The Flight Attendant

[Cuoco] gives charm, wit and true confidence to a character who would otherwise be a hot mess we would neither care about nor believe in. It’s joyfully astonishing to see her spread her wings – and fly.

“The Flight Attendant,” like its heroine, reinvents itself in Season 2. The story is streamlined to focus more on Cassie’s own personal development. This might turn off those who enjoyed what Season 1 laid out, but if you’ve enjoyed the characters this far you’ll continue to love Cuoco and company as they try to become adults.

Mostly it’s Cuoco’ show – less the flight attendant than the pilot of this smoothly airborne caper.

The whole production is buoyed by Cuoco’s performance, which is a pitch-perfect combination of high-energy franticness and real emotional insight. She rides along with the show’s occasionally bumpy tonal reversals, pulling off both its campy excesses and its sudden swerves into remembered childhood trauma.

Mostly she’s confronting past versions of herself who try to lure her back to drinking, but we also get surreal synchronized swimming sequences that are both gloriously goofy and disturbing. There’s a real-life meeting with her embittered mother (Sharon Stone), too, that’s hard to watch as parent and child put each other through agony. Some fairly static subplots involving Cassie’s bestie, Megan (Rosie Perez), and her lawyer pal, Annie (Zosia Mamet), pale in comparison to her own heightened internal struggles.

There are some seemingly unnecessary detours involving supporting characters like Cassie’s best friend Annie (Zosia Mamet) and co-worker Megan (Rosie Perez). But the main plot moves briskly, even as the investigation forces Cassie to turn inward and figure out how she became the ungainly disaster whose friends indulge her only because she’ll make good story fodder later. Cuoco is sharp and likable throughout.

There is more emotional violence and brutal sucker punches of honesty in the sixth episode of “The Flight Attendant” than entire seasons of other shows. ... I could almost forgive the inert storytelling of the five episodes before it. But I cannot, because it is an insult to Cuoco, especially, for the writing to relegate her to cartoonish ditzy bumbling blonde territory for five hours, and saving the raw devastation of Cassie’s interiority for its final moments.

This show ended up being considerably more than I had initially anticipated. Great balance of comedy and mystery, kept me going all the way till the end. Looking forward to the next season!

Kaley Cuoco holds this series together with a fantastically messy and charming performance - but after a strong start you can feel the wheels coming off the refreshment trolley. The shallowness of the plot starts to hamper the show’s momentum and despite a good amount of fun characters chewing the scenery I found my attention drifting by the midway point.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

A decent show that has way too much woke bs in it. Constantly hitting at males. Making the lead FBI agent an oppressed black women not measuring up to her partners white **** very hard to stomach. Hard to find good shows who don’t need to include PC comments so obvious. No subtlety at all. Hard to get through but I will keep trying past episode 3 and hope it just tells the dang narrative and cuts out white man bad and white privileged bs.

When not even the first five minutes can tell a story without modern feministic politics squeezed in, you know what to expect. The flight attendant doesn't have any self respect, that's what I get from the first minutes. How is the audience supposed to sympathize with a promiscuous arrogant feminist, you may ask. Well, don't bother. Just accept the message.