Back in my Race to the Rescue review, I went on record saying that when I was a kid, I was hyped to see Flynn and Belle, and I was really excited for their episodes. Then I actually watched them and...man, they sucked. Even with Race to the Rescue, that one was so bad I have it listed as one of the worst CGI episodes of all time. But you know my thoughts on that one. How about Fiery Flynn? Can it make up for the sins of the Miller? Let's get into it.
Diesel accuses Flynn of being lazy, which he sets out to prove wrong when he learns that a blue engine is on fire. But in typical Sharon Miller fashion, he doesn't wait to hear who he is and goes around blindly spraying water on blue engines.
This is the worst kind of three strikes formula episode...a dumb one. So, we established that Flynn is spraying water on blue engines randomly. But he never checks to see if they're...you know...actually on fire. It takes effort to write something this dumb. Even the plot at the start of Diesel accusing Flynn of doing nothing, that never goes anywhere. Diesel doesn't even learn his lesson, which begs the question "why is it even here?". In fact, this episode cares so little about consistency that even the voices are wrong. Here, Rupert Degas voiced both Dart and Den. What happened there? They already had Keith Wickham in the recording booth. Did Degas read the wrong line and they just decided to roll with it? The only credit I'll give this writing is that they did a decent job setting up that Thomas would be the blue engine by having him talk to Hiro at the start of the episode.
...speaking of which, let's get into the meat of this. This is why the episode is so despised in the fandom. Thomas' firebox was on fire. His firebox...was on fire. This episode went through writing. Recording. Producing. Animating. Post-production. And several testing processes. And nobody questioned that line?! Because as I and many others have pointed out, a firebox is supposed to be on fire. That's what it does, it's not called a peanut butter-box. I know blowback is a real thing that can happen when a pipe bursts in an engine's boiler, but they never clarify that. In fact, Thomas seems totally fine when his firebox is put out. Like, yeah, his firebox was on fire. Also, the sky is blue, my tongue is in my mouth, and the commentary track for Cars 2 is very delusional.
But the question remains: is this episode worse than Race to the Rescue? In my eyes, no. This episode's conflict is arguably worse, but they actually give a reason as to why Flynn can't put out the fire when he realises his mistake. But Fiery Flynn is still a terrible, terrible episode. Dare I say it, it got a little worse on rewatch. Do I even need to explain why? Because if you've seen this episode, you get it. Its writing is atrocious, the characters stupid and the formula overused. Just do yourself a favor and skip this one and Race to the Rescue, you will get literally nothing by watching it except a migraine, and as such, I'm giving this a 1/5. "Fiery Flynn fudges it" indeed.
Final Rating: 1/5
