Monday 12 August 2024

All Engines Go! Review - S3 Ep.26 - The Smells of Sodor + Overall

 THESE ARE MY OWN OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENCED FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANBASE

THE SMELLS OF SODOR
Written by
Craig Carlisle

Directed by
Campbell Bryer 

Produced by
Suzie Gallo

Air Date
29/06/24 - CAN
19/09/24 - US

Plot
Thomas loses a boxcar of treats and he uses his sense of smell to find it.

And finally we are at the last episode of S3! But the episode was pretty mediocre for a finale not that the show needs something grand or spetacular but it's just about Thomas and Percy puffing around Sodor to find the dinosuar pancake van and that's it. There was conflict of the van being missing and all but it just feels weak. Its like if you take 'Not So Slow Coaches' from S18 you have Thomas chasing Annie and Clarabel from Caitlin's train but take out the comuppance that Thomas had to face which was almost loosing his coaches after not taking them seriously about their criticism of Thomas' cheekiness towards them. Like in the 'Smells of Sodor' episode, you have Toby shunting around quickly not paying attention and giving the van to James to take. 

Why not have him trying to take the responsibility and go and find it with them since it was an important journey and learn not to rush around, at least there would be some character development or why not have Thomas opening the van's door three times to let his friends have a smell until it was all gone by the time he arrives at Vicarstown? 

The song meanwhile, as usual, adds nothing to the story to fill in time. I said this many times but the songs don't need to be in every episode! Sure they are made just so Mattel can make a mandated album to sell digitally and promote on their social media pages instead of telling people about the show. 

As I said, the episode was mediocre and could've been better. But at least it beats last season's finale where that episode just reinstated the old tour of Sodor and labelling it as brand new. 

SERIES OVERALL
(Some mild swearing)

I'll be blunt, this season sucks. Season 2 felt like a small improvement over its first season that it made me have four personal favorite episodes and it introduced us a great character who is a represenitive towards people on the spectrum, Bruno. In comparison, Bruno only had one titular role and one secondary appearance this season and was barely in many of the episodes despite that S2 was kind of showing or implying that he was part of the main cast. 

You think for a toy company that wants to have some representation that maybe they could put him in the main cast but then again this is the same company who ten years ago donated money to Autism Speaks for the sake of PR and didn't want to associate the Thomas brand to the Autistic Community after getting a request from a theme park for a sensory event, despite the fact that Thomas has an audience who are on the spectrum since research was made back in 2001.

For this season there had been two episodes that I'd liked which were 'Bruno's Blustery Day' and 'Night Lights'. For the former because of its inspiration by the writer himself and the latter because it used a character that was not part of the main cast and was offering something rare, variety. The rest of the episode apart from some decents ones were either bad, mediocre, forgettable, boring and bland. 

I HATED 'Abraca-Diesel' with passion for its lack of conflict in the story and its crappy friendship song when there was nothing that makes it about friendship and that it feels like a forced moral because they had no idea what to tell in the story. You could at least have Diesel and Sandy fighting over who wants to be a magician instead of just nothing. Kids can get into arguments and fights over something trivial and childish so why not implement that? To me it was the worst episode of this season. 

You might be reading this and say 'Get over your hate for AEG, it's been three years, it's just a kids show!' while you're still rattling on hating BWBA despite that is also a kids show and that iteration had been over for four years so that's pretty bad logic and hypocrisy, something that I cannot stand. 

It just feels like for some people in this fandom and to people in the general audience, criticising a kids show is a bad thing because 'it's made for kids' which just makes me think that you don't care about quality for children and just want them to sit through mediocrity while plenty of people have criticised other kids movies and shows over the years towards the likes of Pixar with 'Cars' or Disney with 'Wish'. If you care about quality and see that it is lacking, then speak out because if you just sit on the sidelines and just letting it be you're just being in favour of mediocrity. Just because something is made for kids doesn't mean that lack of quality and no criticism should get a pass, hell the Thomas Creator Collective series was critcised for its content eight years, and to be honest I don't think it'd aged well, and they made that 'it's for kids' excuse.

