“The Flight Attendant” HBO Max Original Review by Josh Davis
December 2, 2020 11:17 am |
“The Flight Attendant,” based on the 2018 Chris Bohjalian novel of the same name, debuted on HBO Max in late November with the first three episodes available immediately.
“Supernatural” co-creator Steve Yockey serves as showrunner, and the miniseries stars Kaley Cuoco (“The Big Bang Theory”) as Cassie Bowden, Michiel Huisman (“The Haunting of Hill House”) as Alex Sokolov, Rosie Perez (“Birds of Prey”) as Megan Briscoe, and Zosia Mamet (“Girls”) as Annie Mouradian.
The show opens with Cassie enjoying a night of debauchery and then waking up on the New York City subway. She quickly goes back to her apartment to get dressed for work, and is surprised to find a naked man in her bed, who she apparently invited home the previous night before blacking out.
Cassie doesn’t exactly have her shit together.
Moments later, she boards a plane to Bangkok as a flight attendant, her regular job that keeps her globetrotting and partying literally across the world. On the flight, her flirtation with Alex (who she just met) goes as far as fooling around in the airplane bathroom before they’re interrupted, but it doesn’t end there.
They later hookup in Bangkok, as Alex takes Cassie across the city on a glamourous tour by foot and by boat. Alex and Cassie have dinner together, no small number of drinks, and end up having sex in his hotel room.
When Cassie wakes up the next morning, she finds herself lying next to Alex with his throat slit. She’s covered in blood and there’s a broken bottle on the floor, presumably the murder weapon. Only, she doesn’t remember a thing.
From there, the series follows Cassie as she tries to remember what the hell happened. Helping her do so is Alex, who somehow seems able to communicate with her through a series of waking hallucinations – despite his being obviously deceased.
Cassie is good intentioned but also misguided. Determined to solve the crime, she visits Alex’s office to try and find clues about a mysterious woman named Miranda (Michelle Gomez from “The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”), who she met in Bangkok. Later, Cassie goes to Alex’s funeral to snoop around, even though she’s under FBI surveillance as a suspect in his murder.
The series is a sort of stylish dark comedy/murder mystery. Cuoco is fabulous in the lead as a boozy party girl whose mind is slowly unraveling around a terrible crime that she may or may not have committed. It’s no small task to make a brutal murder seem both funny and tense, but she juggles the material well and brings the laughs, but also shines when the show goes dark.
Mamet is also a standout as Cassie’s best friend, Annie, a high-powered attorney with questionable morals. When Cassie is called in by the FBI for questioning, Annie is there to guide her, even though Cassie can be difficult to reign in. Her dry sense of humor and great comic timing is a perfect foil to Cuoco, whose character is constantly flailing.
The distinct and original tone of the show is aided by the fact that there’s a ton of genre background behind it, from Yockey’s time on Supernatural and as a writer on shows like “Scream: The TV Series,” to a cast that has experience in everything from DC Comics movies, to a horror/camp streaming standout like “Sabrina.” It’s a murder mystery, but it’s also a very modern take that’s aware of pop culture.
“The Flight Attendant,” through its first three episodes, is a sexy, tense, darkly funny, trippy, weird, fun and bonkers ride. If it can keep the momentum going through the rest of the series, it’s bound to become one of the best original properties yet on HBO Max.
New episodes are scheduled to drop on Dec. 3, 10 and 17.
PCL Rating: High Taste It
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: FRESH
Tags: Chris Bohjalian, HBO Max original Kaley Cuoco, Kaley Cuoco, pop culture leftovers, Steve Yockey, Television Review, The Flight Attendant, The Flight Attendant 2020 HBO Max, tv, TV Reviews
Categorised in: Movie Reviews
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