THESE ARE MY OWN OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENCED FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANBASE
LIGHTENING THE LOAD
Johnathan Hernandez
Directed by
Campbell Bryer
Produced by
Suzie Gallo
Air Date
11/02/25 - UK
Plot
On a hectic day, Nia volunteers to deliver a missed shipment of a new light for the lighthouse. But she soon finds herself too embarrassed to admit the delivery has been anything but light.
This might be hard for some to believe but despite Nia being heavily underutilised in BWBA thanks to Mattel not giving the show a fair chance to improve itself to make itself better because one network that aired it in the US was bad at showing it, but Nia was at least given some character in the episode 'Counting on Nia' where she didn't want to admit that she doesn't know what numbers look like and was worried that the other engines might find her silly because of it making her have some confidence issues. Sure more could've been done to enhance it but at least the episode did something because this episode, despite its published synopsis, really didn't show Nia embarrassed to admit that the delivery was heavy. Sure she struggled for a bit and that could've been good set up for her character to be stubborn and overconfident but no Bulstrode and Cranky told her to get to the lighthouse and that's it. They didn't bother telling her that she needs help and Nia didn't bother to showcase any other character to at least make her interesting or relevant.
You could at least have the other engines offering to help her and have her refusing their help because she can get this over the hill 'easy', despite she was really struggling. Maybe the reason she's like that because she saw the other engines doing their jobs better with their heavy loads and she wants to do the same.
But it sure as hell was not showing here before Nia and Kana were telling the moral of the story. Nia was struggling up the hill but that was it. She was not being overconfident or stubborn. I'm really not seeing anything different with Nia that some people had been saying in comparison to her original series self. All I know is that she has an interest in music and that's it. I don't see much flaws in her to make her relevant and neither in previous episodes from seasons past. All that I see is a generic, boring character. Say what you want about Nia in BWBA but at least she had a flaw as seen in S22 no matter how hard you're shaking your head in disagreement, try watching the episode without much resentment for once. They could've at least taken that element for this episode but no who needs entertaining characters when boring, generic, goodie goodie characters, who hammer down the moral through dialogue because they can't trust there audience getting it themselves, are what this show needs.
But hey at least they'd made a actual mystery of the spilt chicken feed and the bump on the track instead of showing us what had happened, unlike 'Windmill Woes', but aside from that, this is another bad episode.
We are getting close to the end of this first half and man I have not seen any episode from this season that is actually good. We had a decent opener and then after that we had episodes that could've been better but were really either meh or down right bad. This is not making me look forward to the second half of the season that would air later on in the year. But so far this is probably the worst season of AEG.
Series Rating (So far):
Sheep Stampede - 6/10
The Berry Best - 3/10
Creepy Crawly Courage - 3/10
Windmill Woes - 2/10
Quacking Quandary - 1/10
The Stinking Delivery - 3/10
Don't Train on My Parade - 4/10
Shiny Spiffy Sandy - 3/10
Diesel's Bad Day - 4/10
Moo-Ving Friendship - 4.5/10
Art Engines Go - 1/10
Lightening the Load - 1/10
Overall Rating (So far):
35.5/120
