Series of HBO Max’s ‘The Flight Attendant’

Cassie Bowden (Kaley Cuoco) is not the Cassie we met in the first season of The Flight Attendant (on HBO Max). Cassie is no longer addicted to single-serve vodka bottles or blackout-drunk encounters; she’s been sober for a year!

The idea of an entirely new self, though, is a ruse, as anyone who has ever undergone a significant life transition knows. Cassie may have quit drinking, but she is still the impetuous, intrigue-prone Cassie, much to her despair. Similarly, The Flight Attendant may be starting over with brand-new material (having exhausted the plot of Chris Bohjalian’s novel in season one), but it’s still a delicious blend of exhilarating thrills, razor-sharp comedy, and shockingly meaty psychological drama.

Cassie’s “perfect, I-have-vegetables-in-the-fridge life,” as characterized her BFF Annie (Zosia Mamet), is blown to pieces in less than one episode. Literally: Cassie is trying to chase a target in Berlin when he dies in a violent explosion that is officially blamed on a defective gas line, but Cassie is sure was triggered by a bomb. Worse, it appears to have been planted by a lady who looks eerily like Cassie, even down to the moth tattooed over her shoulder blades. Naturally, the incident leads Cassie scrambling to solve the case before she’s framed (or worse), which threatens to put her booze-free life into disarray.

The Attend Flight takes a daredevil’s pleasure in testing how close it can go to mayhem without entirely losing control, just as it did in season one. Cassie races across Los Angeles or to Reykjavik in quest of information while avoiding the CIA, her airline coworkers, fellow AA members, and her overly protective brother, Davey (T.R. Knight). Meanwhile, the mission’s stress forces her to face demons that even sobriety can’t put at bay – here represented by other versions of Cassie seducing, scolding, or mocking her from Cassie’s pictured hotel lobby.

AA members, as well as her A caustic sense of humour slices through the tension, delivered through witty dialogue. Its secret comic weapon is Mamet’s Annie, who replies to everything from Cassie’s disclosure that she’s still in the CIA to a job author’s questions about her extra-legal commitments in her prior work with the same faintly disdainful deadpan. Annie saves her best remarks for Cassie’s new home, like any true New Yorker would: “L.A. is like someone painted a coffin brilliant colours,” she sniffs to her possibly-fiancé Max (Deniz Akdeniz), a native Angeleno preparing to return.

Other jokes in the show are aimed at itself, including when it winks at a deus-ex-machina twist before the audience has time to notice it.

Whatever shortcomings the show has, they are vastly outweighed by its virtues, the most notable of which is Cuoco’s ability to immerse herself not only in Cassie’s frenetic mental state, but also in all the other Cassies rooting for her. She joins Diane Guerrero of Doom Patrol and Tatiana Maslany of Orphan Black in the pantheon of performers with intriguing chemistry with themselves.

Cassie’s internal monologue is created from their conversations. The Flight Attendant is as exuberant and silly as it gets, yet it’s completely sincere in its exploration of Cassie’s emotional baggage, and her discussions with herself become more searing as her journey develops: While Cassie lingers over a grave late in the season, one hisses, “Why don’t you be doing something helpful and dig a hole for yourself?” The Flight Attendant, like last spring’s Single Drunk Female, understands that Cassie’s drinking days are only the beginning of her journey, and also that the lowest points can occur after numbing haze of booze has lifted.

The Flight Attendant seemed to be on the brink to become a roaring success towards the end of its first season. The show’s addictive, viewing public attributes made a renewal seem like a no-brainer, but the series had also been so rewarding that a follow-up didn’t feel necessary, and even advisable — the show’s chances of catching the same highs were iffy at best. Nevertheless, the show’s most impressive trick is the same in all seasons. Cassie’s series never flounders, even as she loses her grasp.