Hello all! Welcome back to my weekly reviews of Infinity Train. Last week we got started on Book 4 with the first three episodes. This week we cover the midpoint of the season by taking a look at the next four episodes.

‘The Pig Baby Car’, Season 4, Episode 4 (Premiere Date: April 15, 2021)

‘The Astro Queue Car’, Season 4, Episode 5 (Premiere Date: April 15, 2021)

‘The Party Car’, Season 4, Episode 6 (Premiere Date: April 15, 2021)

‘The Art Gallery Car’, Season 4, Episode 7 (Premiere Date: April 15, 2021)

Synopsis – The trio of Min-Gi, Ryan, and Kez find themselves in a car that consists of a massive, gravity-defying kitchen. Realizing where they are, Kez hides herself under a chef’s hat right before a massive talking baby pig and his cow creamer nanny show up. The nanny refuses to show Min-Gi and Ryan to the exit until they have baked a dessert for Pig Baby. After multiple failures and bickering due to Ryan’s impulsiveness, the duo manage to make brownies that suit Pig Baby’s palette. Despite them meeting her requirements, the cow creamer demands that they continue to bake more brownies and claims that they can never leave. Furious, Min-Gi and Ryan realize that the door is lodged between Pig Baby’s teeth. Needing a distraction, they pull the hat off Kez. Pig Baby is so upset – due to an incident where Kez ruined all of his butter – that the trio are able to jump into his mouth and through the door before he can stop them.

Believing that they are stuck on the Train due entirely to Ryan and his impatience, Min-Gi repeatedly and condescendingly tries to ‘teach’ Ryan lessons about slowing down. They soon find themselves in a car that looks like the surface of the Moon with a building in the center. Kez claims that there is a great party going on inside – along with the next door – but there is a line to get in (composed entirely of people in orange space suits) that is so long that it travels through multiple portals around the car. Ryan attempts to cut the line, but the bouncer (also in a space suit) denies them entry. Min-Gi continues to belittle Ryan and attempts to get him to wait in line until they discover that the other astronauts are all dead because they waited so long to get in. With Min-Gi shaken, Ryan hatches a plan to pose as a band invited to play at the party. The ruse is a success and the bouncer lets them pass.

As soon as the trio enters the building’s lobby they are confronted by the Steward, who seems to be glitching and occasionally speaking in Amelia’s voice. The Steward returns Min-Gi and Ryan’s belongings – including Ryan’s guitar and Min-Gi’s mini synthesizer – and then leaves. Confused, Min-Gi, Ryan and Kez pass through to the main party space where they are greeted by some of Kez’s supposed friends. Said ‘friends’ continually mock her for doing things incorrectly and tell Min-Gi and Ryan how to find the venue’s green room. Min-Gi expresses apprehension at the idea of performing again, but seems to come around to the idea as he and Ryan practice. After only a few minutes they are called up to perform but, much to Ryan’s chagrin, Min-Gi leaves him hanging just as he had back in high school. Angry, Ryan attempts to open the exit door but finds that it won’t open unless the party is a proper success. He goes to confront Min-Gi in the bathroom, but finds Min-Gi contrite and downbeat. The two bond and play a song together in the cramped space, inviting Kez to join them after another round of jokes at her expense from her ‘friends’. As the trio hangs out, Min-Gi and Ryan’s numbers drop and the door can be heard unlocking.

Moving on, Min-Gi, Ryan, and Kez eventually find themselves in a car containing a vaguely creepy art gallery. As they split up to search for the exit door, shadows mysteriously shift behind them. Whenever Min-Gi or Ryan are touched by the shadows, they suddenly feel cold and begin to lash out at each other. Although Kez is able to get the two friends temporarily back together, they fall to bickering once again. Eventually Ryan is able to crack the car’s puzzle, discovering that you can pass through the door by looking at a hanging mobile from a certain angle. Unfortunately, after passing through he finds himself blocked from returning by a force field. Unable to communicate with an emotionally paralyzed Min-Gi, Ryan and Kez are forced to watch as the shadows take the form of a monster made out of what appear to be severed arms. Ryan tries his hardest to break through the field and help his friend, causing his number to reach zero and his exit door to appear. Although he is tempted for a moment, the door disappears and his number jumps up again before he can take it. Attempting to escape from the creature, Min-Gi is barely able to solve the puzzle and escape in time. Ryan expresses relief, but Min-Gi rebukes him and claims that Ryan and Kez had abandoned him to die.

