Infinity Train: A Not-So-Infinite Retrospective

let me ask you a question how far would you be willing to go to overcome your own personal issues and find new appreciation for the life that you have would you be willing to die no oh um okay how would you feel about facing a series of challenges meant to emotionally open you up to the idea of changing with the cast of cartoony potentially off-putting sidekicks and also you could die if you don't have the will to change look I know I just described a sod trap but don't worry we're not going to be going as far as elongated disturbing on-screen deaths in this video Okay I lied I don't understand why you people trust me but what did I just show you well to answer that in this indirect and frustrating way as possible the way that I prefer on this channel do you guys remember when Cartoon Network would post shorts on their YouTube channel and website that were very obviously backdoor Pilots for series they wanted to gauge interest in who could forget Jammers bottoms Buttes riding with Burgess yeah a lot of this stuff was completely incomprehensible or seriously Hit or Miss it's not exactly a mystery why Executives would be a bit skeptical about them but it was an interesting experiment nonetheless basically allowing for viewers to decide what might get a shot of being a series based on reception and there were some worthwhile content that materialized in a regular show Over the Garden Wall we bear bears and possibly my favorite of the batch that got picked up Victor and Valentino the poor man's Gravity Falls oh and there was also [Music] but before that while we're on the topic of infinity how about I let you in on the near infinite vehicle choices over several distinct time periods you can pick from in this video's sponsor War Thunder a free multiplayer game available for Xbox PlayStation PC and Mac about fighting military battles using a mix of aircrafts ships and ground Vehicles complete with constantly improving visuals to make the experience as realistic as 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players or ones that have been logged out for over six months we'll get half a million silver Lions a week of renting legendary German ground Vehicles three premium Vehicles as a permanent gift XP boosters a week of Premium Accounts and other bonuses that's a lot to be given up for nothing so hurry up and get it before it comes to an end by checking out my link in the description thanks to War Thunder for sponsoring and on with the video created by Owen Dennis a storyboard artist for regular show and not much else Infinity train started out as a short he created from the idea of waking up in an unsettling Place expanding it from there into the concept of a train with infinite cars that people are taken to when they need it most getting numbers on their hands that represent how far they need to go before they can make it back home to which I say yeah of course this was created by somebody that worked on Regular Show no [ __ ] shits but I don't just say that because of the nightmare inducing deathly imagery for children I just gave you a taste of that's only superficial really it goes way deeper than that and relates back to what both of the series are when stripped down to their Bare Essentials which are way more similar than you think though I do know how dumb that sounds from an outsider's perspective after all when looking at Regular Show in comparison to Infinity train the two seem nothing alike one is an episodic comedy about two slacker Friends making it through their day-to-day lives at a park the other is a linear mystery series with hints of Comedy focused initially on an intuitive 12 year old girl and her struggle of figuring out how to escape gate but the two ultimately have one thing in common that ties them together their usage of completely off the walls settings and scenarios to help the cast creatively deal with their interpersonal problems like I know Regular Show has sort of gotten this reputation for having episodes that go like Mordecai says basketball sucks semicolon the king of basketball comes down from the Moon to fight him but a majority of the time there is a deeper meaning to the conflict of Any Given episode and once it's over the characters are generally better off for it which I think definitely contributed to why people were intrigued by Infinity trains Pilots it gave us some familiar mechanics to draw assumptions and ideas from about where a full-blown series could go but it distinguished itself as unique through a strong mystery element and fun original characters to come along with you could just tell there was way more to be explored unlike a lot of other CN shorts that felt self-contained and hard to imagine as anything more so with enough fan outcry three years after the pilot became the Studio's most popular shorts Infinity train got a full release in 2019 as a 10 episode mini series that thanks to its pop hilarity was followed closely behind by a series of continuations with new sets of characters in the same universe making it not only a mature serialized mystery cartoon with well infinite possibilities for setting and story potential drawing on real emotions and turmoil to keep it feeling down to Earth but also an anthology so you should already be able to guess that it got canceled too soon for stupid reason and eventually it got so mistreated by the