Also I've seen a few people trying to play 'gotcha' over the whole thing of railway realism. While I had always said that railway realism had been thrown out of the window since the original series' 5th season it's sometimes nice that railway realism has a little play in some episodes but it was never done as a way of respecting this world of trains running on a real railway system like what the Rev.W.Awdry himself had created because the realism was only there for plot purposes only. So yes it's great that James can't actually push a tree aside in the Farmers Market episode of the show but it was only done so James can get lost when making a shortcut to get to the farmers market. Sure it's easy for James to jump over the tree, regardless of the passengers because its fueled by cartoon logic, but then you don't have a story but even so the realisim would be contridicted anyway because later on in the episode the other engines jump over a bridge with their vans of things from the market and the Fat Controller inside. 

So the whole 'gotcha' thing is just really shallow as the one second of realisim is just meaningless afterwards. BWBA has more realism than this show and even then some of its moments are unrealistic as hell!  

We are just five months away to the start of the 80th anniversary year and despite that there are plans I am not putting any high expectations towards it since so far this year, Mattel has done horrible marketing towards the show and the brand. Look on their instagram page alone there had only been, as writing this in July, FIVE posts so far during this whole year, the last post was from June promoting some pretty pricy children pajamas from The Sleepy Sloth and not one thing about the show or the Christmas special that Corus annonced back in February. To me this just feels like Mattel doesn't care at all about this brand that they'd bought back in 2011. 

This is why I feel that there'll bad marketing for the 80th anniversary year because they are showing no sign of care or awareness and not helping the brand to have great toy sales despite having a whole brand new marketing team four years prior to solve that mess. Now let's compare their marketing to the Japanese instragram page which not only promote toys that they want to sell to people or events that they want people to attend, but they also tell their followers, which is about 16k compare to Mattel's 106k followers, about upcoming episodes on NHK. 

How hard is it for Mattel to tell their 106k followers about the show? They have more followers than the Japanese page and the latter is doing a much better job at marketing which furthers my belief that Sony Creative Products would and should be a better owner of the Thomas brand not only for their great commitment to market Thomas on a daily basis on Instagram but they also respect the past iteration of the show, prior to AEG they'd made products of the model era, when the CG era of the show was dominant, giving it much better accessability last decade, with them being released on DVD, streaming and on Cartoon Network, compare to Mattel's handling and I'm betting on for sure that SCP would be doing something better for the Railway Series' 80th since they'd carried the weight on their shoulders for the 75th back in 2020, even if it means AEG merch.

One positive thing about this season is that it's just 26 episodes like the original series and it's better than having 52 like the last two seasons and I hope the fourth season is like that as well. But I have very, very strong doubts that S4 would be any better. 

Anyway, now with S3 out of the way the only thing left is the upcoming Christmas special that'll be coming out in a few months so watch out for that when it's released.

Series Rating:
What's the Buzz - 4.5/10
Bells are Ringing - 4/10
Abraca-Diesel - 2/10
Overcommitted - 2.5/10
Sandy's Fine Mess - 4/10
Nia's Green Surprise - 3/10
Duck Duck Whoosh! - 1/10
Choo-Choo Check In - 5/10
Percy's Little Problem - 3/10
Fill-In Friend - 4/10
Cake It Easy - 1/10
The Can-Do Crew - 6/10
Pizza Picnic Problem - 3/10
Travels With Terence - 2/10
Crab Crossing - 1/10
Driving Winston - 6/10
The Slowest Race in the World - 2/10
Bruno's Blustery Day - 9/10
Night Lights - 7/10
For Love or Muddy - 1/10
Percy's Duck Dilemma - 4/10
All for the Nest - 3/10
Winter Games - 1/10
The Accidental Bad Guy - 6/10
Farmer's Market...on Wheels! - 6/10
The Smells of Sodor - 3/10

Overall Rating (So far):
93/250




 

   

  




Sunday 11 August 2024

All Engines Go! Review - S3 Ep.25 - Farmer's Market...on Wheels!

 THESE ARE MY OWN OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENCED FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANBASE

FARMER'S MARKET...ON WHEELS!
Written by
Carin Greenburg

Directed by
Campbell Bryer 

Produced by
Suzie Gallo

Air Date
29/06/24 - CAN
19/09/24 - US

Plot
Nia organizes a special event but must adapt when people and vehicles get lost.

I will say this, hearing how this is another 'Nia makes a plan that doesn't go to plan' dreaded me since we already had plenty of episodes showcasing that in past seasons but this episode doesn't have the need to make Nia go on a three strike formula and then she learns her lesson and put things right and then we have a forced down pun as a poor attempt at humor. It was pretty much she made a plan, the engines went to get their deliveries to fill in time and make their way to the farmer's market while James tries to find the best way possible to the market as a side plot, though he has the power to jump off the track and all like the others in this show but hey he can't do that for plot reason.

