Season 16 - Episode 5: Ho Ho Snowman

February 2012 saw the fifth 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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Ho Ho Snowman

Writer: Sharon Miller

Charlie loves the snow and decides to show Henry that snow really can be fun! He hides behind a huge snowman and as Henry rumbles past, Charlie pretends to be the snowman telling a joke!

Overall Thoughts

I'm not really enamoured with this one.

Why is there a random amount of shunting trucks on a hill?

Which, by the way, is probably the most unlikely of unlikely inclines (and I have made the same comment in previous years. If it's meant to be Gordon's hill, it's both far too steep and too short!)

Thomas and Charlie reiterating catchphrases from the Misty Island trio. Recipe for annoyance. Henry cascading down a hill and acting all miserable and moany. You would have thought by now that Henry's typecasting as a sickly, miserable child would have been put to bed.

It's a character defamation which annoys me greatly. It first started in the model series, in that first episode with Emily, where Henry is ill and doesn't want to say he's ill, and then developed to such an extreme that Henry is now incapable of going anywhere without his happy coal.

I do not understand the attraction of the character Charlie. He's irritating, a bad influence, and one of the least developed of the HiT characters and one of the most utilised.

The hiding behind various items of scenery was very Tickled Pink, the jokes were horrendous (but then Charlie, known for his “jokes” is always horrendous), the CGI animation was amazing, but then it's a moot point when so much of the episode feels like padding.

One of the things I'm absolutely adamant about is the length of the episodes. I don't think the change to the nearly nine minute long episode (8 minutes 45 seconds by my watch) helps the Thomas & Friends storylines.

The beauty of the five minute, and to a lesser extent, the seven minute long episodes, was that you didn't require two minutes of padding through dialogue. The storylines were simple, not repetitive within themselves, and had a proper beginning, middle and end.

Ho Ho Snowman is yet another one of those episodes that you wish was three minutes shorter. If you removed the repetitiveness, half of the dialogue, and most of Charlie's “jokes”, then you end up with a half decent episode which would not be out of place in the model era of Thomas & Friends. As it is, it's boring for the kids, the adults, and certainly not in any way, shape or form, as funny as the lead role in this episode claimed to be.

However – troublesome trucks with faces again. A single and excellent positive for the development of this series. Now we need them all to have their faces back. Thomas & Friends has never been the same since the trucks lost their squeaky voices and mischievous ways...

Thoughts From Other SiF Members

Ryan (Admin):

I cannot help but feel that Charlie is somewhat redundant as a character. He's purely one-dimensional and serves no real purpose in the grand scheme of things. The episode itself seemed like little more than an excuse to showcase more of Charlie's diabolically poor jokes...

Jim (Mod):

I found the setting [for the shunting of trucks] odd. Other than having a convenient (and CG economical) place to have Henry appear without the need to change 'set' locations.

In addition, I found it funny how Henry practically stops on a dime at the bottom of the hill with a rake of coal trucks. I'm also beginning to find the way engines shunt trucks so roughly (an understatement) in the episodes grating "One biff, one bash, and there's never a crash". I admittedly only have a general knowledge of railways, but doesn't the practice involve a gentle nudge from an engine to send the truck along by its own momentum?

The story itself was only held together with a series of cheesy jokes centered around a 12-15' snowman. I truly wonder if toddlers watching this or any other episode featuring Charlie retain and later retell these jokes. This would provide an explanation and the only merit for penning this episode.

Other notes: Charlie's taking a shortcut to get to the siding before Henry seems like a rework of what was seen in "Thomas and the Rubbish Train".

Christopher (ERS Mod):

- Joke rank = 5. Charlie's jokes could easily match "That's Right" and "Oh the Indignity" as the most groansome phrases in the CGI era.

- Henry taking a few trucks at a time - Big Strong Henry reference perhaps?

- It did get pretty boring hearing Henry "stutter and stammer" thrice in a row. If other engines had been involved instead, it might have been a little bit interesting. Say, Charlie trying to show ALL the big engines snow is fun?

- Shunting on the Main Line…Simon's going to have a field day with this one.  ;) But it was worth it to see the trucks more animated again, faces and all.

- And speaking of animation, the only noteworthy scene to point out were the Robins Henry and Charlie pass by. Beautiful

- Thinking about it, if only Henry had been Grumpy instead of feeble and worrisome, it could have been closer to his RWS persona.

- "Oh Me, Oh My" - does anyone ever talk like that anymore? It makes everyone in Thomas sound like someone from a Mickey Mouse cartoon…

- How could Henry not know it was Charlie? The jokes were a big giveaway.

- Emily's first speaking role. And come her lead episode, that would probably count as her second in the season …

- Personally, Edward & Emily could have given decent reasons for not liking winter - ice and snow causing delays, for example.

In short, as with everyone's thoughts, it was pretty bland in all. A proper storyline could have come out of Henry's journeys to and fro the yards and Docks rather than crane-shunting railway locos into the roles of humans. It's about as realistic as treating the QE2 like a pet dog.

BTW, has anyone noticed that so far, a fair number of episodes have a sort of "title card"? We get a few seconds with the snowman and the story title, then fade in to the start of the tale. Just thought it worthwhile to mention.

Final Conclusions

Ho Ho Snowman has got to go down as one of the worst Thomas & Friends episodes ever made. Alongside of the likes of Fiery Flynn, Race to the Rescue, and a few of the model episodes such as Thomas & the Jet Engine, there's little of substance that ties into reality.

There's too many similarities to past HiT episodes, there's very little that hasn't been seen or done before, the characters in it are neither funny nor endearing (Henry is flat out annoying. He's no longer endearingly grumpy but incessantly whiny), and overall you're left feeling like the best part of the whole episode was the snowman itself.

Which it wasn't, it was Nitrogen's beautiful sequence with the robins (as Christopher pointed out earlier), but who is going to rate this episode highly on the basis of a few seconds of beautiful footage?

Ho Ho...no.

Individual Episode Score: 1/10 - Fiery Flynn 3/10 – Ol’ Wheezy Wobbles 7/10 - Express Coming Through 3/10 - Percy & The Monster of Brendam 2/10 - Ho Ho Snowman

Total Season Score So Far: 16/50

Average Season Score So Far: 3.2/10

Quick Character Stats

Speaking Roles:

Henry, Charlie, Thomas, Emily, Edward

Cameos:

Rosie, Hiro, Percy, Troublesome Trucks no. 1-7