people at HBO Max as one of their Originals they removed it from the platform for pretty much no reason and made it impossible to legally watch in high quality real life gets me so depressed sometimes but I'm not gonna let it attract from what Infinity train was nor am I gonna let people forget about the series anytime soon when it did so much to prove it was worth remembering despite each season's honestly tiny run time an hour and 40 minutes per season might not sound like a lot of dammit but there's more than enough material for me to make some kind of video about it so let's reminisce on what we were lucky enough to get from this show before it was taken too soon this is infinity train a surprisingly finite retrospective but a pretty long title I might have to work on that [Music] when it comes to saying the groundwork for an anthology Series where each story moving forward is going to be different and focus on the near entirely separate cast of characters from the previous one the first thought that comes to the mind of any Creator should probably go along the lines of how do I start seeing as it's important to set the status quo in the first story or two so the audience can get a better understanding of what's to come and possibly what could be subverted in the future think of The Twilight Zone it's best known for creating creepy situations and unsettling moments from simple ideas that may or may not even be happening and that's conveyed well in the first episode whereas everybody which also lets us know that stories will often have an unforeseen twist or some kind of commentary on the World At Large there are these consistent narrative threads that pop up again and again to help identify a story as part of the universe keeping in tone with a series of themes and for Infinity train the main connective theme should be pretty obvious each season is going to deal with a different group on the train led by a passenger sure slowly coming to terms with what it is they need to learn about themselves so they can get home and though that basic formula is going to be deconstructed over the next few seasons like I said the first is about setting the Baseline for what should be expected nit does a great job doing just that by showing us the average passenger experience same as it was in the pilot our first major protagonist is tulip a 12 year old intellectual girl from Wisconsin that's unable to go to a game design Camp she was really excited for due to her parents being disorganized after their divorce a shift in her family Dynamic that's very clearly been affecting her but from what we see in the first episode she isn't willing to talk about it with anyone so with this event is sort of the last straw she tries going to camp on her own but finds the train thinking it'll take her where she needs to go and honestly I love this introduction to her character purely for how well it sets up not only what she's like but also what she's going through in such a natural way lots of kids have to deal with divorces after all and often attempts at portraying it aren't communicated properly such as the infamous band Sesame Street episode hilariously titled Snuffy's parents get a divorce so having such a complex situation be the central conflict of a series lead is pretty bold and what's even more impressive is that the show doesn't treat it like a singular event tulip needs to overcome it's something that's also worse than negative aspects of her personality causing subsequent issues to pop up so with that in mind she not only needs to figure out why the divorce happened and accept it but also addressed the other problems it's created and the train gets her to finally do both of those things through her dinners and companions a dual Personality robot looking for his mother 1-1 and a royal talking Corgi Atticus who are sort of tailor-made to put tulip in scenarios that force her to confront the way she is as their Carefree simple willing to slow down for the sake of fun and immediately put themselves In Harm's Way for the sake of friends all things tulip doesn't take to at first being a super logical person that likes making immediate progress by herself and gets incredibly frustrated if she doesn't however slowly but surely with the duo there to guide her tool of lowers that exterior to acknowledge how she's acted in to cope with the divorce she starts letting herself slow down to take everything in and understand nothing is as black and white as she wants it to be so by the time she reaches the car that shows happy versions of experiences with her parents appealing to the fictional reality she wanted that matches how she once preferred to remember them tulip is able to see beyond and recognize that while she wanted her parents to be happy and saw the divorce as a massive shock for that reason thinking it went against her logical analysis in reality the signs were always there she just didn't want to see them and chose to run away from the issue making it her responsibility to Bear rather than one that could be solved by talking everything out it's a stellar way of writing tweens going through that kind of process as at that age it really is common for children to blame themselves believing it was somehow their fault and the divorce could be fixed if they just found a way to be better but a lot of the time it isn't anyone's faults sometimes it's out of any singular