And there is another shocker from this episode, the moral of the episode wasn't told by the character and instead it let the audience to digest it themselves! What a shame though that it was nearing the end of this season's run that they decided to do that which shows that you can trust your audience to get it! The episode had some of the usual grips like Percy trying to explain the pun as if it was actually funny when spoilers, for those who actually care, it wasn't. 

The episode itself wasn't that great but a decent one. 

Series Rating:
What's the Buzz - 4.5/10
Bells are Ringing - 4/10
Abraca-Diesel - 2/10
Overcommitted - 2.5/10
Sandy's Fine Mess - 4/10
Nia's Green Surprise - 3/10
Duck Duck Whoosh! - 1/10
Choo-Choo Check In - 5/10
Percy's Little Problem - 3/10
Fill-In Friend - 4/10
Cake It Easy - 1/10
The Can-Do Crew - 6/10
Pizza Picnic Problem - 3/10
Travels With Terence - 2/10
Crab Crossing - 1/10
Driving Winston - 6/10
The Slowest Race in the World - 2/10
Bruno's Blustery Day - 9/10
Night Lights - 7/10
For Love or Muddy - 1/10
Percy's Duck Dilemma - 4/10
All for the Nest - 3/10
Winter Games - 1/10
The Accidental Bad Guy - 6/10
Farmer's Market...on Wheels! - 6/10

Overall Rating (So far):
90/240

Saturday 10 August 2024

All Engines Go! Review - S3 Ep.24 - The Accidental Bad Guy

 THESE ARE MY OWN OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENCED FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANBASE

THE ACCIDENTAL BAD GUY
Written by
Tracy Nicoletti

Directed by
Campbell Bryer 

Produced by
Suzie Gallo

Air Date
15/06/24 - CAN
19/09/24 - US

Plot
Percy takes a game of superheroes and villians too far.

This was a much better episode compare to the one that I'd reviewed yesterday but it feels a wee bit of a rehash of the episode 'Rules of the Game' from S1 and it just feels the same with Percy playing with Diesel and Kana but ending up with being broken or derailed. The only difference is Percy was emotional over being called a bad guy by his friends whereas Thomas in the former episode realised his mistakes and learns that not everyone can have the same fun as you. But it still has the usual AEG style of writing where the message is being told instead of shown because it doesn't trust its audience who would get the message during its runtime. Despite that, the episode was fine overall.

Series Rating:
What's the Buzz - 4.5/10
Bells are Ringing - 4/10
Abraca-Diesel - 2/10
Overcommitted - 2.5/10
Sandy's Fine Mess - 4/10
Nia's Green Surprise - 3/10
Duck Duck Whoosh! - 1/10
Choo-Choo Check In - 5/10
Percy's Little Problem - 3/10
Fill-In Friend - 4/10
Cake It Easy - 1/10
The Can-Do Crew - 6/10
Pizza Picnic Problem - 3/10
Travels With Terence - 2/10
Crab Crossing - 1/10
Driving Winston - 6/10
The Slowest Race in the World - 2/10
Bruno's Blustery Day - 9/10
Night Lights - 7/10
For Love or Muddy - 1/10
Percy's Duck Dilemma - 4/10
All for the Nest - 3/10
Winter Games - 1/10
The Accidental Bad Guy - 6/10

Overall Rating (So far):
84/240

Friday 9 August 2024

All Engines Go! Review - S3 Ep.23 - Winter Games

  THESE ARE MY OWN OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENCED FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANBASE

WINTER GAMES

Written by
John Loy

Directed by
Campbell Bryer 


Produced by
Suzie Gallo

Air Date
15/06/24 - CAN
19/09/24 - US

Plot
Thomas and Diesel improvise engine versions of winter sports to escape a blizzard

Like I said in 'Night Lights', this show lacks variety. Just how many episodes are we going to have that showcases Thomas competing to Diesel and they both end up getting stuck or crash, despite having the power to jump and move as implied at the end of this episode, and then they tell the audience what the moral is despite knowing the message in one second after Gordon told them to work together, collaborate, but through a crappy forgettable song. 

The Thomas and Diesel being competitive storyline has been used so many times in this iteration of the show that I think it was about eight? I don't know because most of the episodes just feel the same but this one is set in snow that's the only difference that we get but that doesn't mean it has variety. We also have snow puns through the episode too because this show actually thinks puns are suppose to be funny? Just like how explaining a quip makes it more funny for some reason because this show doesn't trust its auidence.

