On the surface, neither of these two episodes have anything to do with one another thematically. However, upon a second watch, I’ve noticed that both “The Parasite Car” and “The Lucky Cat Car” deal with being ignored, whether by accident or on purpose or by friends or by society.

I’ve finally realized why Alan Dracula is Jesse’s companion, aside from the fact that we all clearly needed a little bit of Alan Dracula in our lives. Alan Dracula during “The Parasite Car” is what happens when your friends ignore you, whether by accident or on purpose. Due to being a deer — albeit a god-like deer — Alan can’t talk and thus can’t express himself in a way Lake and Jesse can instantly recognize, so when he has a problem, neither Lake or Jesse can easily discern that he has a problem in the first place.

True, Lake susses out that something’s off about letting a parasite use their friend as a puppet. But, because Perry the parasite makes Alan much more readily useful than he was before, she lets it go as soon as Perry says that Alan’s okay with the arrangement. They could have told Perry to leave Alan for a moment so they could get his input on the idea — while Alan Dracula can’t talk, he has no problem expressing himself — but they didn’t. There is no doubt that Lake and Jesse both care deeply for Alan Dracula and would never intentionally hurt him, but in ignoring Alan’s wants for a seemingly more useful Alan Dracula puppeted by a literal parasite, they did hurt their friend for a while and promptly apologized after.

Perry is the literal parasite friend. He’s the one who inserts himself into the friend group to use the people there for his own gain without caring one bit about the people he’s hanging around. Naturally, he picks the one friend who communicates with signals and body language instead of verbally. It’s hard to speak up for yourself when people are so used to only paying attention when someone needs something or when words are spoken rather than signed or typed, which requires a level of listening that a lot of people think they have but actually fall very short of. Since Perry restricts Alan’s movements, he also takes away Alan’s ability to speak. People like Perry are best left to the curb without a single glance back.

The lucky cat car might as well be renamed the cameo car. It’s great seeing all these characters again. Of course, Randall still tries to sell his donut holer and The Cat can never make things easy.

This is also the first time seeing Grace in person as opposed to on a computer scene back in season one. The funny thing is if Grace had never done that weird wavy hand sign with that one kid like she’s mind controlling the kid with the force, I would have not picked up on the Apex being a cult before we actually saw more of the Apex aside from rowdy kids being rowdy kids. I didn’t even get the feeling that the cult had anything against the denizens of the Infinity Train yet. Grace being dismissive of Lake just felt like Grace acting on her own prejudices rather than it being a much bigger problem than I thought it was.

“The Lucky Cat Car” is where I see the beginning of Lake’s quest to acquire a number and make the train recognize her as a person. Lake, both as a character and through her experiences, resonates with many different people from many different backgrounds. Having society decide that you’re not a person based on some arbitrary bullcrap that’s innate to you, that you can’t change, is really relatable to a lot of people. Watching Lake get fewer points because she’s not a passenger hurts more because I know I’ll have to watch Lake jump through so many hoops to try and prove to people who don’t matter to her that she’s a person. It makes me love and appreciate Jesse’s advice to not care what others more, because it makes me realize that Lake and Jesse have switched positions in a sense.

In the first half, Jesse was the one so hung up on what others thought and Lake was the one who only cared about what she thought. Now, it’s the other way around and Lake will take this far worse than Jesse did, with rage and destruction left in her wake. It’s obvious that Lake always had some growing to do ever since coming across Jesse, but it’s nice to see that her growth didn’t end with her learning how to let people in. Jesse is a main character but Lake is the main character of the season, and thus she gets the most character development.

Despite the storm that is about to follow and the nightmarish body horror, I find “The Parasite Car” and “The Lucky Cat Car” to be very heartwarming episodes. Lake, Jesse, and Alan Dracula are a delight to watch interact with each other. Alan Dracula is determined to get the grass in the crane machine and it’s hilarious to watch the other two struggle to pull him away. Lake and Jesse joke around and have stupid conversations like real friends do. They’ve even started emotionally supporting each other. I love that Jesse didn’t think twice about inviting Lake to live with him. Friends stick together, Lake is his friend and is in trouble, so Lake should come with him. It’s that simple. Now, if only I could enjoy that scene properly without future events hanging over my head constantly reminding me of the emotional pain that’s to come.

Book Two Part 2 Book Two Part 4