person's control and you need to accept the world you wanted isn't able to be repaired or you'll only end up hurting yourself as we see through the dichotomy two of halves with the antagonist of the Season Emilia a former passenger that chose to take over the train from its initial conductor who turns out to be 1-1 so she could recreate the life she once had through cars representing her life but really all she was doing was elongating her pain holding on to a future she could never have for decades on end she's a sad reflection of what tulip could have become if she never had anyone to keep her grounded like Atticus and one one did sinking into her own despair assuming she could fix a problem out of her control but she can't and tulip gets her to realize that giving us the hope that Emilia might change too despite all she's done and atone for the wrong set of cost her number to grow as high as it has but she's also not the focus of the next season if that's what you were thinking though I will say it would be appropriate to call season 2's protagonist another reflection of tulip [Music] all right so among season 1's various affirmations of lore regarding the train one clear distinction made was that it had three types of people on board the conductor and their assistants who'd tend to the train and make sure everything is progressing as it should the passengers who come from the normal world and learn to be better displayed through a number that can go up or down depending on their actions and denizens who are inhabitants of the train created to help move the passengers along through either giving them challenges or being their companions that's the typical order of how the train is supposed to operate at maximum efficiency but what if adenosine decided it wanted to live the life of a passenger instead I mean think about it there are theoretically an infinite number of cars it shouldn't be out of the question that one might have a Denizen unhappy with where they are that wants to see the world only passengers know and it could make for some thought-provoking conflict so as a tease for what's to come season one briefly explored it through the Chrome car a part of the train that lets a person's reflection express its own autonomy and oh boy tulips has been weighing the flame her ass for multiple years now with explicit detail details on why which I gotta say is a really creative method for giving Exposition about how Tula backs without us needing to see it as obviously if her reflection is nothing like her she'd have a couple Choice words for how tulip chooses to live plus outside of that narrative context the fact that mirror tulip has had to reflect someone else she isn't for her entire life or face extermination really endears us to her character in a short time frame so having the second season be about her personal struggle for identity and freedom isn't hard to imagine at all it was properly foreshadowed as a returning plot point before the last story's ending so it feels natural that since tulip's story is finished it only makes sense to continue on with her mirror self as we've already come to know she has plenty to offer theming wise but a singular character fixing their issues and infinity train season does not make so early on she gets her own companion character a passenger by the name of Jesse who at first seems to serve a similar purpose to Atticus in 1-1 but we soon come to see that isn't the case when the show reiterates to us that well he's a passenger and Mt is just a Denizen he he wasn't created for the purpose of getting Mt through our own issues since one one doesn't recognize her as someone that needs her issues solved wanting to live freely without the mirror police on her back isn't a priority she's supposed to be another part of the train a prop to gauge morality as Jesse continues his own Journey on the other side though when looking at it on a meta level we the audience View and T as the main character of the Season that clearly has her own problems to work through so in traveling along with Jesse who has his own shortcomings we think of it less as a commensal relationship where the companions just come along for the sake of the protagonist's benefit and more of a symbiotic exchange or as the normies would say a mutual friendship their two Bros hanging out watching each other's backs and fixing each other's problems Jesse to learn he should stand up for himself instead of going with the flow and Mt to come along with Once his number reaches zero escaping the confines of the train and living her own life however the train doesn't see that it only notices Mt helping Jesse so it thinks she's doing her job the way she should and in a way that's true Mt might have a goal and she forms a connection with Jesse that allows her to open up but compared to him she didn't go through nearly as much of a change Jesse went through and learned something Mt emotionally and philosophically speaking remained nearly the same technically at least when you remove all the Nuance she was just along for the ride and what I love about this idea is that unless you were paying super close attention during the season this detail is only something he noticed in retrospect when other characters spell it out she served the function denizens are meant to perform as she attempted to be her own person so in light of this it gets you to wonder does she have