Season 16 - Episode 2 Review: Ol' Wheezy Wobbles

Simierski
May 15
5 min read

February 2012 saw the second episode of Season 16 of Thomas & Friends...

...but before the review, the usual disclaimer:

The views below are entirely those of the author and not representative of the Sodor Island Forums as a whole.

On that note, it's time to get this review underway...

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Ol' Wheezy Wobbles

Writer: Sharon Miller

It's a bad day on Misty Island. Ol' Wheezy has stopped working! The Logging Locos don't know what to do and that makes them sad. Thomas is sure he can help.

Overall Impressions

I am not entirely sure what the point of this episode is. After three viewings, trying to put it in the perspective of a writer, a godfather to a young, impressionable child, and as a fan, I’m left wondering what was the story actually about, and what messages it was giving to today’s youth.

It’s just a complete mystery as to what the actual core moral of the story was.

Was it that teamwork is great?

Or that Thomas shouldn’t try and split partnerships up? (The fact that the little blue engine has done this sort of strange, “no we’ll do things my way...three times, and then I’ll realize the problem, apologise for over a minute and then we’ll all laugh at the end” so, so many times before is perhaps one of the sources of my inherent cynicism about the writing for this season).

Everyone understands the situation presented, that is not in doubt.

Ol’ Wheezy isn’t working for various reasons. The aim of the storyline is to find someone to fix him.

Oh, the Dieselworks diesels work with oil, you say...? (Why the reference to oil? If Ol’ Wheezy is diesel powered, say they have experience with “diesel engines”).

So Thomas takes Dart, then Den, then Den and Dart on trips to Misty Island so that he can be taught (!) that teamwork between the two is the only way to fix Ol’ Wheezy.

Except, and this is shown quite clearly, it’s the drivers/engineers of Den & Dart doing the fixing of Ol’ Wheezy. The dialogue and concept of “Den and Dart run the Dieselworks therefore they fix things” doesn’t work because they’re just locomotives. They can shunt things into position, pull trains...and that’s about it.

What I dislike intensely about today’s episode is the way it showcases the broken logic in having talking trains, with drivers and fireman. It’s neither entirely realistic (where the engines sometimes run on their own without their crew anyway) no cartoony (where the likes of Chuggington don’t have crews, period).

Thomas is a talking tank engine who both does his own thing and runs himself, and then as an extension of his being, has a human do it for him. This is also of the rest of the cast. It doesn’t work, and hasn’t worked since before The Great Discovery.

One of the real triumphs of the first five series of Thomas & Friends was the understanding that the engines could talk, but ultimately their drivers and fireman were in control. They were never named (bar Edward’s crew), but they were never zombie-like and soulless as they have become.

Which is a right pity as once again, Nitrogen’s animation of the people in Thomas’ world is terrific. Coughing, and spluttering when Ol’ Wheezy belches black smoke, what little screen time the people of Sodor have, they are wonderfully animated and thoroughly convincing.

There are few other things worth mentioning. Ferdinand not having a two word vocabulary should not be the overwhelming positive that it is. The voice acting of the Geordie twosome gets higher pitched and more irritating with every episode they feature in.

The locations have all been done to death from the same camera angles on Misty Island, and I still find the Shake-Shake bridge to be ridiculous.

Thoughts From Other SiF Members

Christopher (Mod):

Far and beyond, the one major negative this episode has is this:

The entire story, as well as Misty Island, contribute nothing useful to the series as a whole, in any form of character or continuity development.

Besides being the "home" of fictional, non-existent types of wood (Jobi and Sea respectively), the characters themselves don't evolve, don't grow, and - as with everyone else since the CGI switchover - don't learn anything. The warning bells were evident from MIR that their dangerously mixed morals and illogical stunts could affect their target audience between what's right and what's wrong.

In fact, Ol' Wheezy must symbolise Misty Isle as a whole. Once mended, he / it goes back to being as reckless as ever. Wheezy is as big a pony trick as Ferdinand, which is evident with the material that's been churned out from a "character" with zero personality.

IMO, what would have made a far better episode would be the following:

Ol' Wheezy is deemed beyond repair and scrapped right from the start, the Logging Locos get a new (safer) crane and they learn to start over - this is something everyone can relate to when they lose a precious item, or if you will, when someone dear to them passes on.

From that angle, you'd get proper development: the Logging Locos mourn for Wheezy - with moral support from, say, Edward and Toby - and eventually mature when they realise the new crane is more reliable than Wheezy ever was, which may prompt them to rebuild the Shake Shake Bridge as well. Safer structures, faster production, and better characters in all.

Final Conclusions

Trying to come at this from any of the angles mentioned in the above – parent or guardian, fan, writer – is pointless.

It doesn’t appeal to any of those angles. Does it appeal to children? I can’t see how. The latest Fireman Sam episodes are more thoughtful and educative, not to mention matching Thomas & Friends for brightness, if not quality of the animation, and to be frank this episode – in a similar vein to the last one – is just so utterly bland at its very core that there’s very little to criticize past the usual suspects of rhyming, poor morals and strange character development and deployment, because there is so little substance to it.

I suspect that after four seasons of the same basic storylines being bandied around, the children and the adults which watch it with them, will have seen it all before, to boot.

That chiefly is the problem of this episode, and has been part of the problem in the writing as a whole for nearly a decade.

Fantastic style aesthetically, but very little substance in the writing.

It’s a shame in some respects as I genuinely like the potential concept of “things which are old can be fixed and aren’t obsolete”. If that had been at the core of the writing for this storyline – for Ol’ Wheezy - then it could be argued from a green perspective that recycling and repair would be seen in a positive light, and in terms of future education on this planet, is something to be wholly supported.

A missed opportunity.