The Grid Car

This article is about the episode Were you looking for the train car instead?

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The Grid Car
Season	1
Episode	1
Overall	1
Broadcast Information
Air Date	July 20, 2019 (online)    August 5, 2019 (TV)
Air Time	11:16 (online) 7:30 (TV)
Production Code	V101
Viewers	461,000
Credits
Written by	Cole Sanchez Lindsay Katai Madeline Queripel Owen Dennis
Storyboard by	Madeline Queripel Owen Dennis Sofia Alexander Cole Sanchez
Guide
Previous	Pilot
Next	"The Beach Car"

"The Grid Car" is the 1^st episode of Season 1 of Infinity Train and the 1^st episode overall. It was made available on the Cartoon Network website on July 20, 2019 at 5:00 PM (PST), and aired on television on August 5, 2019 at 7:30 PM.

Synopsis

Tulip, a headstrong 13-year-old girl, finds a mysterious train where every car contains its own universe.

Plot

Tulip and Mikayla get off their school bus.

On November 22, 2019, Tulip Olsen and her friend Mikayla disembark from the school bus and start walking home. While Tulip eats a raw onion (to Mikayla's resigned disgust) the two discuss Tulip's upcoming trip to a coding camp in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and the video game Tulip has been working on. As they approach Tulip's house, Mikayla asks Tulip about her parents' relationship since the divorce. Tulip bristles at the subject and tersely bids Mikayla goodbye.

As Tulip heads to her room, her mother Megan tries to flag her down while on a phone call with Tulip's father Andy, but Tulip ignores her. Using her "Coding is Cool" book, she fixes a bug in the game that prevented one of her sprites from moving. As she celebrates her victory, Megan calls her downstairs and regretfully informs her that neither she nor her father can take her to camp: Andy mixed up the dates on his calendar and planned an out-of-town trip for work, while Megan has a overnight shift at the hospital. Tulip lashes out, accusing the two of being "too busy to be [her] parents". Megan tries to apologize, admitting she and Andy are still trying to figure things out since the divorce, but Tulip tearfully storms back into her room. She crumples up a flyer from the camp and ignores an apology text from her father. After looking thoughtfully at her window, which looks out over a snow-covered field, she puts on boots and gloves, opens the window, and runs away across the field, hoping to get to the camp on foot.

Night eventually falls, and Tulip realizes the futility of trying to walk 300 miles. Just as she comments on this, she is startled to see a train pass by with green light shining out of its windows. It stops directly in front of her with a destination board reading "Oshkosh". Tulip shrugs and boards the train, only to be immediately engulfed by a glowing ring of light.

Tulip meets One-One for the first time.

She awakes in what she believes to be just a snowy landscape in the daytime, and decides she just had a ("boring") dream "about outdated forms of transportation!" Coming across some snowmen, she tries to mess with them, only to discover the head of the last snowman is actually a little white robot with two opposing personalities. The robot explains he is looking for his "Mother", and asks Tulip if she is looking for her mother. Tulip denies this and brushes the robot off as a toy before declaring she is still trying to go to Oshkosh. Noticing a giant snowman in the middle of the field with a door in its stomach, Tulip opens up the door only to be shocked to see the exterior of the very train she had boarded. Realizing she has boarded a "really weird big train", she excitedly asks the robot for more information, but he proves somewhat unhelpful in answering her questions.

Tulip runs into the next car, the Grid Car, which appears to just be an empty room with regular grid patterns covering the walls. When she steps inside, however, she discovers that when pressure is applied to the walls, floor, or ceiling, a tone sounds and a colorful cube appears. The two immediately start playing around in the car, building various structures out of the cubes. The robot sees Tulip construct two objects based on the game she was working on, "Good Guys Poppin' Bad Guys". He asks how many games she has made, to which she replies only one. The robot reveals this is actually his name, "One-One", which Tulip replies is a strange name (unlike "'Tulip', which is perfectly normal").

The glowing number 115 on Tulip's hand.

Just as Tulip throws a glove to activate a cube on the ceiling, she is startled by a glowing number 115 that has appeared on her hand. Just as this happens, the train abruptly stops. Tulip looks out the door and is disturbed to find that the land around the train does not look like Wisconsin, but rather a reddish desert landscape with ominous clouds in the sky. As Tulip watches, a beam of light, resembling a glowing tornado, extends from the center of a rotating cloud to a car in front of her, and a human silhouette gets pulled out of the car into it, disintegrating in the process. Terrified, Tulip decides she needs to get off the train and climbs off the car and runs into the surrounding desert, only to get stuck in a patch of mud.

The Ghoms.

As Tulip tries to pull herself out of the mud, three giant creatures known as Ghoms emerge from the ground. With renewed effort, Tulip frees her foot from the mud, and the Ghoms chase her back to the train, which has started moving again. Tulip manages to get back on by riding one of the wheels up to the bottom of a car and climbing up, and the Ghoms fly up after her. She runs back into the Grid Car and tries to shut the door, but one of the Ghoms manages to get inside. Tulip briefly stops the Ghom by using the car to make a short wall, but it soon corners her and starts sucking her life-force out. One-One intervenes by popping in half, revealing he is actually two separate robots, "Glad-One" and "Sad-One". He launches "Glad-One" at the Ghom, knocking it backwards and freeing Tulip. Tulip sends One-One to form a wall around the next door to hold back the Ghom, and the two manage to escape the car, leaving the Ghom trapped inside.

"I'm getting off this train."