autonomy or is she predetermined to do as the train wants or two and of course we know that based on our actions the answer is yes she does have autonomy but for characters that are either pushing a certain agenda or have difficulty thinking outside of black and white terms they're not going to pick up on that subtlety whether unintentionally or maliciously really it takes an unbiased human voice to break through the noise of it all in CMT or as she eventually chooses is to go by Lake for who she is and that voice comes from who else but Jesse the one person that actually got to experience what she was like and no intrinsically that she was more than a companion more than a reflection more than a fugitive she's his friend as well as an independent person with her own flaws personality traits eccentricities and mannerisms and she deserves to have the same kind of Happiness the kind of life that he does even if she wasn't originally created or spawned into existence with that purpose predefined she should have the choice as a living breathing thinking being that's unhappy where she is to change that doesn't have to go much further just basic human understanding and compassion for their fellow man and thankfully Jesse gives her that opportunity finding a way to bring Lake along with him to the real world where whether or not she has any kind of plan to go off of she finally has a life that she can do anything with and that's enough [Music] if there was one thing season two made clear through its deviation and subject matter and purpose from the first it was this Infinity train isn't going to be a typical Anthology going from story to story with a regular passenger that wakes up on the train meets companions learn something about the train finds the answer cycle rinse repeats 100 the series could have been if it wanted to and worked equally as well season one is a prime example of them using the formula properly but that's not what the series is aiming for it wants to go higher season one just set up the meta it created the base model so now the showrunners want to deconstruct it with exceptions to the rules see what inventive new spins they can come up with by picking apart the vague standards that they created first it was Lake the Denizen that wanted to be something more Longing For Freedom away from the train and here in season 3 we're given the exact opposite with the Apex a group of kids and teens that rather than taking the help of denizens learning the reason why they were brought there in the first place and growing his people have chosen to embrace the Train's Escapist Dreamland element as their right completely forgetting their previous lives to have as much fun as they want basically it's an extremist group where Lord of the Flies has been voluntarily applied to the train system and that really isn't all too exaggerated seeing as none of the kids actually know how numbers work not even the leaders they're completely in the dark about what they're supposed to do but they know through trial and error that they can pretty much act however they want as long as they avoid certain dangers so they exploit that treating the denizens with complete disregard believing they're nothing but vessels for their amusements and if it causes their numbers to grow that must mean they're doing good plus say new passengers especially kids have a limited understanding of the train that scares them and the Apex presents a lifestyle that favors freedom from consequence or guilt so it's no wonder they found it appealing it's a system that allows their members to sink further into depravity in turn straying away from or ignoring the personal issues they were meant to resolve but who cares about fixing their [ __ ] when they can forget instead why I learned when you could not it's about as counterproductive to the meaning of the train as you can imagine and there's no better way for me to explain how much of a problem it is than through the leaders Grace and Simon who are without a doubt the most complex protagonist we've gotten so far considering that for once they're just straight up bad people like up to this point we've undoubtedly been given leads that were flawed and needed to overcome serious adversity seeing as that's the whole point of the train in the first place but tulip Jesse Lake they were all people that didn't lean into their negative qualities and only revealed them during moments of stress or trauma usually unintentionally they were regular honest people who happen to have unaddressed issues eating away at them without proper acknowledgment so the train forced them to figure out and confront those issues whether they initially noticed them or not so they could hopefully return to the regular World better off than they were before Grace and Simon throw that idea out the window they've determined that getting their numbers higher is a marker of strength so they intentionally act as bad as possible with zero remorse and in turn it's made them defined by the characteristics they were supposed to figure out were toxic to their mental health Grace more so than Simon as she's enraptured herself in a cloak of lies and manipulation so she doesn't have to question her own values I mean notice the age of everyone around her and Simon they're super young as the Apex doesn't trust adult passengers and while it's never directly spelled out why it's easy to see that