Recap / Infinity Train S2E6 "The Lucky Cat Car"

What fun are games without stakes?
Credit: Storyboard artist Kellye Perdue

Written by Lindsay Katai
Storyboarded by Ryan Pequin & Madeline Queripel

Jesse and MT have to compete against another passenger in the Lucky Cat Carnival games.

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Tropes:

• Ambiguous Situation: The kids that Grace leads. The one that brings Jesse, MT and Alan Dracula out of the car doesn't have a visible number on him and Grace seems to control them with a special hand signal. It's left to the viewers to wonder just what they are, if Grace has some cult-like brainwashing on them or there's something even worse waiting in the wings. The audience learns the truth in the next chapter and it's not pretty.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: M.T. quickly counters Jesse's attempts to greet the giant Lucky Cat statue in the beginning with the assumption that it's not alive. This despite the fact that they've seen a number of strange things on the train that were actually alive. Jesse calls her out on this, to which she admits he has a point.
• The Bus Came Back: The Cat from Book 1 has returned, running a car full of carnival games.
• Call-Back:
  • The Toad shows up at a carnival booth. Now he's getting paid when people kick him.
  • Grace actually appeared in the season 1 finale. She was on the list of passengers that Amelia brought up while locating Tulip's file. Her number was listed as "...53891", showing that she's been at this for a while.
  • The kids that Grace let inside the Lucky Cat Car are the same kids from the "The Wedding Cake Car" documentary.
  • The Cat calls M.T. "Kitten", the nickname she gave Tulip.
• The Cameo: Various characters from Book 1 make their appearance here:
  • "The Beach Car": Randall runs the water balloon booth. He even tries to sell M.T. a donut holer.
  • "The Crystal Car": Greige is playing a Dance Dance Revolution game and Nancy is selling homemade pasta.
  • "The Ball Pit Car": Khaki Bottoms is seen with a new jiggle-wiggle in his paws. One of his ears got torn off and a patch is covering it.
• Cliffhanger: The episode ends with one of Grace's kids taking MT, Jesse and Alan Dracula away to Grace's lair...all while Grace looks at the number on her forearm.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: If MT remembered that she had grass stuffed in her pockets, she could've used it to lure Alan Dracula away from the crane game much much earlier.
• Distracting Disambiguation: A conversation between Jesse and MT about Mirror World lore eventually devolves into a discussion of whether or not red blood cells are really shaped like tiny inner tubes so that they can float in liquid.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: MT is frustrated that she'll get a numerically lesser reward than Jesse even when their performance is literally identical. It turns out to be because he's a passenger, but their respective genders are still a notable coincidence.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • MT ends up earning fewer points than Jesse because, as Randall states, she's not a passenger and thus doesn't have as much urgency to leave.
  • On the other side of the coin, Grace and her gang use the fact that they're passengers that need to fight for survival to justify ransacking the Lucky Cat Car and terrorizing the inhabitants.
• Foreshadowing: Jesse earns more points than MT because passengers are given higher priority, thus making it easier for them to complete the car's challenge. If this is the case, how is the other contestant keeping up?
• Hypocrite: Grace says she and her followers have to fight to survive because they're passengers. However, it's clear they want to stay passengers. Grace's number is huge (it's up to her forearm), and when she derides Jesse's number being 4 and says they can fix that in no time, the implication (which Jesse and M.T. miss) is that she means bringing it up, not down.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: In-Universe, Grace uses this as a justification for ransacking the Lucky Cat Car.
• Red Herring: MT stuffed her pockets with some grass before they all headed to the carnival. It never occurs her to actually use it to make sure Alan Dracula stopped obsessing over the crane game's own "grass".
• Running Gag: Played for Drama. Alan Dracula's obsession with wanting to eat the "grass" from the Crane Game costs Jesse and MT the time to deliver their 1000 game points to The Cat.
• Stealth Pun: The Lucky Cat Car is a car-nival.
• Take a Third Option: After Grace wins and collects the prize of access to the door, rather than strand Jesse and MT in the Lucky Cat Car until next month, she leaves it wide open for anyone to come and go at will and invites the two to come with her. Although, her motives remains to be seen.
• There Can Only Be One: Only one carnival winner is allowed to exit the car per month, necessitating MT and Jesse to win 1000 points and fast. Grace blithely ignores this rule, letting all three of them go through, along with several other children that came in to ransack the car.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Alan Dracula's constant obsession with the "grass" in the Crane Game distracts Jesse and MT from handing in their 1000 game points to The Cat.
• Wham Episode: We finally see other passengers besides the main protagonists.
• Wham Shot:
  • The hooded figure reveals herself as Grace, one of the passengers that was mentioned in the previous season.
  • At the end of the episode, Grace removes her glove, revealing that her number extends up her forearm.
• Xanatos Gambit: Its implied the Cat's motivation for helping Jesse and MT is mainly for profit. With 2-1 odds on beating Grace, everyone who bet on Grace winning gets sent to the debtor's prison. If Grace won, the Cat gets two customers who are forced to play her games for an entire month. When Jesse and MT win but lose to Grace getting the door, the Cat still gets the goods she pilfered off the the debtor's prison and the new customers. Grace unleashing the Apex on the car throws all these plans out of order.

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