Much like how I would describe this year in general, to call Season 15 insanity would be an understatement, and I don't mean in a good way. This season is unanimously panned by many within the fandom as being the worst of the series pre-Big World, Big Adventures Era, and for good reason. It's horribly written and the characters are brainless. But with that said in preparation for this week's review, I didn't dread it as much as I did with the previous two seasons in the Nitrogen Era. I don't know if this is a hot take, but I feel like Season 15 has quite a bit more going on for it than Season 14 did. There's certainly more to talk about with it. This year played a lot with the expanded cast. They put Percy in the spotlight of his own movie, yet we all know he'd get a much better one only a few years later. The Logging Locos got a trilogy of episodes. They gave Bertie, Kevin, Spencer, and Butch of all characters, their own episodes. Thomas isn't as forced down our throats this year, heck, he didn't have the lead role in the season premiere. The animation direction is a lot more interesting, and the pacing is quite a bit snappier.
None of these positives, of course, can or will ever excuse how badly the season is written, though. Writing is everything. And if your episode has nothing but awful dialogue that's hard to sit through and they all stick to a predictable templated structure, well...then your episodes just aren't very good, now, are they? Now, when it comes to Season 15 as a whole, I'm sure you've guys have seen a Top 10 or some sort of retrospective for what the best and worst episodes of the season are. Rather if you've read it in an article, seen it in a video, or even made your own list, it almost feels like they're all kind of the same. You have your Wonky Whistles, your Fiery Flynns, your James To The Rescues, your Percy's New Friends, your Stop That Bus, and especially the episode that we're reviewing for today known notoriously for its astounding lack of logic..."Up, Up, and Away". Yep, that one. The infamous episode where Thomas and Percy transport a balloon on a flatbed to the point where they made fun of it twice in the Brenner Era rather it be "Tale of the Brave" or "Dowager Hatt's Busy Day". I have so many questions regarding this episode, it's hard to know where to even start. Why are the engines delivering something as medial as a big balloon? Why are two engines needed for this job? Why are the balloons being blown up before being transported? Why does Mr. Bubbles stay at the docks and not hitch a ride with them? Why is he blowing all these balloons up by himself? They literally show us that he blew up the balloons all by himself. Are his lungs full of helium? They need helium to float. The only "sky-high" feeling I got from watching this trainwreck was reflecting back on my Thomas The Riffed Engine & Friends episode of this episode I did years ago.
This is such garbage and is still a real low point for the franchise's history to the point where I just can't even bring myself to reviewing this one even for the extremely minimal good things that it does have outside of nostalgia for my channel's early days. It's easy to see why it was such an easy target for future episodes to make fun of during the show's renaissance era. The fact that we're coming up on the fifteenth anniversary of its home media release which was also the same day that the Nostalgia Critic did his review of "Thomas and the Magic Railroad" doesn't even make the feeling of what I've just had to revisit even worse. I think it goes without saying, but I'm done with this episode, I'm never going back to this episode again. 1.5/5, I'm out, someone get me some Tylenol!