there's a reason older passengers would be more likely to question the apex's values not taking as easily to manipulation using fear and lack of understanding so as the creator of the rules and guidelines for the Apex Grace most likely removed them from the equation to not deal with the headache putting her efforts into being good with children who look up to her for being older smarter wiser Etc it's all about creating an environment she has full control over that helps her feel confident in herself as when Grace was a child she lacked confidence or sense of Freedom due to her under-supportive rich parents so she would lie to get what she wanted and fake courage for the sake of attention that's what the train originally brought her aboard to fix but Grace felt more comfortable lying to herself and others so she did the exact opposite faking it till she made it but the thing about lies is that they catch up if you aren't careful and for Grace someone whose whole world and identity was built on the back of lies all it took for that world to fall apart was by meeting someone that emotionally demonstrated she was wrong and I say emotionally because proving she was wrong with examples and evidence wouldn't be enough she could always backtrack and plug her ears to pretend she didn't hear it or say it was a lie but if a character could show Grace was wrong by hitting her in her heart instead of her brain she wouldn't be able to ignore it like she does everything else as we see when she comes across a six-year-old girl with a gorilla for her companion Hazel who from a glance is everything Grace could hope for in a new member of the Apex she's young assertive Charming but there's one problem she turns out to be a Denizen and as you may recall Grace has built up the Apex as a group that doesn't care about denizens and sees him as play things to mess around with or destroy so forming any attachment to them is a big no but she does so on its own that should tell Grace all she needs to know about the life she's led up to now but she can't admit it Grace doesn't have the capacity to say that she was wrong because if that truth isn't true then what else has she been wrong about how deeply has she missed the point all this time it's a question that she isn't willing to confront so with nowhere to go but down she keeps digging a hole she lies about Hazel's true identity to Simon pretend she didn't know when Hazel is discovered pretend she's looking out for Hazel's best interest but it's all wrong and she knows it everything Grace does is to protect herself or the image she's created as leader of the Apex and it's only when she finally admits that's the case after having lost everything that she can finally begin the path to Redemption for herself and the rest of the kids that she's LED astray or I guess I should say almost the rest since one was too far gone to be saved highlighting that though the two were close friends they weren't as similar as they may have thought on one hand Grace used her insecurities and negative qualities as a source of strength when forming the Apex building her personality and motives around the seeds while on the other Simon chose to bury his deep within to avoid them but just the same as Grace's manipulative Tendencies grew with time so did Simon's issues and you know contrary to Grace we never get a flashback or deeper understanding of how Simon arrived as a passenger in the first place but from his turmoil and breakdowns it's not too difficult to piece together that had something to do with deep-seated dependency on others causing a lack of emotional stability when his high expectations started falling through it happened with his companion when she accidentally abandoned him leaving Simon with a hatred of all citizens afterwards and it happens in the present when after spending years basically relying on Grace to tell him what to think and how to act she starts getting angry at him for doing what she wants to encouraged him too he preaches the values of the Apex she shuts him down he kills a Denizen that was making things difficult she gets Furious and pulse rank to condemn him it's all too much for Simon to handle without explanation and once he sees the grace lies to him about hazel he rationalizes it by believing that she's been manipulated to turn against him by the others it's actually nearly an exact parallel to Grace denying that she was wrong and continuing to lie so she could avoid taking accountability but unlike her Simon's not able to reflect and admit that all he's believed in for so long was a lie so he just does to Grace what he did for ditizens and completely writes her off as worthy of being destroyed fully giving in to his emotions and becoming the prime example of what the train wanted to prevent an attached broken person that couldn't see the error of their ways and sunk too far for anyone to reach them no matter the ACT he's what Amelia could have become if tulip didn't stop her and so he makes for a perfectly Disturbed tragic antagonist in the finale serving as a narrative opposite to Grace who's accepted the meaning of the train and gets saved for wanting to change whereas Simon rejects that meaning in favor of ignoring the signs and ends up dead representing the split between letting your negative traits consume you and realizing you have a problem that needs fixing a bittersweet ending to a powerful season