ThomasNATION Reviews - Carly's Magnificent Magnet
February 01, 2025
Anyone who's ever known Carly knows that she is a bubbly crane who is happy to help out. She is friendly and is able to make friends with almost anyone. But while she can be a bit over-enthusiastic about her work, she only wants to be really useful. Compared to the grumpy Cranky and the silent Big Mickey, Carly is the most approachable crane at Brendam Docks to have as a conversation partner since she often compliments and chats with engines visiting and leaving the docks but is still serious about her work. But here's the thing, that's just the Carly that we longtime fans of Thomas The Tank Engine have known and loved from our days of watching the original television series since the Carly that we have now in the 'All Engines Go' series reboot can be seen as one of the few characters that the reboot actually got right even if that meant turning Carly from a gantry crane into a crane engine-man, talk about being demoted! As for how the All Engines Go reboot portrays Carly, she is still a very helpful crane who is always there to lend a hook when her friends are in trouble and she also acts as a sort of big sister figure to Sandy which makes me so happy that they kept their relationship as friends and not the mother-daughter relationship that the production team had in mind. Otherwise, it would've just raised so many questions about the rules of how this new version of the Thomas & Friends universe work especially regarding the question if engines had...uhhh, let's just move on with the review!
But moving on, what's been truly surprising in my opinion apart from how consistent in character that Carly has been so far with her original series counterpart is how much All Engines Go has done to develop Carly as a character more than the original series ever did as she was never given a chance to be in the spotlight for her own story after her two-parter debut stories back in Season 21 since she was reduced to just appearing whenever an episode had a scene or took place entirely at Brendam Docks. Heck, Carly should be lucky to have even had any speaking roles at all in some cases. So when I saw that Carly was finally getting her chance to be in the spotlight for her own episode, I was actually looking forward to seeing what they could do in order to develop her character even further than what we've seen already. What was the end result, I know that I'm gonna get a lot of flack from a majority of the fanbase for this but 'Carly's Magnificent Magnet' is pretty much Season 15's 'Stuck on You' but done much better. Don't get me wrong, 'Stuck on You' is still a guilty pleasure of mine for how it finally gave Butch a long-awaited speaking and starring role after nearly fifteen years of being in the background but is still plagued by the lazy writing and typical 'three strikes, you're out' formula that truly hurt the HiT era of the series.
But as for 'Carly's Magnificent Magnet' while it may be similar to 'Stuck on You' in terms of the story, it's actually a very relatable concept for anyone who has ever struggled with having to learn something new in life as sometimes making mistakes is what it takes. In other words, if at first you don't succeed, try again! So even though I like both episodes from the original series and the reboot equally, I think I actually got more entertainment as well as enjoyment out of 'Carly's Magnificent Magnet' and that is why I'm giving this episode a rating of a 3.5/5.
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