Buckled Tracks and Bumpy Trucks (Thomas & Friends)
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| "Buckled Tracks and Bumpy Trucks" | ||||||||||||||||
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 Looks like Sir Topham Hatt/The Fat Controller is having a bad hat day, as if Season 20 wasn't hilarious enough already.
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"Buckled Tracks and Bumpy Trucks" (retitled "Buckled Tracks and Bumpy Cars in the US) is the seventeenth episode of the twentieth season of Thomas & Friends. It is the twenty fifth in production order. The American version aired early in Canada while the original British version aired in the UK six months after its Canadian release, and the US dub has made it for American release only on streaming in 2018.
Plot
Everyone on Sodor struggles in the hot weather, Belle and Flynn were putting out fires while the Fat Controller was forced to wear a safari hat to keep himself cool.
Why It Rocks
- For one thing, this episode uses the humor with the Fat Controller is a really funny manner. He doesn't want to wear his safari hat Dowager Hatt had gave him in order to keep cool, but no matter how much he refused to wear his safari hat, things turn backs on him. It's funny because he is a nuisance against that hat.
- This episode in general has a lot of fun with Sir Topham Hatt's safari hat problem itself. The writer, Lee Pressman, felt like he was having fun. Everybody else behind the scenes felt like they were having fun.
- Dowager Hatt plays out a good mother figure for the Fat Controller here. She has a very good point that wearing a white hat can keep people cool during the summer season when she gave her son that hat.
- Speaking of Sir Topham's hat problem, there are other funny moments to come from this episode that sprinkled in.
- "Better safari, than sorry", as said by Dowager Hatt. That line itself set up a very good punchline that completes the joke.
- The Fat Controller saying Gordon's catchphrase, "O the Indignity", with Gordon saying "That's my line, sir!" responding to Sir Topham Hatt's grief.
- The goat nodding his head "yes" in response to Flynn fighting against the fire also gets a good chuckle.
- A picture of Dowager Hatt talking to Sir Topham Hatt scolding her son strictly by saying "Topham! Don't even think about leaving without your hat!", only to reveal it was in The Fat Controller's imagination.
- Flynn and Belle are portrayed perfectly as they should be in this episode, just like in "Too Many Fire Engines" from Season 17. They thankfully don't act out of character as either main role characters for an episode at all.
- This episode shows everyone why wearing white deflects the heat and how wearing black absorbs the heat, logic wise. This is shown throughout the episode and it shows out a good educational and logical message to the younger viewers.
- The orchestic scoring from Chris Renshaw is spot on.
- The animation in general is just as great as ever. The animation for the fire is even the best part in terms of visual animation.
- Thomas is clearly in the right to come up with a solution to the buckled tracks by painting all of the railway tracks white.
- Speaking of painting the tracks white, this episode is influenced on a real life event where a railway has painted its own tracks white after heat has caused hazardous problems on said railway.
Trivia
- Sir Topham would later wear the safari hat once more in "Big World! Big Adventures!", during his search for Thomas.
- The branch line which the tracks bend from the heat is the same line which suffered the same problem in "Thomas Gets Bumped" that the Fat Controller addresses.
- Portraits of Thomas from "Creaky Cranky" and Victor from "Percy's Parcel" are seen in the Fat Controller's Office.
- The goat eating Sir Topham Hatt's safari hat is most likely a reference to the Series 1 episode "Edward, Gordon and Henry" and the Series 5 episode, "Baa!"
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