You might say that in the original series, the competiveness of Thomas and Bertie was overused. But overall, it was only used five times and there had been very wide gaps between those episodes. In the classic series we only had two episodes that were seven seasons apart, which was 19 years apart, and we didn't get another racing story between them until ten years later in 2013 when S17 aired and even then we only had one or two episodes of them racing two seasons apart. That's because the original series at least had a variety of stories to tell through its array of different characters and doesn't have the requirement to make more than one story of them racing which is something, as I said earlier, that Mattel has been lacking serverly in this iteration of the show, just like the show's merch line, the Minis range has more variety of characters than the Motorised, Wooden Railway and Push Alongs all together! 

Even if they had added in different characters in AEG, I know that Duck and Donald are returning next season, they'll either be forgotten or regulated as cameo characters in the aftermath offering nothing new to them because Mattel thinks having a restricted cast is better than having variety, look at Toby or Yong Bao. 

This is just another bland, boring Thomas and Diesel being competitive episode offering nothing new or different that I can't suggest anything constructive on how to make this episode any better. I hate this episode and I hate this overdone trope.

Series Rating:
What's the Buzz - 4.5/10
Bells are Ringing - 4/10
Abraca-Diesel - 2/10
Overcommitted - 2.5/10
Sandy's Fine Mess - 4/10
Nia's Green Surprise - 3/10
Duck Duck Whoosh! - 1/10
Choo-Choo Check In - 5/10
Percy's Little Problem - 3/10
Fill-In Friend - 4/10
Cake It Easy - 1/10
The Can-Do Crew - 6/10
Pizza Picnic Problem - 3/10
Travels With Terence - 2/10
Crab Crossing - 1/10
Driving Winston - 6/10
The Slowest Race in the World - 2/10
Bruno's Blustery Day - 9/10
Night Lights - 7/10
For Love or Muddy - 1/10
Percy's Duck Dilemma - 4/10
All for the Nest - 3/10
Winter Games - 1/10

Overall Rating (So far):
78/230

Thursday 8 August 2024

All Engines Go! Review - S3 Ep.22 - All for the Nest

 THESE ARE MY OWN OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENCED FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANBASE

ALL FOR THE NEST


Written by
Eva Konstantopoulos 

Directed by
Campbell Bryer 

Produced by
Suzie Gallo

Air Date
1/06/24 - CAN
19/09/24 - US

Plot
A gull lays an egg on Cranky and he refuses to move until it hatches.

I really don't see the need for the seagull's egg to give Tess, I still hate her, a reason for her appearance and for her story. You could just change it to maybe Cranky being broken and cannot move and the episode would play out the same, there would be nothing different plotwise because the title for this episode as well as the synopsis makes it sound like the whole seagull and its egg is an important factor to the story but it was simply a plot device for Tess wanting help and that's it or you cannot have Cranky at all and have Bulstrode trying to get unloaded by Tess but she was busy and cannot do it and it's STILL the same story. There are different ways you can tell the story and it's the exact same thing without the egg!

That's all I can say about the episode to be honest as I find this episode to be not good. I still don't like Tess and I didn't like how she 'why didn't you ask me?' about Bulstrode's dilemma when they were telling her, a minor nitpick but it annoyed me when watching the episode and its showcase of its consistency problem.
  
Series Rating:
What's the Buzz - 4.5/10
Bells are Ringing - 4/10
Abraca-Diesel - 2/10
Overcommitted - 2.5/10
Sandy's Fine Mess - 4/10
Nia's Green Surprise - 3/10
Duck Duck Whoosh! - 1/10
Choo-Choo Check In - 5/10
Percy's Little Problem - 3/10
Fill-In Friend - 4/10
Cake It Easy - 1/10
The Can-Do Crew - 6/10
Pizza Picnic Problem - 3/10
Travels With Terence - 2/10
Crab Crossing - 1/10
Driving Winston - 6/10
The Slowest Race in the World - 2/10
Bruno's Blustery Day - 9/10
Night Lights - 7/10
For Love or Muddy - 1/10
Percy's Duck Dilemma - 4/10
All for the Nest - 3/10

Overall Rating (So far):
77/220

Wednesday 7 August 2024

All Engines Go! Review - S3 Ep.21 - Percy's Duck Dilemma

 THESE ARE MY OWN OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENCED FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANBASE

PERCY'S DUCK DILEMMA
Written by
Peter Gaffney

Directed by
Campbell Bryer 

Produced by
Suzie Gallo

Air Date
1/06/24 - CAN
19/09/24 - US

Plot
Percy discovers that the ducks are migrating, so he tries to get them to stay.

