Season 3 of AEG made its debut back in February 2024 in Canada, home of Nelvana, the production house where 'All Engines Go!' is animated. There is really not much to go off from for the show's third season except for the fact that it is now 26 episodes long like the original series and that to sign the season off we will be having a 60min special based around on Christmas, a major first for the franchise, called 'The Christmas Letter Express' written by Rick Suvalle who hadn't written an episode since the show's first episode back in 2021. But I'm not looking forward to it as after watching the last two 60 minute specials and seeing how they turned out, I feel it'll be another very long exhausting special with unmemorable songs to fill in time and I believe there would be not much marketing behind it from Mattel's side until it's close to its release date. But that special is another post for another day.
Season 2 of AEG was a slight improvement to its first season but overall, the former, like the latter, was very underwhelming in my opinion. Sure all my reviews is not going to bring the original series back but that was never the point to begin with. It is basically trying to look at these episode without a non-biased lens and see why they are either good or bad and what could've been better storywise and maybe someone from either Mattel or the writing staff might find these but I'm just a guy with a small blogsite.
Recently, I've seen people trying to use the excuse that the show is 'just made for kids' and that excuse just feels like a total brush off to shut people up who are very critical of this series. People have been very critcal about BWBA and the rest of the original series over the years, including the books, that it just feels hypocritical and also just because it is a kids show doesn't mean that quality was put into it. Ever wonder why Bluey is so popular not just with kids but to adults as well who either have kids of their own or who are grandparents, aunts, uncles? And it's not just adults but teenagers as well!
One of the best things about Bluey is that it has some stories that deal with tough subjects that the older audience can understand but with total nuance towards children. The episode where Chillie's sister can't have children because she was infertile is one episode I can think of from the top of my head that has that and explain it to a child in a way they could understand which was Bluey wanting the onesie that Bingo was wearing. It was a beautiful and emotional episode, especially for adults who are actually going through with it. The only AEG episode that has that was the episode from S2 with Boxy being turned into something different. But the rest of the series, to me, AEG, was generic, loud, morally forced and comedically forced dribble, to an extent.
However berating people who are fans of the iteration of Thomas is something that I condem because at the end of the day people have different tastes and see things differently unlike maybe a majority and we must respect their individuality. Sure I might not agree with what they say but I won't go as far as berating their intelligence, unlike some people on this crazy, very broken, chatoic world known as the internet. And I have more sympathy for fans of AEG because as someone who actually enjoys BWBA, despite its problems, I understand the annoyance of being belittled by some who have a complete meltdowns over someone liking something that they don't.
But enough rambling, maybe Season 3 might be better but I'm starting off this season with extremely low expectations. But thankfully it's 26 episodes rather than 52, but still split in half. So here are my views of S3A, but first:
THESE ARE MY OWN OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENCED FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANBASE
WHAT'S THE BUZZ
John Loy
Directed by
Campbell Bryer
Produced by
Suzie Gallo
Air Date
3/02/24 - CAN
7/03/24 - US
Plot
When bees settle on Thomas' funnel, he seeks a better home for them.
Surprisingly, after seeing two mediocre and dissapointing season openers, this one was actually alright. Not bad or great, just average. It feels almost like an episode that could work in the original series, I know we had 'Buzzy Bees' back in 2010 and after watching the latter for the first time in years, while reviewing this episode to see if the plots are similar, which thankfully is not because this episode was much better with its pacing and unlike the 2010 episode it had more of a story instead of a formula, despite the three strikes formula in this episode.
The song however is just, you guessed it, another bland forgettable song which is about not giving up. The messages these songs tell us are what's not bad. What's bad about them is that I feel they don't allow the audience to digest the message themselves because it feels like they need to telling them what it is. Kids are more smarter than you think and society should never underestimate them.
This episode was just moderate but not very memorable, like any episode of AEG. It's a moderate start to S3A but expectations are still very low.
And despite me mentioning 'Buzzy Bees', no it doesn't mean I'll be re-reviewing S13-16 anytime in the future. After sitting through that episode to see if the plots are similar, they had never aged well.
Series Rating:
What's the Buzz - 4.5/10
Overall Rating (So far):
4.5/10
