This is gonna be fun!
Ever since the Italian dub made its way online, this episode has been loved and hated in equal measure for one reason: fans think engines can’t love... for some reason. I’m not going to focus on that again, because I’ve already done a blog post about it. All I’ll say here is that love and sex are two different things. And if these engine characters weren’t meant to feel every human emotion, why bother anthropomorphising them?
Other than that, there’s not much to talk about here either. The story takes a while to get going in order to exposit the idea of Valentine’s Day to the audience. Although I completely agree with Percy that it’s stupid to show your love on just one day (especially when businesses take advantage as much as they can on that day). And the potential of two of the male station staff having feelings for each other was amazingly progressive.
Plus, the whole conflict just feels natural and easy for kids to grasp. They’ll go through this growing up, if they haven’t already. And it’s a great way to teach them how to go about things.
The theme of the episode is also excellent. It teaches that it’s OK to love someone, but it’s also OK to just be friends with them. It also feels more... powerful that the speech came from Thomas. So many men these days feel they’re entitled to a woman solely because they say hi to them. So to teach boys, through Thomas, that girls can be friends with boys and deserve respect too is fantastic. And if more of the season was like this, I would be sticking around. It’s such a frustrating season, that I feel will only get worse in the future.
Final Thoughts
Slow opening aside, this episode was wonderfully sweet and charming. It was experimental, it was fresh, it taught a wonderful lesson and it’s... going to be as undervalued as Diesel & the Ducklings, isn’t it? Ah well, it deserves all the love it can get.
Also, side note, why does this reboot have such an obsession with animals? We’ve had pandas, elephants, tigers, monkeys, the animals in the outback and now a cat? I’m pretty sure that kids don’t tune in to a show about talking locomotives to see animal antics..!
Rating: Great (10/10)
They’re not wrong. Every single holiday is a commercialised mess these days. It’s why Easter and Christmas stuff ends up on shelves months before the actual holidays as well. It sucks all the fun and meaning out of every single holiday.
ReplyDeleteI liked that episode, so I agree that it's a great one.
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