The Reel Review
When a jet-setting, boozehound of a flight attendant wakes up in a Bangkok hotel room next to her now dead date from the night before, she finds herself in a race against the clock to clear her name and learn who killed him in this HBO Max mystery/comedy series starring Kaley Cuoco. It is based on the 2018 novel from Chris Bohjalian.
Cuoco brings an exuberant, Christina Applegate level of charm to her role as Cassie, the likable but maddeningly ditzy alcoholic who makes an astounding series of bad life choices. Zosia Mamet (Shoshana from Girls) is scene-stealingly hilarious as her smart-mouthed attorney and best friend Annie, and Rosie Perez brings charm to her role as the co-worker/friend who also happens to be caught up in a drama of her own.
Unfortunately, the solid acting, the fun pop art show intro, the goofy score and Cassie’s surreal conversations with her dead bedmate (Michiel Huisman) are not enough to lift this series out of its strange, dramedy holding pattern – although at times hilarious, it frequently is neither quite funny or serious enough, just mired in that uncomfortably mucky no man’s land of strangeness.
REEL FACTS
• Production of The Flight Attendant was shut down for several months after Rosie Perez contracted COVID-19 in November 2019 during filming in Bangkok.
• Kaley Cuoco purchased the TV/film rights to the novel “The Flight Attendant” prior to reading it.
• Susanna Fogel, who directed two episodes of The Flight Attendant, wrote and directed 2018’s The Spy Who Dumped Me.
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