As they sit on the platform just outside the car's door, Tulip tries to reason her way out her situation, saying that "even crazy things have their own logic". She asks One-One if the train has a conductor. The robot tells her that he thinks they do have one, but "he would most likely be at the engine." Tulip looks out at the rest of the train, which seems to stretch into infinity. Looking at the glowing number on her hand, she affirmatively declares, "I'm getting off this train."

Features

Characters

• Tulip
• One-One
• Mikayla (debut)
• Megan (debut)
• Andy (mentioned/pictured)
• Gohms (debut)
• Snowmen
  • Linnette Ramsey-Wilkinson
  • Hot Dog
  • Joe

Locations

• North Branch, Minnesota
  • Megan's Residence (debut)
  • North Middle Branch Area Middle School (referenced)
• North Saint Paul, Minnesota (mentioned)
• Oshkosh, Wisconsin (mentioned)
  • Oshkosh Game Design Camp (referenced)
• DolphWorld (pictured)
• Wasteland
• Infinity Train
  • Snow Car
  • Grid Car

Trivia

"Osh Kosh," as in the trailer

"North St. Paul kids probably built this." The real North Saint Paul Snowman.

• In the Official Infinity Train Trailer, the destination of the train is referred to as "Osh Kosh" instead of "Oshkosh" as it is in the episode. This was a mistake by Owen Dennis that was noticed at the very last minute and corrected mere hours before the final episode was due.
• A small binary code poster in Tulip's room translates to "love is love". This was discovered by a user on Twitter and liked by Owen Dennis.
• When Tulip runs against the Ghoms, One-One (Glad-One) sings "Yakety Sax" (better known as the closing theme to The Benny Hill Show) to express the moment.
• Upon seeing the giant snowman, Tulip remarks, "North Saint Paul kids probably built this." This is a reference to the North Saint Paul Snowman, a 20-ton concrete snowman that is the logo of North St. Paul, Minnesota. Owen Dennis grew up within 10 minutes of this snowman.
• End tag: Tulip's hand, against a backdrop of the Wasteland, with her number rapidly changing.

Continuity

• According to Tulip's smartphone lock screen, Tulip runs away from home on Friday, November 22. Around three months after this episode released Owen Dennis pointed out that the season 2 trailer was set to release on the exact same day Tulip gets on the train. Confirming that Tulip left in the year 2019.
• In a "12 Things You Need To Know about Infinity Train" video released around the time the series first season was announced, fact number 6 is that Tulip first meets One-One as a snowman head, which happens in this episode.
• Tulip witnesses a passenger get disintegrated by a portal that latches onto the train.
• The picture Tulip looks at is from her family's trip to DolphWorld.
• When Tulip wakes up on the train, a mysterious circular object can be seen flying away in the background. What exactly this is becomes obvious as the series continues.
  • Owen Dennis remarked in the Book One commentary that it was spotted by viewers long before its purpose was revealed in the show, and expressed shock that they were able to spot it when it only appears onscreen for a few frames.

Behind the scenes

• The original version of this episode was titled "The Bliss Car" and featured a car populated by passengers who were stuck staring at television screens.
• At one point in its development, Infinity Train was scripted as a traditional half-hour time slot cartoon, with 19-page scripts. As a result, a number of scenes and lines originally scripted for this episode were cut when it was decided each episode would run for approximately 11 minutes.
  • During Tulip and Mikayla's conversation, Mikayla would have talked about being forced to hang out with her "boring" Uncle Nate, who asks if kids are still into magazines these days.
  • The inciting incident for Tulip running away was learning of her parents' divorce. This scene was later moved to "The Cat's Car".
  • At one point there was a scene where Tulip leaves some money at a ticket booth before boarding the train, commenting, "Well, I paid for it, not getting in trouble, bye!"
  • The person getting sucked out of the train would have shouted, "You were right, Bobby, I am coming home!" This line was written by Cole Sanchez, who added it during the storyboarding process.
• Storyboarding for this episode began during additional development after production on the pilot. It is the only episode on which Cole Sanchez receives both a writing and storyboarding credit: he departed the series after initial development to serve as supervising producer on Summer Camp Island.
• Tulip's room features a number of things based on objects from the crew's childhoods: "Good Guys Popping Bad Guys" is inspired by the first game Owen Dennis made when he was twelve-years old, while the desk is based on Madeline Queripel's childhood desk. More specifically, the room is based on Dennis' cousin's daughter's bedroom, while the house's is based on that of a family friend of Dennis.
• Lindsay Katai based the scheduling argument between Tulip and her mother on her own experiences with divorced parents, noting her father frequently had issues with scheduling.
• Lindsay Katai wrote the text from Tulip's father, but one of the designers added the emojis at the end of it.
• When Tulip first walks up to the train, the name "OWEN" can be seen above the door for a single frame each time the animation loops.
  • This is an easter egg added by the creator of the show, Owen Dennis, because one of the animators added the initials "GM KEP" in another frame of the loop.
• The issue the writers ran into with Tulip and One-One's introduction was how she would accept the existence of a robot considering her obsession with logic.
• The show where Tulip opens the door into the Grid Car is one of the few times the team used a hand-drawn door, as opposed to the more-commonly used CG doors throughout the series.
• The fact that Tulip's first major experience in a car took place in a grid, like her video games, was unintentional.

Videos

Episode 1 First Minute Infinity Train Cartoon Network

"The Grid Car" Recap Infinity Train Cartoon Network

Transcript

View the episode's transcript here.

Gallery

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References

v • e Episodes Pilot 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