that explains so much about the meaning of numbers and still have plenty of questions to be theorized about leading into [Music] foreign okay I'm gonna be honest it's a bit difficult for me to talk about this season from an unbiased perspective not that it's too complex or hard to interpret or super divisive it isn't as far as Infinity train Seasons go it's got a theme that's easier to take apart than most it's just this isn't just another season it's the ending of the entire series and though I can see some Merit in the story as a detached viewing unto itself I hate looking at it as an ending since it's so obvious that wasn't the intention and it's not woven into the subtext in a subtle way you wouldn't notice if you were watching casually either book 4 is very much a middle of the road type installment that's primarily about toying with a fun Concept in this case the idea of two passengers sharing one number and setting up lore for the future with what basically equates to a Side Story set before the events of the first season which would be perfectly fine if it was just that but it wasn't it was the finale and when you take that tidbit into consideration knowing there's nothing after it leaves book 4 feeling all the less finished as its own thing and more like a puzzle with half the pieces missing presumably there was a lot of content that got scrapped when the series was canceled as the writers originally envisioned it continuing on for eight seasons the fitting of how the infinity symbol is the sideways eights but then HBO rejected the concept for season 5 a movie focusing on Amelia's takeover of the train for not having a quote-unquote child entry point since Amelia is old and children can't relate to old people Johnny brav who Sam who right jack regular [ __ ] who what are those you sound [ __ ] stupid but yeah with all that on The Cutting Room Floor season four more than anything reminds me a lot of a gretzko's final season that was released a couple months back it's not really connected to any parts of the show that came before the blood it does follow is serviceable but nowhere near what you'd expect for a series finale it doesn't quite push boundaries in the same way Seasons before it did then once it's finished you're left thinking wait that was the end I I barely felt like we started but it's over the show's been canceled before there was any chance of a satisfying conclusion so we gotta live with it and okay I'm making season four sound bad with these comparisons but my regular cartoon standards it's still pretty good way better than a gretsko's ending that's for sure it's more so like humans when compared to the rest of gorillas it's easily the worst the band has done in their vast collection of amazing LPS but you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone that listened to it and said that was an objectively terrible album I'm shocked and appalled it's good not great that's how I feel about it season 4. it was an exploration of the friendship between two Asian Canadian teens figuring out their paths in life choosing between what'll make them happy or what their families want and it was perfectly fine my only major gripe aside from a couple abrupt Revelations and minorly annoying characters was with the pacing as early episodes in the season felt Meandering and pointless well once at the end were Peg tight with conflict in a way that I feel would have been more satisfying if it was spread out properly but that's just me rambling it was a solid 6.5 out of 10 season with likable Pro tags that I could personally relate to as someone that's been in the same situation more or less and it was cool to see that numbers can reach zero and then regress if the person doesn't quite understand the lesson I thought that was an interesting touch but aside from that for season four I don't have that much to say for it as a solo piece I just get bummed out watching it since I like to think about what more could have come if Executives saw Creator Owen Dennis's vision and let him pursue it but I guess getting four seasons of infinity train in the first place was already a miracle on its own I hate to repeat myself here but have you seen some of the [ __ ] they got away with we saw multiple characters agonizingly die on screen in brutal ways we got a bunch of interconnected mini-series with mature themes relating to divorce identity and choice with the current climate of streaming services and I was shitty most of them are to animation I doubt we're going to get anything close to similar in children's hell adult cartoon media for a while so for now let's all just appreciate what was made turn on our vpns and engage in some morally righteous yo Ho-Ho and if you catch my drift could say if HBO Max wants to get rid of it that doesn't mean we have to stop watching or talking about Infinity train I've been just stopped you've been in a train car this whole time you stupid idiots hope you enjoyed the video and peace out [Music] [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Just Stop

Views: 94,278

Keywords: Infinity Train, Infinity Train Retrospective, Infinity Train Review, Infinity Train Rant, Just Stop Review, Just Stop Rant, Just Stop Retrospective, Cartoon Network, HBO Max, HBO Max Purge, Infinity Train Cancelled, Owen Dennis

Id: ub8mhUlM9y8

Length: 29min 2sec (1742 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 25 2023