The best thing about "The Flight Attendant," created by Steve Yockey for HBO Now, is that it's very fast-paced and engaging. It's one of those murder mystery shows where nearly every episode ends on a cliffhanger, and you get satisfying payoffs constantly. The second best thing is Kaley Cuoco, playing the ordinary woman who wakes up next to a dead body, and spends the rest of the season trying to piece together what happened, while getting thoroughly tangled up in a larger conspiracy. Well, she's not quite ordinary. In the grand tradition of detective noir, Cuoco plays Cassie Bowden, a flight attendant who lives an enviable party-girl life, but has a lot of secret vices and terrible traumas in her past.
Cuoco has no trouble carrying the show, bringing just the right amount of comic energy to keep the proceedings light, while still selling the darker, thornier psychological underpinnings. The murder sends her life into a downward spiral, and Cassie engages in a lot of self-destructive behavior. However, it takes a while to appreciate how screwed up she actually is, because Cassie is so vibrant and has a fun personality. She is very good at pretending that everything is alright. Her fellow stewardess Megan (Rosie Perez) and her attorney gal-pal Annie (Zosia Mamet) both automatically call Cassie their best friend, even though neither of them know her all that well. Her brother Davey (T.R. Knight) is more reluctant to trust her, as he's the only one who knows the truth about her troubling past and lingering demons.
When the murder happens, Cassie gets so blackout drunk she only has fragments of memories of the night she spent with the victim, Alex (Michiel Huisman). Soon, she's digging into his life for clues, while being stalked by a scary assassin lady (Michelle Gomez), and hounded by FBI agents (Merle Dandridge, Nolan Gerard Funk). The show employs a neat gimmick where Cassie occasionally pops into a physical space that represents her mind, and she interacts with a version of Alex as she remembers him. This dramatizes her internal thoughts in an appealing way, and allows for more fanciful visuals. Sometimes Cassie and Alex will argue over what to do next, or puzzle out clues together. Sometimes they'll observe what's going on outside of Cassie's head, and comment on the scene together. Cassie's childhood traumas are represented by deer and rabbits, and they can literally invade her headspace.
Even without these jaunts into quasi-fantasy, "The Flight Attendant" takes place in a pleasantly heightened world, where corporate espionage and organized crime seem to be commonplace, and everybody's got a secret. Being a flight attendant has never looked more appealing, as the characters are constantly travelling all over the globe and enjoying the local nightlife and amenities. The action takes place across three cities - Bangkok, New York, and Rome - and it all looks gorgeous. The show features copious amounts of eye-catching production design, and Cassie has a wardrobe to die for. The jazzy score from Blake Neely does a lot to set the mood, keeping tensions high during the chase and suspense sequences, and underlining the nervous humor.
There's not much new or novel in "The Flight Attendant," but the execution makes all the difference. Even though a significant amount of the narrative is about watching Cassie hit rock bottom and confronting the ugly truths about herself, the show functions very well as an appealing piece of glitzy wish-fulfillment. Our heroine is sympathetic and relatable, but also credibly a glamour girl who is sharp enough to step into the roles of detective and spy. Cassie even manages to attract handsome casual partners on every continent, including Buckley (Colin Woodell) and Enrico (Alberto Frezza), with a refreshing lack of self-consciousness.
I look forward to future seasons of this one.
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