A lesson about the various types of transport is cut short when their teacher, an old, leaky train, abruptly dies. Wanting to escape their old lives, Red Guy drags along Yellow Guy and Duck Guy on a road trip to a new community.
Tropes:
- Art Shift: The main transport song changes the live-action style to a 2D cartoon.
- It happens yet again in Yellow Guy's daydream, albeit in the style of stop motion like CGI.
- Bait-and-Switch Boss: The Old Train barely manages to do anything before Red Guy takes advantage of his car form to get out of the house, only barely managing to get out a song on different types of transport. The real threat of the episode reveals itself later on; reality itself trying to keep them from leaving.
- Bottle Episode: The episode mostly takes place inside the car.
- Butt-Monkey: Even in the car, it arbitrarily chooses one of the passengers to pamper with food and in-car entertainment (Duck Guy) and give nothing but a barf bag and used cigarettes to the other (Yellow Guy).
- Continuity Nod:
- In this episode's Grolton & Hovris clip, Grolton remarks, "Isn't it nice to finally be outside?", just as Red Guy did back in "Love".
- While Red Guy is trying to figure out how the car works, Yellow Guy offers, "Green is for go," which was part of a lesson from one of teachers in "Dreams".
- One of the pictures that Duck Guy places on the window is a photo of himself winning what appears to be a tournament.
- Despair Event Horizon: Red Guy hits his after the group finds themselves stuck in a desolate wasteland, his attempt at freeing himself and his friends from the madness back at home being all for nothing.
- Discontinuity Nod: Red Guy chooses Clay Hill on the GPS. The GPS says "That place doesn't exist anymore", with the further explanation that it "Just shriveled up, I reckon.", a reference to the TV pilot that isn't part of the canon of the actual series itself.
- Flat Joy: From exactly who you'd expect.Red Guy: Just look at me. Look how excited I'm getting. [same face he always has]
- Foreshadowing:
- While Red Guy is explaining his goal to Yellow Guy, Yellow Guy says wonderingly, "We're going to live outside?" Red Guy thinks he's referring to the outdoors, but by the end of the trip, they're outside their usual reality.
- Yellow Guy notes that when he looks out the window, it looks back at him, referring to his reflection looking at him, yet the reflection foreshadows his appearance in the next episode when he becomes "smart".
- When Duck Guy decides to personalize his side of the car, we see a heart with what appears to be a paper shredder on it, tying it into the next episode.
- There are numerous hints throughout the episode foreshadowing Lesley's arrival. Her name appears on many of the Old Train's transformations, the narrator in Yellow Guy's dream is clearly her voice, and the final shot of the episode shows her hand moving the toy-sized version of the car.
- Yellow Guy's description of his dream in the intro song seems to be foreshadowing elements of the next episode: He mentions "another me", "the other ones", "the little lumpy one", "the whiny middle one", and "the stuff I heard about that I knew about but I don't know now".
- Formula-Breaking Episode: For the first time ever, a majority of the episode is spent with the students alone without learning a lesson or any teachers and strange characters to interact with.
- Gainax Ending: Quite possibly the most confusing one of the entire series. After driving for long enough, the trio seemingly escape their kid-show aesthetic reality and into a realistic wasteland in the middle of nowhere. After observing their surroundings, they end up camping there overnight as they have nowhere else to go. Red Guy, in denial of their current circumstances, encourages to a depressed Yellow Guy that things will get better and that they made the right call to escape. Yellow Guy hears what appears to be a female narrator saying that no matter what, they always return home. Smash Cut to a diorama version of their house, where a human hand drags a toy-version of the car they were in back home.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: It becomes increasingly clear that the real reason why Red Guy is obsessed with going on a journey is so that he and his friends can leave their house and join a normal town with people, away from all the nonsense they have to deal with back home.
- Not So Stoic: Red Guy is slowly overrun with desperation to escape when it becomes clear that they have an actual chance to run away with the car.
- Pressure-Sensitive Interface: Discussed. Duck Guy thinks this principle applies to the touchscreen of Mr. Transport's WatchBox, and protests when Red Guy asks him to ease up. His answer —"You have to jab it hard, or it won't respect your choices!"— is not as absurd as it seems due to Red's earlier argument with Mr. Transport's navigation aid (a talking touchscreen).
- Pyrrhic Victory: Even if the mysterious voice didn't drag them back, the trio's prospects didn't look good. They were all alone in a wasteland that seemingly goes on for miles and with no way to find safe food; sooner or later they would have starved to death.
- Road Trip Plot: Once the Old Train dies, the episode shifts gear to Red Guy taking Yellow Guy and Duck on a car ride to a new community.
- Status Quo Is God: Discussed. Red Guy is determined to try to break the cycle of having to deal with teachers and the like and wants to leave the house to find a new community. His efforts wind up being for naught, as his efforts strand the Students in a junkyard and then Lesley takes them back home anyway.
- Take That!: The lack of ameneties for Yellow Guy in the car vs. the luxuries Duck Guy has seems to be a jab at the disparity in quality between first and economy class in train and air travel.
- Wham Line: A mysterious voice, heard only by Yellow Guy, narrates the following as the episode ends, followed by a Wham Shot of a live-action hand returning the car (and by extension, the puppets) back to the house they just escaped from:"Journeys made and lessons learned
You may feel like you're alone
But no matter how much the wheels turn
The journey always ends up back at home!" - Xtreme Kool Letterz: The first Driving Lesson tape is about getting a license plate, and gives "DJ BIN BAGS" as an example, except "the I is a 1, the G is a 6, and the S is a Z BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I'M THINKING ABOUT GETTING!".
