'The Flight Attendant': Cassie's suppressed memories add depth to mystery, how does she cope with alcoholism?
Spoilers for 'The Flight Attendant'
'The Flight Attendant' has quite a murder mystery premise — when Imperial Airlines flight attendant Cassie Bowden (Kaley Cuoco) wakes up next to her dead Bangkok date Alex (Michiel Huisman), she tries to wade the FBI as she decides to figure out what happened that fateful night. It's not a new idea, and it is adapted from Chris Bohjalian's 2018 novel of the same name.
However, when it comes to character arcs and depth, we have to say that Cassie's surprised memories did add the "oompf" the series so desperately needed. While the hiding, chasing, Alex's ghosting, frantic lying and slit throat dead body does bring the charm to the genre, the delivery wasn't well put, in our opinion.
The protagonist is of course Cassie, so when we learn of her surprising memories and her relationship with her brother, we breathe a sigh of relief, because if it's not for the background of the character, you essentially would only have a minimally satisfying story.
Cassie has a short, subtle but very powerful moment with her brother Davey played by 'Grey's Anatomy' alum TR Knight. Although frustrated with his sister, he lacks the emotional need to worry about all the wrong choices she decides to make. They're both in pain, and while they don't talk about it explicitly, we see their characters explored in much-needed depth in that one conversation.
Audiences are shown that Cassie doesn't come from a quite happy childhood, in fact, it was a bit distressing and troubled — those memories she's suppressed quite well. One of the memories we're shown is when her alcoholic father gives Cassie a beer when she was just a young girl. While Davey struggles with suppressed clashing memories of his own, he has no patience for his sister's antics as he leads a life as a married man and a responsible father.
When Davey comes to visit his sister with his family, we see the past traumas in the limelight, and it gives a deeper sense as to why Cassie could be an alcoholic herself. The trailer even sees Davey asking Cassie, "how much have you had to drink today?" which honestly is something someone should be asking Cassie every day.
How she deals with it is a whole different story - if she hadn't had had that much of a booze-filled night with Alex, she maybe could have pieced the night together. In fact, in the trailer, we hear her clearly say, "I'm a crazy drunk flight attendant, not a killer," and while we can't tell if the latter is true, the former sure is.
Dealing with her drinking habit seems to not be her priority though considering she's still trying to figure out who killed Alex — it's just ironic that a drunken night filled with drunk sex is what led her to this daunting reality in the first place.
The first three episodes of 'The Flight Attendant' premiere on HBO Max Thursday, November 26, followed by the launch of two new episodes on December 3, two episodes on December 10, and the finale episode on December 17.
