Hello all! Welcome back to my weekly reviews of Infinity Train. Last week we got started on Book 2 with ‘The Black Market Car’ and ‘The Family Tree Car’. This week we continue onward with ‘The Map Car’ and ‘The Toad Car’.

‘The Map Car’, Season 2, Episode 3 (Premiere Date: January 7, 2020)

Synopsis – M.T., Jesse, and Alan Dracula arrive in an unusual car where the terrain looks like an unfinished old-timey map surrounded by a black void. As soon as they arrive Jesse is given a piece of map that looks exactly like the car by a talking cloud named Marcel. Marcel cheerfully reveals that in order to move on to the next car they will need to find more pieces of the map and, in turn, reveal more parts of the car. M.T. decides to use this as an opportunity to get Jesse’s number down, pushing him to do things like walking on top of a mountain range rather than a dotted line on the ground. They expand the map a few times, but Jesse’s number actually goes up. Eventually they unveil a large chunk of ocean.

Marcel tells them to get on a boat shaped like a compass, saying that he will blow them to where they can find the next map piece. As they are sailing, Jesse talks about how he competes on his swim team with the butterfly stroke because that’s what his team wanted him to do even though he prefers freestyle. They quickly realize that Marcel is just blowing them in circles, and M.T. confronts him. Marcel reveals that he has no intention of helping them finish the map, as he wants them to stay with him and have fun forever. Realizing what must be done, Jesse draws a door on the back of a receipt in order to attach it to the map. Marcel blows it away to a nearby island, but Jesse is able to swim there – notably freestyle – and attach the receipt, finishing the map. With the map completed, the environment suddenly becomes more realistic, causing Marcel to disappear in a puff of wind. Still floating on the boat in the water, Jesse sees his number drop to 29. He and M.T. are happy, until M.T. realizes that the water is now reflective and Agents Sieve and Mace emerge.

My Thoughts – I remembered this being a slow episode and, given that I have seemed to generally find the slower episodes a bit weaker so far, I was certain that I was going to find this to be a lower-tier episode. In actuality, however, I really quite enjoyed it. I think a large part of that, beyond the humor mined from M.T. and Jesse’s dynamic, is the unsettling nature of the car. The nonexistent sky, the formless black void beyond the edges of the map, the uncanny valley effect of everything looking old-fashioned and made of paper, it all combined to create a new experience we haven’t really seen prior. Wayne Knight also did a great job with Marcel, making him seem a little too eager to please in a way that sets off alarm bells early on.

This episode gives a lot more insight into Jesse’s problems. We saw in ‘The Family Tree Car’ that a desire to please everyone, even above himself, is one of his key personality traits. In that episode it served as a roadblock to getting to the bottom of the tree. In this case, it makes the whole ordeal with the map longer than it needs to be. M.T. has some…interesting ideas about what can make a Passenger’s number go down, and rather than point out the ridiculousness of some of them – like going over the mountains instead of following the dotted line – Jesse just goes along with everything she says without question. This reluctance to contradict M.T. not only prolongs the map search, but it also bumps his number up as well. Even beyond this example, Jesse tells a couple of stories about his life that illustrate the issues with his approach to interpersonal relationships. Accepting his friends’ celery and getting into trouble with the lunch lady, as well as agreeing to do the butterfly stroke on the swim team even though he doesn’t like it, demonstrate how he is constantly putting other peoples’ wishes above his own. It is clear that, even though he seems fine with it on the surface, he very much would like the chance to do things that he wants to do rather than what other people want for him. This will be key moving forward.

By the end of the episode we have clearer understanding of M.T.’s personality as well. Like Tulip was at the beginning of Book 1, she can be quite inflexible and even a bit selfish. She is convinced that she knows the best way for Jesse to decrease his number. Even though none of her ideas – usually amounting to ‘do something random and see if that makes your number go down’ – actually work, she continues to push Jesse in that direction. She also comes across as disinterested in Jesse’s journey, instead just wanting to go back to being on her own with Alan Dracula. This is likely connected to her own hopes for self-discovery – how can she figure out who she is as a person if she is constantly having to assist someone else? We’ll have to see how she and Jesse figure this out over the next several episodes.

As a side note, I never realized it before but Marcel’s motivation – fear that a Passenger completing his map will wipe him from existence – actually relates well to M.T.’s desire to move beyond the purpose she was created for. Something interesting to consider.

Episode MVP – Jesse. We gain a much better understanding of who he is as a person, and he also gets the chance to finally assert himself by the end of the episode.

