The Flight Attendant, season 2, is a voyage of discovery and acceptance from Kaley Cuoco. Cuoco plays an alcoholic flight attendant who gets caught up in a dangerous situation. She can barely cope with normal life. The crazy things that happen to her make for a wild ride.
Kaley Cuoco plays multiple versions of herself in The Flight Attendant. These alternate Cassie’s are the good, bad, depressed, self-hating, successful, smart, stupid, and negative internal voices in her head that accompany her and comment on her every move. She struggles every minute of every day to stay sober. Add the CIA, and the North Koreans, and other bad guys who are out to get her into the mix and her struggle becomes epic and overwhelming.
If it’s possible to be both manic and grounded, this series is that.
I’d like to refer you to my review of season one of The Flight Attendant, but for some reason I don’t understand, I didn’t write one. I know I watched it and found it inventive and creative. Season 2 is a manic chase to figure out what is happening to her and who is making it happen. There are many faulty clues and plot twists along the way.
When the season begins, Cassie is claiming a one year of sobriety pin in AA. Her sponsor is played by Shohreh Aghdashloo! Her friends Annie (Zosia Mamet) and Max (Deniz Akdeniz) are visiting her place in L.A. looking to relocate. Cassie’s had a steady boyfriend for the last 6 months named Marco (Santiago Cabrera).
Life is good, right?
Wrong. The CIA is sending her on flights to do little errands for them. Those errands land her in a lot of trouble. Right off the bat she discovers that someone is pretending to be her to frame her for several murders.
The CIA people include her fellow flight attendant friend Shane (Griffin Matthews), the regular agent from the CIA office Benjamin (Mo McRae), and the boss over them all, Dot (Cheryl Hines). It’s hard to tell if they are helping her or making things worse. Trouble there.
Cassie’s friend Megan (Rosie Perez) has been hiding from the North Koreans for a year. When she calls Cassie for help, Cassie goes. More trouble there.
As part of Cassie’s AA steps, she and her brother Davey (T.R. Knight) call on their mom (Sharon Stone). Big trouble there.
Cassie befriends another flight attendant, Grace (Mae Martin), who puts swords and photos of herself in an army uniform on the wall in her house. And I mustn’t forget the AA chick, Jenny (Jessie Ennis), who says she wants to do a true crime podcast about the dead guy Cassie woke up next to in season one. You guessed it, more trouble.
All these things are happening fast, simultaneously, and they tumble into Cassie’s internal self-talk from all the parts of her personality. It makes for a frantic pace. Kaley Cuoco is simply fabulous at every bit of it. It’s a hard slog to prove who’s framing her and to learn to love and accept the imperfect parts of herself.
Even though the pace is wild and funny, I thought Cassie’s journey was a brilliantly done effort to describe and explore alcohol addiction and recovery. If it’s possible to be both manic and grounded, this series is that.
Silver Tree and Jennifer Phang directed most episodes. Both seasons are on HBO Max.