‘The Flight Attendant’: Kaley Cuoco is still the life of the party in season 2

The second season of ‘The Flight Attendant’ has a major challenge: repeating the success of its predecessor by building a new mystery from scratch and incorporating a double life for a protagonist (Kaley Cuoco) who no longer confuses the story with her drunken binges, but instead takes pride in her sobriety. Can the series survive by changing much of its DNA, making a kind of clean slate? From what his first two episodes reveal, which have arrived on HBO Max this April 22, he is on the right track to achieve it.

The HBO Max series now flies alone having exhausted the events of Chris Bohjalian’s novel, on which the first season is based, and thus remaining with a group of characters that must face new problems and unknown terrain. The only option? Up the ante as much as possible. More characters, more international espionage plots, more murders, more mayhem, more versions of Cassie living in her head and whispering in her ear to break her sobriety… With the showrunners Starring Steve Yockey and Natalie Chaidez, ‘The Flight Attendant’ moves from New York to Los Angeles and levels up in search of survival. For now, it manages to maintain what made it a success in the fall of 2020: its mixture of psychological drama, thriller and comedy with a Kaley Cuoco in a state of grace and a devilish rhythm that provokes serious addiction. From here, fasten your seat belts and keep an eye on the emergency exits, just in case.

Kaley Cuoco is still the life of the party in ‘The Flight Attendant’

‘The Flight Attendant’ picks up its story a year after the events we saw in the first season, which have nothing to do with the new episodes: Cassie Bowden (Cuoco) celebrates a year sober having moved to Los Angeles and surrounded by her fellow Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. She also maintains a stable relationship with the photographer Marco (Santiago Cabrera), continues her job as a high-flying stewardess and has also become a secret agent for the CIA. And she wears it all great!

However, this stability that Cassie has worked for a year is not as stable as you think, and begins to reel when, in the midst of espionage, he discovers that another woman is impersonating his identity. Fearing that the CIA will think her guilty, she sets out to find this person on her own, another of the many wrong decisions and stupid plans that characterize Cassie’s story and make her drama such a stressful viewing. as entertaining. Part of the charm of this series is that point of absurdity that justifies that a clumsy, chaotic woman in a flashy red coat can follow an international criminal all over Berlin without her knowing about it. How can we not love her?

The hole will get deeper while the protagonist fights against the temptation of alcohol and deals with the voices in her head, which are now three: the mental space that we already saw in the first season (where she imaginarily communicated with the guy killed in the hotel) has now a new setting and several past versions of Cassie (the party girl, the depressed drunk, and the frustrated teen), who function as the classic angel and devil whispering over her shoulders. Who will he end up paying attention to?

New characters, new mysteries

With the second season we will live reunions with old acquaintances and also new ones signings that will continue to live in the shadow of Kaley Cuoco, sometimes more than we would like. It seems that Annie (Zosia Mamet), Cassie’s best friend, is the one who is now having an existential crisis: after quitting her unethical job at the law firm and cleaning up her karma for months selflessly helping people in trouble, Annie needs to find a job and quit living off of her boyfriend-or-maybe-fiancé Max (Deniz Akdeniz), who is fine by the way after the mishap he had at the end of the first season. At the beginning of the season, they both visit Cassie in Los Angeles and are sucked back into her chaotic spiral of problems. However, we have to rate Annie as one of the funniest characters in the series thanks to her delirious drynesswhether it’s begrudgingly hugging her best friend or getting into trouble at a job interview.

On the other hand is Megan (Rosie Perez), Cassie’s stewardess partner turned North Korean spy who is now in trouble, though the writers don’t seem to care too much either. There’s more juice to be had in new characters like Grace (Mae Martin), a secretive new flight attendant who seems to be hiding more than one secret, and also Benjamin (Mo McRae), her CIA contact who isn’t entirely sure that Cassie be able to cope with his new job as a spy. And we don’t forget the great signing of the season, Sharon Stone, who since before the premiere we know that she plays Cassie’s mother and whose presence in the first episodes of this season is rather brief.although it promises to have a great role in the outcome.

A very funny thriller

Fans can rest easy: despite the changes, ‘The Flight Attendant’ continues to be based on the same maxims. Once we get past the introduction to Cassie Bowden’s new reality and the first mysteries are unleashed, everything seems to return to normal: there are a multitude of split screens to immerse us in the action from different perspectives and with large doses of tension, there is a montage for schizophrenic moments that hardly leave room to catch your breath, there are constant visits to Cassie’s psyche where she has three-way conversations with her different past versions, there are completely absurd plans that by the grace of the god ex machina they always turn out well…

The series reaches its best version when it seems to lose control of itself (although it never does, really) and when he lets Kaley Cuoco be the unlikely heroine of a thriller that could only make sense in the context of a comedy. And that is where we are going to enjoy it more fully. Unbuckle your seatbelts.