ThomasNATION Reviews - A Rusty Rescue
February 03, 2024
If you were to ask any longtime fan of Thomas the Tank Engine what their thoughts were on the original television series as a whole, they would more often than not tell you that Diesel became a fairly annoying character as of the CGI seasons. When he was first introduced in Season 2's 'Pop Goes the Diesel', he was very devious and maniacal, a 'pulls the strings behind the curtains' type of character, the type of guy that would flip any situation in his favor and win it if he put his mind to it. But as the show went on, he just turned into a brute reduced to nothing but a selfish bully who picks on others just for the sake of it. He fell victim to the irreversable march of flanderization and as a result, became a shell of his former self. Many longtime fans of Thomas including myself didn't particularly like modern day Diesel since we thought an episode with him can be very entertaining when he was paired with a good character foil like Paxton as seen in Season 18's 'Disappearing Diesels', but Diesel himself was incredibly one-dimensional. Whenever he screws up and is subsequently forgiven, it never feels earned because we know he hasn't changed and he never will.
So as you can imagine, there were a lot of angry adult Thomas fans who were up in arms when All Engines Go was first announced and it was revealed that Diesel who while still retaining some of his original personality from the original Thomas & Friends series was now portrayed as one of Thomas' best friends which didn't make any sense at all in the grand scheme of things surrounding the reboot. Granted, he's presented as a comic foil to the main characters at times and you even have those little moments where he is a rival to Thomas and the gang but that doesn't happen as often as many longtime fans including myself would've hoped since he's just one of the homies half of the time. But with this in mind as, it came as a surprise to me that Diesel wasn't the worst thing about 'A Rusty Rescue' but rather it was once again the portrayal of Thomas himself. Why, you may ask? Well, remember Season 22's "School Of Duck" which had the message of "repair, recycle, reuse"? Thomas says this at the start: if something is old or broken, you might want to throw it away. But often, broken things could be...well, repaired, recycled or reused. Here however, Thomas is so quick to throw away Diesel's favorite oil can simply because he saw it as trash which kinda goes against how preachy he was about the idea of recycling during the original series.
While the song 'My Rusty Can' did give me nostalgic vibes of 'If I Didn't Have You' from 'Monsters, Inc.' which...yeah, head to the end of the page. That alone is not gonna save 'A Rusty Rescue' from being a failed mission due to once again screwing up character development from the original series for the face of the entire Thomas & Friends franchise and that is why I'm giving this episode a rating of a 2.5/5.
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