying fuck who the mother is any more because you’ll happily spin this series on until you’ve tiled your bathrooms with gold, no matter how tired it gets. That little scene was like a cold, wet  slap in the face to the fans who’ve been with the series from the beginning. Why? Because we know the writers are capable of so much more. I love the show, I love the series, but by god the writers need to stop shoehorning in the ‘Mother story arc’. You can be really funny and really clever, it just takes effort. On this evidence, it seriously looks like the writers are running out of big ideas.

Sample meeting:

‘Right, anyone got any awesome story arcs?’

*Silence*

‘Fuck it, let’s do everything by numbers and we’ll chuck in a 15 second scene at the end of the season to appease the die-hards.’

*Celebrations*

It might be in the nature of series that go on for more than four seasons to just get bogged down in shit – the showrunners decide that they’ve got better things to do than write, and instead of character development we get paint-by-numbers checklists. But while the season finale was alright compared to other sitcoms (and good god there’s some godawful stuff out there….watched that ill-advised TV spin-off of Knocked Up the other week and it almost made me vomit with its fucktardery), compared to HIMYM’s own standards, it was pretty damn forgettable. I can watch old early episodes again and again and again, and I can marathon entire early seasons. But I don’t really have the urge to do either for season 6.

I’ll keep watching, Bays and Thomas. But not because it’s still good. Rather because I hope it’ll  get better.

And if anyone even mentions the fucking Arcadian again, I’ll kneecap them.

Hmmm. That probably came out wrong, but it’s actually fairly accurate, what with P3P being a game where you alternate between making school friends, hitting on girls (or boys) and fighting endlessly respawning shadow monsters in a labyrinthine tower that shifts its layout every night.

The Persona series is known for a number of things, the most prominent three being that its

1. Bat-shit crazy
2. Really, really good
3. Takes forever for the various instalments to make it to Europe

We finally got the portable version of Persona 3, giving me another reason to keep my PSP out and not flog it for beer money, and it’s really very good.

I’ve reviewed it over at Dealspwn here, so I won’t bore you with the details unless you want to click through and see for yourself, but here’s a much shorter synopsis of my critique for those of you with ADHD.

The Short Version:

The story is pretty crap, particularly in comparison to Persona 2, and 3D exploration is out of the window due to UMD capacity, so getting around town is much like that in No More Heroes 2 - quick, painless, via a map. What it lacks in immersion, it more than makes up for with its slick interface, detailed 2D backdrops, non-existent load-times and expanded gameplay additions. But it’s the balance between dungeon-crawling and dating-sim that’ll just keep you coming back time and time again, with the additional female perspective potentially doubling the replay value.

Excellent.

I wish I hadn’t had such high hopes for Dragon Age II. You see, while we were all looking at Activision these past few years, we’ve taken our eyes off of the auld enemy – EA – and they’ve gone and done it again. We all know BioWare can produce stunning games. But DA:O took half a decade…how the hell were they going to produce a sequel to top it in under two years?!

The answer is…they couldn’t….and they haven’t. Dragon Age II isn’t a bad game, but it has some severely mediocre patches to it. When Obsidian took over KOTOR2 they openly lamented the lack of time they had to finish the game and it showed. Bland level design, lots of gray panelling, a heap of repetition. But at least the story was a corker. I can’t even say that about DAII. After all of that, all of the excitement about playing around with narrative and exploring new modes of storytelling, there’s nothing to make us feel or think or marvel at…just unfulfilled and empty promises. We have come to expect so much more.

I really hope Mass Effect 3 isn’t fucked now…

You can read my full rant over at Dealspwn.

There’s more coming soon.