The Cat's Car

**Overview**
Gallery
Transcript

## **Guide**

"**The Cat's Car**" is the 5th episode of Season 1 of *Infinity Train* and the 5th episode overall. It aired on August 7, 2019.

## Plot

After an adventure in the Dinosaur Baseball Car, Tulip and her friends' journey to the next car is stopped by the walkway between cars retracting and a new car arriving right in front of them. Upon investigation, they discover the car belongs to the Cat, who stores all of her various items on its shelves. The Cat claims to have moved on from Tulip's reneging on their deal in "The Beach Car." The group tries to move on despite the Cat's entreaties to stay, but are stopped when the Cat knocks over a pile of tapes and she asks Tulip to pick them up. Tulip does so, only to discover one of the tapes has her name on it. The Cat offers to show Tulip the tape and inserts it into a nearby television. Despite Atticus and One-One's concerns, Tulip watches the tape, only to immediately find herself sucked in.

Exploring the tape, Tulip realizes it contains her memories, particularly those involving her parents. Although she looks back at them fondly at first, she begins to notice little details that make no sense, such as her putting a blanket on an empty couch and the presence of Atticus and One-One in a TV commercial. As she finds her body engulfed by static, she quickly realizes the memories have been altered: soon she sees her true memories of her witnessing the gradual breakdown in her parents' marriage. After encountering an exaggerated version of the day they told her about their impending separation, she quickly fixes it and witnesses her younger self lashing out at her parents for changing things. Tulip realizes she was the one changing her memories to cope with her parents' divorce, and accepts that their marriage was never as happy as she pretended. This revelation frees her from the tape. Back in the real world, Tulip realizes the Cat was trying to trap her in the tape. As she tries to leave, the Cat protests that Tulip's number is going down and she must be making progress. Angered at the thought that the number is the train's measure of her personal growth, Tulip rebukes the Cat and the train's rules, choosing to cover the number with one of her gloves. She departs, with an equally angered Atticus and One-One following.

Realizing her plan failed, the Cat frantically retrieves another one of the Memory Tapes before her car is abruptly moved to another part of the train, where she is confronted by the Steward who demands to know where Tulip is. The Conductor, a mysterious robotic figure, orders the Steward to kill the Cat, but the Cat begs for mercy, claiming she's the only one who can help find them. The Conductor calls off the Steward, who orders the Cat not to fail again before destroying the Cat's collection.

## Features

### Characters

* Tulip Olsen
* One-One
* Atticus
* The Cat
* Steward
* Conductor (in shadow)
* Megan Olsen (flashback)
* Andy Olsen (flashback)
* Mikayla (flashback)
* Mildred the Tyrannosaur (debut)

### Locations

* DolphWorld (flashback)
* Megan's Residence (flashback)
* Wasteland
* Infinity Train
	+ Dinosaur Baseball Car
	+ Samantha's Car

## Trivia

* Based on the voice credits Tulip was five, six and eight years old in three different memories.
* **End tag:** Tulip's hand, against a backdrop of the Wasteland, with her number rapidly changing.

### Cultural References

* This episode includes two references to the Japanese video game company Nintendo:
	+ A Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) can be seen as one of the Cat's things when Tulip and her friends explore the car.
	+ Tulip's dad at one point calls her "Shigeru" in relation to her game design aspirations: this is a reference to Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of the *Mario* and *The Legend of Zelda* franchises.
* Tulip imagines getting into Vassar College (a real college in Poughkeepsie, New York), which is referred to as a school "for smart people too creative for their own good."
* DolphWorld, and the apparently abused dolphins, appears to be a reference to SeaWorld and its treatment of orcas as depicted in the 2013 documentary *Blackfish*.
* The "Harry the Bike Guy" commercial is a reference to a near-identical commercial featuring "Erik the Bike Man", the spokesperson for the Minnesota-based bike store franchise Erik's Bike Shop.

### Continuity

* This episode features the third and final instance of the "No thumbs" running gag. Similarly to its first occurrence in "The Beach Car," the Cat invokes it to explain why she cannot pick up the tapes.
	+ The writing team wanted to find more opportunities to include the gag, but couldn't find a way to fit it in.
* "Word Up" by Cameo (the song Tulip sang in the previous episode) can be heard during her memory of the family road trip.
* Tulip's contract with her parents is on the fridge during her flashback of tucking in her father.
* The Cat grabs a memory tape from her shelf and hides it just before the Conductor and the Steward appear.
* The four-tone sequence the Conductor uses to control the Steward, besides being derived from the *Infinity Train* theme, was previously sung by One-One when he met the Steward in "The Corgi Car."
* There's a mirror police helmet on The Cat's shelf in the scene where Tulip angrily leaves the car. Tulip will eventually meet the mirror police in "The Chrome Car".