My Totally Arbitrary Car Ranking – Map Car (B+)

My Totally Arbitrary Episode Ranking – A solid B.

Cast Additions – Only one new addition this time around, with character actor Wayne Knight (Jurassic Park, Seinfeld, Toy Story 2) voicing Marcel.

Trivia/Stray Observations –

• “Wait a second, you should be doing this. Open the door. Learn something!”
• “I learned his name is Marcel. Does that count?” “Did your number go down?”
• “So are you gonna keep him now or what? ‘Cause I kind of just want to hang out with this deer.”
• “So, Marcel, are you just going to keep watching us the entire time?” “Yep, pretty much!”
• “On your way back, think about your shortcomings and how you deal with them.”
• “Your hand is trash.”
• “Look at that. That could have been you chewing that map, and your number could have dropped by ten.”
• “I mean, the map had my spit on it and its still good, right?”
• “So, anyway, I’m metal…”
• “Share your feelings with them. Uh…go to Game Design Camp?” Nice callback.
• “I guess you need to talk more about sports or something.” “Yeah, that makes sense!”
• Supposedly the woman M.T. sees in the Doily Car in ‘The Black Market Car’ is Jesse’s old lunch lady.
• Apparently the episode was supposed to start with the trio in ‘the Salt Car’, a car filled with salt, and Alan Dracula would have been dragging his tongue along everything.
• The look of the Map Car was allegedly very difficult to produce and animate.
• The giggling of the mermaids was meant to sound like canned laughter.
• Both the celery and butterfly stroke stories were based on writer Alex Horab’s childhood.

‘The Toad Car’, Season 2, Episode 4 (Premiere Date: January 7, 2020)

Synopsis – With an assist by Alan Dracula, Jesse and M.T. are able to rush past Agents Sieve and Mace and into the next car. Fortunately for them, the door locks behind them, preventing the Flecs from entering the car after them. Unfortunately, they find that the other door is locked as well, leaving them stuck inside a bare white room with a toad sitting in the middle of it. The Toad reveals that the doors will only unlock if he is kicked, but he begs that they don’t kick him. M.T. tries to pressure Jesse to kick the Toad, but Jesse is reluctant and stops mid-swing when notices that his number is going up. Frustrated, he sits down by the entrance while M.T. works at trying to open the exit.

As Jesse is sitting by the door, Sieve speaks to him through it and tells him that M.T. is a violent radical criminal and must be turned in. The agent’s manipulations have an effect on Jesse, as he clearly begins to doubt M.T. The car transitions to a nighttime state, and as M.T. falls asleep, Jesse looks through his phone and stumbles across a video of himself reluctantly pressuring his younger brother to do a dangerous stunt at the behest of his ‘friends’. Hearing Jesse’s phone, Sieve prods him to leave the phone out so that once daylight returns he and Mace will be able to enter the car through its reflective surface. M.T. breaks Jesse’s phone and spray paints it black to prevent this. Angry, Mace brings out some kind of powerful laser drill to burn through the door.

Annoyed at M.T.’s refusal to discuss her past, Jesse manages to convince her to open up about everything. Jesse realizes that she is not the dangerous criminal Sieve made her out to be just as the Flecs begin to break down the door. Terrified, the Toad desperately asks M.T. and Jesse to kick him. They prepare to do so together, but at the last second the Toad bumps into Alan Dracula, prompting the deer to kick him itself. The doors unlock and M.T., Jesse, and Alan make it through the exit just in time, taking the Toad with them so that Sieve and Mace are left trapped inside the empty car. As the Toad bids farewell, Jesse’s number drops to 14 and they celebrate.

My Thoughts – If there is one type of episode that I really love when done well, it’s a bottle episode. A bottle episode, if you are unaware, is an episode that is restricted to just a few main characters and sets (usually ones that are already existing) and few special effects in order to save money. Due to these constraints, such episodes usually focus almost entirely on character dynamics and/or complex psychological situations. They often are able to provide a much deeper understanding of the characters than you might otherwise get with a bigger-budget, more action focused episode. Two examples I can think of off the top of my head are ‘Duet’ from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and ‘Midnight’ from Doctor Who, both of which are held up as high points of their respective seasons or even their series as a whole.