I honestly think the episode could've been for Bruno since this story is more akin to someone who could be new to things, especially since kids struggle adapting to new things. Have Bruno go though what Percy did in the episode until someone tells him that the ducks have a schedule to leave. Sure it's a bit similar to Percy but with Percy it just feels like he's been on the Island for a while since the show had many passing seasons and he just realised that ducks migrate when surely he would've known about that by now and this wouldn't be an episode set in the past since Beresford was in the episode and was introduced in the show's second season. 

It just doesn't feel right to give this to someone like Percy when continuity is a thing. The episode isn't bad but it could've been better. The song, meh but at least it felt like it added something to the episode though it could work fine without it.

Series Rating:
What's the Buzz - 4.5/10
Bells are Ringing - 4/10
Abraca-Diesel - 2/10
Overcommitted - 2.5/10
Sandy's Fine Mess - 4/10
Nia's Green Surprise - 3/10
Duck Duck Whoosh! - 1/10
Choo-Choo Check In - 5/10
Percy's Little Problem - 3/10
Fill-In Friend - 4/10
Cake It Easy - 1/10
The Can-Do Crew - 6/10
Pizza Picnic Problem - 3/10
Travels With Terence - 2/10
Crab Crossing - 1/10
Driving Winston - 6/10
The Slowest Race in the World - 2/10
Bruno's Blustery Day - 9/10
Night Lights - 7/10
For Love or Muddy - 1/10
Percy's Duck Dilemma - 4/10

Overall Rating (So far):
74/210

Tuesday 6 August 2024

All Engines Go! Review - S3 Ep.20- For Love or Muddy

 THESE ARE MY OWN OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENCED FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANBASE

FOR LOVE OR MUDDY
Written by
Sam Bissonette

Directed by
Campbell Bryer 

Produced by
Suzie Gallo

Air Date
25/05/24 - CAN
19/09/24 - US

Plot
Kana gets a clean fast job while her friends are stuck with a muddy slow one

I really don't see what Kana was learning here? No one complained about her having a nice, clean job and no one complained about her going to the mainland and they weren't having any trouble at all with clearing the mud apart from complaining about how stinky it was and that's it. Sure she wants to help her friends but like I said they were doing fine so why can't Kana learn that she can't feel bad about not helping her friends all the time because she was given an important job, regardless, and that was to take passengers since they're working on a railway, though looking from this show sometimes it's hardly serving people, instead of wanting to be with her friends. 

The message of her not trying to feel bad all the time is something I think kids could learn from instead of whatever the episode was trying to say. 

There's nothing much else to discuss, most of the episode was just Kana going to the mainland and Thomas and the others clearing the mud and complaining about it and that's it. Sure there was a rain storm and Kana was to deliver the sand bags to prevent another mudslide but that was it and I feel Kana didn't get anything out of it since the line was cleared anyway. 

This was such a bland, boring repetitive episode and even if Gordon was pulling coaches for the first time in this show, as some people have pointed out as something big, it doesn't take away the bad that was this episode towards a bland character who had personality in past episodes but never bothered to do anything with else with her afterwards. 

If they were going with the don't feel bad all the time message with Kana actually going through a dilemma, this could've been a good episode but they chose not too and we were given this.

Series Rating:
What's the Buzz - 4.5/10
Bells are Ringing - 4/10
Abraca-Diesel - 2/10
Overcommitted - 2.5/10
Sandy's Fine Mess - 4/10
Nia's Green Surprise - 3/10
Duck Duck Whoosh! - 1/10
Choo-Choo Check In - 5/10
Percy's Little Problem - 3/10
Fill-In Friend - 4/10
Cake It Easy - 1/10
The Can-Do Crew - 6/10
Pizza Picnic Problem - 3/10
Travels With Terence - 2/10
Crab Crossing - 1/10
Driving Winston - 6/10
The Slowest Race in the World - 2/10
Bruno's Blustery Day - 9/10
Night Lights - 7/10
For Love or Muddy - 1/10

Overall Rating (So far):
70/200