### Storyline analysis

* The writers consider this to be the episode where the show begins to reveal more about the nature of the train, essentially showing there is more to the train than simply fun adventures in different cars. Notably, it solves one of the mysteries that has existed since the pilot: the numbers are a measure of personal growth, and one must go through their own development to get down to zero. The reason the answer is given so early in the season is that by solving one of the series' main mysteries, they open the door for other mysteries, particularly that of the Conductor. Owen Dennis feels the question of "why" is more important than the question of "what" when it comes to *Infinity Train*.

### Behind the scenes

* An award on the Cat's shelf reads "Sam Spina: Best Bod." Says series creator Owen Dennis: "Bet you can't guess who drew that scene?"
* This is Justin Michael's personal favorite episode that he wrote for the season.
* The original conceit for this episode was that the Cat, named "Heart's Desire", ran a shop where she claimed she could give passengers whatever their hearts desired for a price. Tulip agrees and gives the Cat her most prized possession: a recipe card with a doodle her mother drew on the back. The Cat apparently zaps her back home, only for Tulip to realize she is simply reliving old memories with her parents.
* Justin Michael had the idea for a car that was vertically oriented, which was incorporated into this episode.
* Owen Dennis wanted this episode to lean into the horror genre, largely achieved through the surrealist approach to the tape.
* The Christmas tree falling on young Tulip is based on an incident that occurred to Madeline Queripel when she was a child: she pulled on a Christmas tree ornament and the tree fell on her.
* "I can see Orion's belt and part of his pants" was a joke that Justin Michael's sister made when she was little.
* Dolph World is loosely based on the Como Park Zoo in St. Paul, Minnesota.
* The Dolph World crowd scenes feature animated caricatures of the *Infinity Train* crew.
* Designers Allison Kim and Megan Phonesavanh respectively dressed as One-One and Atticus in the Donut Holer commercial for Halloween.
* Madeline Queripel threw in the "family forever" text on Tulip's parents' sweaters during boarding, as she felt they needed to emphasize the over-the-top happiness in Tulip's false memories.
* Justin Michael wrote a separate page of dialogue of Tulip's parents' argument at Dolph World, in case they needed a longer take of it. Owen Dennis praised Audrey Wasilewski and Mark Fite's performances as Megan and Andy Olsen during this cut dialogue.
* Ugly Irwin's cameo was in the script, but Kellye Perdue added the line "Divorce!"
* The dialogue for the divorce scene is pulled directly from the original script for "The Grid Car" as written by Owen Dennis, Madeline Queripel, and Cole Sanchez. Justin Michael's contribution was Tulip's own commentary after watching the scene.
* The team were unsure of whether or not to see the Conductor in this episode, ultimately choosing to simply show the sine wave.

### Errors

* The Cat's line "Je ne serais jamais" is an incorrect translation for "I would never". The "ne serais" part is unusual for a native French speaker. A more appropriate translation would be "Je n'oserais jamais" which is used in the captions for this episode when it was on HBO Max.
* Near the end of the episode, Tulip puts on her glove to cover her right hand. However, when she opens the door out of the Cat's Car, she no longer wears her glove.

## Gallery

*Click here to view this page's gallery.*

## References

1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 Book 1 DVD Commentary: "The Cat's Car."
2. ↑ Owen Dennis tweet. Archived from the original (dead link).
3. ↑ Owen Dennis tweet: "Here's some more original cat."
4. ↑ Owen Dennis tweet: "A christmas tree actually fell on @HamShears."
5. ↑ Owen Dennis tweet: "Dolph World is loosely based on the Como Park Zoo in St. Paul."

Infinity Train (pilot)

**Book One**
The Grid Car • The Beach Car • The Corgi Car • The Crystal Car • **The Cat's Car** • The Unfinished Car • The Chrome Car • The Ball Pit Car • The Past Car • The Engine

**Minisodes**
The Green Car • The Tiny Wizard Car • The Kaiju Car • The Tech Support Car • The Snow Car • The Hill Car • The Movie Theater Car • The Cross-Eyed Ducks Car • The Minecart Car • The Wedding Cake Car

**Book Two**
The Black Market Car • The Family Tree Car • The Map Car • The Toad Car • The Parasite Car • The Lucky Cat Car • The Mall Car • The Wasteland • The Tape Car • The Number Car

**Book Three**
The Musical Car • The Jungle Car • The Debutante Ball Car • Le Chat Chalet Car • The Color Clock Car • The Campfire Car • The Canyon of the Golden Winged Snakes Car • The Hey Ho Whoa Car • The Origami Car • The New Apex

**Book Four**
The Twin Tapes • The Iceberg Car • The Old West Car • The Pig Baby Car • The Astro Queue Car • The Party Car • The Art Gallery Car • The Mega Maze Car • The Castle Car • The Train to Nowhere