"The Flight Attendant," Year Two

Minor spoilers ahead.

The second season of HBO Max's "The Flight Attendant" isn't as much fun as the first, but it's still a good watch.  Cassie Bowden is keeping busy, juggling her job as a flight attendant, her gigs as a CIA asset, Alcoholics Anonymous, and a new boyfriend, Marco (Santiago Cabrera).  She's doing well enough that she invites Annie and her boyfriend Max (Deniz Akdeniz) to come visit her in Los Angeles.  Unfortunately, a mission goes wrong in Berlin, and Cassie suspects she's being framed for murder.  There are several new characters introduced this season, including Cassie's CIA handler Benjamin (Mo McRae) and his boss Dot (Cheryl Heinz), Cassie's AA sponsor Brenda (Shohreh Aghdashloo), a podcaster friend Jenny (Jessie Ennis), a new flight attendant colleague Grace (Mae Martin), and Cassie's mother Lisa (Sharon Stone).    

I like shows that are fast paced and offer lots going on all at once, so "The Flight Attendant" is a great time for me.  Over eight episodes, Cassie is constantly bouncing between one crisis and another, only occasionally having enough time to pause and address the deeper, darker personal issues that she's still struggling with.  The gimmick of her occasionally retreating into her mind, represented by a physical room, comes back.  This time, however, the space is populated by other versions of Cassie herself - the party girl Cassie, the responsible Cassie she wants to be, and Cassie as a little girl.  This allows her internal fights with her own nature to be dramatized with more oomph.  Despite the progress she's made, Cassie is still an alcoholic, and a large chunk of this season focuses on her bumpy recovery amidst all the chaos.     

I like that the show isn't so narrowly focused on Cassie this year.  Annie and Max are a fun, neurotic couple who take over part of the investigation.  Then there's Megan, who has been a fugitive since getting mixed up with the North Koreans last year.  Cassie gets roped into helping her as well.  The central mystery is honestly one of the least interesting things about this season, because the stakes are fairly muddled and it's hard to keep up with the convoluted logic of all the players.  It takes some effort to keep pace with Cassie's wild ride, and all the relationships and storylines she gets tangled up in.  Of course, not all of them get the required attention.  In one episode Cassie goes to Reykjavik to find Megan, and has a brief adventure with Margaret Cho and Michelle Gomez, who both promptly disappear for the rest of the series.  Poor Santiago Cabrera is kept around for ages as a red herring, but gets almost nothing to do.

The show is designed so that there's no time to get bored, but as a result little feels substantive.  The one exception is the material dealing with Cassie's recovery and experience in AA.  She's shed the party girl image and has embraced a recovery narrative, but this is only a front.  She still lies to everybody, including herself, and self-sabotages regularly.  Coming to realize and accept her bad qualities becomes Cassie's character arc this year, and it's a good one.  Still, depending on your mileage, you may find Cassie infuriating as a heroine, because she's one of those television creatures who gets away with everything.  And being self-aware that she's terrible doesn't mean she isn't still terrible for most of the season.  

Still, for causal viewing "Flight Attendant" is hard to beat.  It's light and funny and consistently exciting.  Cuoco's never had a role more suited to her talents.   There's not as much glamorous jet-setting as last season, and Cassie is only involved with one handsome man, but the thrills are still pretty thrilling, and the characters are a little warmer and more lovable. Annie and Max's relationship troubles are an especially good source of amusement this year, and if Kelly Cuoco doesn't want to come back for a third season, I want these two to get a detective agency spinoff.  

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