My Thoughts – Two of last week’s episodes – ‘The Iceberg Car’ and ‘The Old West Car’ – felt very Kez-focused. This week’s four episodes largely shift the focus back to Min-Gi and Ryan, which I feel is definitely to these installments’ benefit in terms of providing the protagonists with needed character development and keeping Kez from feeling overused. The duo’s rocky relationship provides a strong through line here as they oscillate back and forth between reconciliation and estrangement and their character flaws are put under a microscope. Ryan’s main issue is fairly obvious. He is impatient and impulsive, and it causes them a number of major setbacks (most notably in his difficulty in taking their task seriously in ‘The Pig Baby Car’). Min-Gi’s flaws are a bit more subtle, in fitting with his more reserved personality, but no less problematic for their shared progress. He does tend to think that he knows better than those around him – hence his smugness in ‘The Astro Queue Car’ – but luckily he gets over that relatively quickly. More important is his anxiety about failure. He is so worried about what the future may hold, about whether he and Ryan could possibly succeed as musicians, that he is willing to push Ryan away and settle on a career that holds little interest for him. It’s something that haunts him throughout these episodes – ‘The Party Car’ being a particularly strong example – and remains to be resolved. It is clear that Ryan and Min-Gi are well-suited for each other, with strengths that mirror each other’s weaknesses, but they are unable as of yet to get past their differences and fully patch up their friendship.

Although these episodes have more of a Ryan and Min-Gi focus, we do get some additional background on Kez that helps to color her character and make her more interesting. When Min-Gi and Ryan discuss leaving the train at the end of ‘The Pig Baby Car’, Kez shows significant reluctance to consider the idea. This could imply that she previously was abandoned (or perceived that she was abandoned) by someone close to her, which could explain a bit of her flightiness. This also generally contributes to a sense of loneliness about her in these episodes. While she has ‘friends’ who show up in ‘The Party Car’, they spend the whole time belittling her and mocking her for little mistakes. By her confused and embarrassed reactions, it is likely that she realizes that these bullies aren’t actually her friends. From everything we’ve seen so far, though, it seems that she has a lot of enemies and few people beyond Min-Gi and Ryan that could really be considered friends, so she sticks with Brando, Spiceman and co. out of a desire to fit in. She appears to have found her place with Min-Gi and Ryan, but these insecurities are almost certain to pop up again before the season is over.

Looking at the episodes as a whole, the first two are fun but have their issues. ‘The Pig Baby Car’ and ‘The Astro Queue Car’ have great moments of absurdity – being forced to bake giant deserts for a humongous talking baby pig, for example, or trying to circumvent a line so long that people die before they can reach the end of it. The cars themselves are also two of the more interesting car designs we’ve seen in a while, what with the Pig Baby Car’s gravity defying giant kitchen and the Astro Queue Car’s space theme. It’s also nice that both cars actually have puzzles that need to be solved, given that a number of cars last season felt more like set dressing. On the flipside, though, one of the main problems with these episodes is the pacing. Both the baking montages and Cow Creamer’s attempts to soothe Pig Baby’s tantrums in ‘The Pig Baby Car’, while fun at first, feel like they drag on a bit too long. Similarly, Min-Gi’s constant condescending smugness in ‘The Astro Queue Car’ became grating very quickly and pulled the episode down with it.

‘The Party Car’, meanwhile, has some really strong emotional beats, particularly with regards to the way it explores Min-Gi and Ryan’s relationship. Forcing the duo to face down the same sort of incident that broke them apart in ‘The Twin Tapes’ really allows the writers to showcase how they have changed in even this short period of time. Rather than storming off and never seeing each other again (technically unfeasible anyway, given the locked door), they actually talk out their issues and insecurities. The ending bathroom scene is surprisingly sweet, especially in the way Min-Gi and Ryan get Kez involved (after all of the problems with her ‘friends’, as mentioned earlier). If I had one complaint about the episode, it would likely be that it still doesn’t feel like we have a grasp of Min-Gi’s goals. Does he actually want to be in a band? It’s still unclear, and the lack of clarity blunts the impact of the conversation between the friends ever so slightly. And although Brando, Spiceman, and co. serve an important purpose for Kez’s arc, I found them to be quite annoying and wish that their presence had been cut back.

In my view, though, ‘The Art Gallery Car’ is the real standout of the season (at least up to this point). It might even be one of my favorite episodes of the series. It has such an incredibly creepy and tense atmosphere from the get-go, from the eerily empty museum setting to the shifting shadows. All three main characters get important character moments, with Kez proving useful in getting Min-Gi and Ryan together in the same room to talk things out, Min-Gi and Ryan being forced to get things out in the open that might only have been papered over in the previous episodes, and Ryan not only solving the final puzzle but also temporarily managing to get his own exit door. Speaking of, I found the door puzzle to be very clever. Studying art is all about observing it from every possible angle – both metaphorically and, potentially, literally – so it only makes sense to have a door that only becomes accessible when looked at from the proper viewpoint. On top of all that, the Docent was an all-time great creepy monster with, given that it appears to be made out of arms with numbers on them, some very disturbing implications. All-in-all, it is an excellent capper to this batch of episodes.

