Season 2 of AEG began its world premiere in September 2022 in the United States and it had introduced us to a new character called Bruno, a brake car who is autistic. I remember everyone was in fanfare of this and even I was and I was especially glad that Mattel hadn't consulted with the likes of 'Austism Speaks', a terrible organisation that uses austism as if it were an illness instead of actually bringing awareness of it all so people could understand. Though it's a pity that Mattel had donated money to their Canadian branch once.
Plus during the same year Bruno had debuted, Mattel were being sued by Railway Productions LLC, the owners of the Edaville park that had once hosted Thomas Land since 2015, due to false promises by Mattel over visitation numbers, the distribution of merchandise and forbidding them to purchase merchandise from third party sellers and it'd also mentioned that they didn't want to get involved with the idea of having an autisim day at the park, which is a bit hypocritical to me as their Australian branch has a day specially for them during Day Out With Thomas at the NSW Rail Museum, Thirlmere and that had been a success since 2019! And Mattel would have to approve that since they are the owners of the brand and surely the head office in America would know about its existence. Here is the link to the court documents but I think this reddit post sums it up best. The matter had been settled around August 2022.
While Mattel has the right to not let the railway host it, I feel that it was downright disgraceful to deny such an intitive considering that there are many children on the spectrum who enjoy watching Thomas and that Thomas is the most popular show for children on the spectrum. I also feel sorry for the child, whom that was mentioned not by name in the court documents, who was the inspiration for the idea of an austism day at the Thomas park, whose teacher wanted him to go to their and thanks to Mattel all that he got in the end was a colouring book for him and his classmates. I don't know what his reaction to that was but I think I would feel displeased by the outcome.
But I digress here, Bruno was created by the AEG production staff with the assitance of ASAN and easterseals. I will get more to Bruno a bit later.
After witnessing the first season, in my opinion it was not worth sitting through, would the second season be any better? Well let's find out but first:
THESE ARE SOLEY MY OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENCED FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANDOM
FAST FRIENDS
Written by
Sarah Eisenberg and Becky Wangberg
Directed by
Campbell Bryer
Produced by
Suzie Gallo
Air Date
17/09/22 - CAN
19/09/22 - USA
16/01/23 - UK
6/02/23 - AUS
Plot
While Kana and Thomas deliver aquarium materials for the Vicarstown Fish Day, it's up to steady Percy and Nia to deliver the fish themselves.
So the whole episode was about it's better to be safe than going fast and ending up in trouble and for being smart all said but Kana but when some tracks that goes over a cutting were out leading towards Vicarstown they'd jumped over it. I know that Kana was telling Nia and the audience, a common thing in AEG in general, that it's best to decide when to go fast and slow but jumping over a gap, at fast speed with a large load mostly filled with water and live animals is not really a smart move. If you want children to learn about making smart decisions wouldn't it be better for Kana to say that can go around and find another shortcut to Vicarstown? I mean there are SO.MANY.SHORTCUTS in this show for some reason.
And as usual this episode has unfunny jokes, unfunny puns, wild antics that will be repeated a bunch of times and a bland, forgettable song that was mostly there as filler to force down the message of the episode instead of letting the audience digest it themselves. What a dismal start to the second season of the show.
Series Rating:
Fast Friends - 1/10
Overall Rating (So far):
1/10
1/10