Why do I bring all this up? It’s because ‘The Toad Car’ is pretty much the closest Infinity Train has gotten or will get to having a bottle episode. In fact, the writers have outright said that this episode was meant to be a bottle episode. Only one new location makes an appearance, the Toad Car itself, which is bare bones to put it mildly. Similarly, the only new character is the Toad who, despite having some funny lines and being the object of the dilemma, doesn’t actually factor much into Jesse and M.T.’s conversations. Beyond them, the only characters to show up are the Flecs, who have already been established. Even the plot itself plays out like you would expect with a bottle episode, with the bulk of the episode revolving around two psychological dilemmas: Will Jesse or M.T. kick the Toad over its objections in order to escape the car? And will Jesse listen to Agent Sieve and turn M.T. in?

Ultimately, this format ends up working out very well. This episode is perhaps the most important for Jesse’s personal journey up to this point in the season (and maybe the most important for him overall). Sieve attempts to push him into handing over M.T., and although the chances of that happening were admittedly very low there is still tension due to Jesse’s established tendency to give in to others’ demands in the hopes of pleasing everyone. The fact that he ends up resisting Sieve’s entreaties despite his clear doubts is a major step for him. Similarly, watching the video in which he pressured his brother to do a dangerous stunt, and getting chewed out by M.T. about it, forces him to confront the issue directly. We can see the shift in him by episode’s end – when he does finally decide to kick the Toad (although it is Alan Dracula that actually does it) it is on his own terms rather than M.T.’s.

This wasn’t just Jesse’s episode, however – both M.T. and Agent Sieve are given added depth. M.T. has continually refused to reveal much about her past to Jesse, even when it could be helpful. In her quest to be her own person, she seems…I don’t know, embarrassed, ashamed?… of the person she used to be. This time it almost spells disaster, as her silence about herself allows the Flecs to more easily manipulate Jesse. Throughout the episode she ends up having to learn to trust Jesse and be willing to be more open about herself. Agent Sieve also gets perhaps his best chance to shine in this episode. Up to this point he has largely come across as the more naïve, less rough counterpart to Agent Mace – the good cop to Mace’s bad cop, if you will. The events here dispel all that. In a way, he almost proves more dangerous than Mace – whereas Mace tends to go for brute force, Sieve’s strategy is significantly more insidious and manipulative, and it seems like it almost succeeds. It’s an interesting way to further differentiate the two mirror agents.

Episode MVP – Jesse. I know he’s been the MVP for the past two episodes, but this one is really vital to his personal growth moving forward. Don’t worry – M.T. will have more time to shine in coming episodes.

My Totally Arbitrary Car Ranking – Toad Car (B). The car itself is boring, but the dilemma presented with the Toad is a good one.

My Totally Arbitrary Episode Ranking – A strong B+. A very good use of the bottle episode format that provides good moments for most of the main characters.

Cast Additions – The most prominent character added this episode is the Toad, voiced by Owen Dennis himself with an intentional Elvis impression. The only other new characters are Jesse’s friends in the recording, voiced by prolific voice actor Scott Menville, Robbie Daymond (Jesse), and Owen Dennis.

Trivia/Stray Observations –

• “Please don’t kick me.”
• “Kicking a defenseless frog –” “Uh, toad.”
• “Thank my lucky warts.”
• “Y’all need anything? Maybe some cookies and warm pond water?” “No, thanks.” “Oh, good. I ran out years ago.”
• Sieve rolls up his pant leg. “No, that looks stupid…”
• “People can’t jump out of people!”
• “If all my time in this car has taught me one thing, it’s the toad always gets kicked.”
• Owen Dennis made it a rule that Alan Dracula never intentionally helps out Jesse and M.T. They had Alan’s head start spinning partway through ‘The Map Car’ solely so that M.T. could use him to move the boat without seeming like it was Alan’s decision.
• Apparently writer Alex Horab said when writing started for this season that the difference between Tulip and M.T. is that Tulip would clean her room while M.T. would kick a toad. That is apparently where the idea for this episode came from.
• The writers included the exchange about how people can’t jump out of people because they realized partway through production that the alternative would create a massive plot hole.
• Supposedly there was a lot of back-and-forth among the writers over whether it should be possible to speak through the doors like Sieve and Jesse did.
• This episode introduces (at least I think it hasn’t shown up prior to this) another of my favorite songs from the show – Jesse and M.T.’s Theme. I would post it here, but unfortunately every video of it that I can find has a particular spoiler in the title. I’ll have to wait until the season finale.

That’s it for this week! We’ve made some progress in Book 2, and next week we are off to ‘The Parasite Car’ (with a guest star that really geeked me out) and ‘The Lucky Cat Car’.

Please share any thoughts about these episodes below. Make sure to spoiler tag any references to future events in the series in case anybody is stumbling across the show for the first time, and follow all of the Avocado’s rules and guidelines.

Thanks for reading!