ThomasNATION Reviews - Carly's Screechy Squeak
May 03, 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 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...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. So when I saw that Carly was getting another chance to be in the spotlight for her own episode in the same season as 'Carly's Magnificent Magnet', I was actually looking forward to seeing what else they could do in order to develop her character even further than what we've seen already. What was the end result, who knew that a little squeak could cause such a big problem? The reason I say this is because in Carly's debut episode 'Cranky at the End of the Line' from the original Thomas & Friends series, she says this to Cranky to make him feel better about the creaking issues that he was facing: "that's what happens when you're made of metal, a spot of oil will soon fix that".
Now I know that All Engines Go is meant to be wackier and goofier in tone as a means of competing with the kids' entertainment of today, but was there really a need for Sandy to build this wacky robot oil can squirter which feels like a lot more like a device that the team behind the Jackass franchise would've created other than for possible toy sales for Mattel's future plans for this franchise? It's like the old saying goes, big things come in small packages and I think our team of kid engines have definitely learned that the hard way when it comes to this week's episode as I feel like all the problems that came with 'Carly's Screechy Squeak' could've been solved if these engines actually stopped and used common sense for a moment and that is why I have to give 'Carly's Screechy Squeak' a rating of a 3/5.
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