Island Of Shit & Pain

Not talkin' 'bout Puerto Rico, but the imaginary Island of Sodor. I must admit, the guy in the top hat & the tank engine's slavish devotion to him has given me the creeps more than once, but I didn't know just how horrid it was. Written by a fucking clergyman, so it figures.

Realizing that the day’s workflow is irrevocably disrupted, Fat Controller decides that Henry must be punished— for life. “We shall take away your rails, and leave you here for always and always,” he tells Henry. As Henry’s face contorts into anguish and the background music toots a series of Oompa Loompa faux-glum flourishes, railway employees build a brick prison around Henry, leaving only half of his face visible. His train friends pass by: one snubs him, and another whistles hello. Henry has no steam left to whistle back. He spends his days alone, soot-streaked, wondering if he’ll ever be allowed to go back to work. The last line of the segment is the narrator saying, “I think he deserved his punishment, don’t you?” In the U.S. version, this voice-over is tweaked so that Henry’s fate seems temporary. But the original version is still on YouTube, and it’s comically bleak. As one commenter writes, “What moral lesson are kids supposed to learn from this? Do as you’re told or you will be entombed forever in the darkness to die?”