My Totally Arbitrary Car Ranking – The Art Gallery Car (A-), The Pig Baby Car (B+), The Astro Queue Car (B), The Party Car (B-)

My Totally Arbitrary Episode Ranking – The Art Gallery Car (A), The Party Car (B+), The Pig Baby Car (B), The Astro Queue Car (B-)

Cast Additions –

The Pig Baby Car:

This episode introduces two recurring characters for this season – Pig Baby, voiced by Oscar-winning character actor J.K. Simmons (Spider-Man, Whiplash, The Legend of Korra), and Cow Creamer, voiced by prolific voice actress Audrey Wasilewski (who previously voiced Tulip’s mother in Book 1).

The Astro Queue Car:

No new characters with speaking roles were introduced in this episode.

The Party Car:

Among Kez’s friends, Brando (the hand) is voiced by Owen Dennis, Spiceman (the beehive guy) is voiced by actor and comedian Thomas Lennon (Reno 911!), and Beehive (the pepper guy) is voiced by Donald Faison (Scrubs).

The Art Gallery Car:

No new characters with speaking roles were introduced in this episode.

Trivia/Stray Observations –

The Pig Baby Car:

• “Yours has cool doodles. Mine is apparently an old person’s grocery list.”
• “I don’t hate fun, I just…Oh. Who in this car hates you?”
• “There, there, who’s a pretty baby?” *Sniff, sniff* “I am.”
• “Ugh, it’s American.”
• “Who in their right mind enjoys post-war American food?”
• I love the design of Pig Baby’s car, with all the giant kitchen furniture/appliances floating in the air.
• It sounds to me like J.K. Simmons is using his Yellow M&M voice for Pig Baby.
• You’re right, Min-Gi. Warm banana mayonnaise salad does sound awful.

The Astro Queue Car:

• “You guys don’t seem to be having fun. You seem more smug. And annoyed?”
• “Hold on. Kez has a very liberal definition of the word ‘friends’.”
• “She’s a bell. Why was that…warm?”
• “Ugh, do your corpse bodies do that too?”
• “I’m pretty happy with what I see.”
• During the opening scene, Kez at one point says, “When I was baby…” This seeming typo was apparently intentional and tripped up Minty Lewis during the first script read.
• Kez regurgitating the bag of chips was mildly disturbing.
• How did Ryan manage to dig that big of a hole? And why did it need to be so wide?
• I love the way they tricked the bouncer.
• Even after four seasons the Steward is still very creepy.
• A donut holer apparently makes an appearance at one point.

The Party Car:

• “Or, make yourself as big as possible. Show it you’re the bigger AAH!”
• “Ooh, neat, she left presents this time.”
• “Nice. Didn’t know you were…like…a dad, but I can see it now.”
• “Party time, corpses.” I feel like I have to try using that line sometime.
• “You’re so right. We’re always talking about chicken.”
• “There was a bathroom to change in this whole time?”
• We get a cool moment with what appears to be Amelia’s takeover of the Steward, although not much comes of it here.
• Nice to see the space suit guys having some fun.
• The Hey Ho Whoa Car callback was great.
• Painting of space suit guy with wine glass = perfection.
• That was a very sweet moment to end on.
• There was a deleted, scripted-but-never-made scene where Min-Gi tries to change clothes under a table only for the table to move and reveal itself to be a young Alan Dracula.

The Art Gallery Car:

• “You’re the worst Canadian.”
• “The colors are bold, but the lines have…like…hesitation in them.”
• “So, I found these headphones, but there isn’t, like, anyplace to plug them in. I think it’s a scam.”
• “Huh? Oh, yeah, sometimes I do that.”
• Now I’m sad we didn’t get to see the car with the big rollerskates.
• If this took place in the 90s, I would say that Ryan’s been playing too much Super Mario 64.
• The hand monster’s official name is the Docent, which makes the ‘Mind the Docent’ sign at the beginning ominously understated in hindsight.
• Min-Gi and Ryan at one point discuss a fictional musician named Ridge Irvine. His name is inspired by production assistant Ridge Hirano.
• Two of the paintings in the gallery appear to show Khaki Bottoms and the Steward.

That’s it for this week! We’re now onto the final stretch of Book 4, and next week we finish off the series with ‘The Mega Maze Car’, ‘The Castle Car’, and ‘The Train to Nowhere’.

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!