‘The Flight Attendant’ Season 2, Episode 5 Spoiler Review — “Drowning Women”

This episode was written by Liz Sagal and Steve Yockey, and directed by Pete Chatmon.

I’ve mentioned in my last review that Cassie’s (Kaley Cuoco) hookup with Ben (Mo McRae) in his office in episode 4 of The Flight Attendant is a form of relapse; she clearly doesn’t see it that way. “At least I didn’t drink. Good for you” is what she tells herself when she wakes up the next morning, still in his office, surveying the scene.

Again, Cassie likes to balance on the tightrope of discretion. She snoops around Ben’s office and finds her own personnel file with photos of her back in Germany. Not only does she snoop, but she also manages to snap a few pictures on her phone with the sound effects on full blast volume. All while Ben is still sound asleep behind her, threatening to wake at any moment.

She walk of shames out of there and unfortunately runs into Dot (Cheryl Hines), another CIA officer. Thanks to Kaley Cuoco and The Flight Attendant’s hair and wardrobe team, Cassie definitely does not look like she just woke up after having sex with her handler. Instead, she looks like she really was just stopping by the office for an innocent visit, which is the half-true excuse she gives to Dot. Ben can be seen lurking in the back, watching their interaction, and just as Cassie disappears through the elevator doors, Dot turns around to see Ben suspiciously stepping away. Dot begins to connect the dots… (sorry). Needless to say, she’s on to them.

Cassie and Ben’s incident is shelved for another day because Cassie is reaching her boiling point. She calls Shane (Griffin Matthews) to vent about her anxiety with thinking there’s someone out there impersonating her by stealing her identity and framing her for crimes, and that she thinks it might be the CIA. After a brief calming down, Shane dutifully reminds her about the mandatory annual Continuing Qualification training because, oh yeah, they’re also flight attendants. Obviously, if she hadn’t called Shane on a stressed whim, she definitely would’ve missed that training course, and the show would no longer be called The Flight Attendant.

On her way to training, Cassie has a run-in with a very aggravated Marco (Santiago Cabrera). He’s trying to clear the water between them considering Cassie has been dodging him like he’s a bottle of vodka. Long story short, she admits to cheating on him, saying “I guess I forgot about you” (ouch on Marco’s account), and Marco dumps her (ouch on Cassie’s account), before telling her that he truly saw a future with her and that his daughter would’ve loved Cassie (double ouch on Cassie’s account). It’s a terrible mood to set Cassie in as she starts the training course, and it doesn’t make things any better when Carol (the one that Cassie blackmailed for her jump seat to Iceland) is assigned to the same group as her.

Keeping up with Megan

Megan (Rosie Perez) has been a hot topic as of late. She also can’t seem to keep still. Cassie just rescued her from foreign assassins and gave her only one job: stay put and safe at Brenda’s (Shohreh Aghdashloo) house. You can imagine Cassie’s stress meter breaking when Megan does the opposite of that. She runs off to who knows where and when Brenda calls Cassie in the middle of her training session to tell her about it, Cassie, as well as the rest of us, deem it too unimportant at the moment for Cassie to deal with.

Well, Megan turns up at a place I’m sure none of us expected: a strip club. She meets an old friend and former coworker there, Cherri (Izabella Miko), who actually owns the place. Megan tells her that she needs her lockbox back but Cherri says that she doesn’t have it anymore because a “Wanda” (Betsy Moore) took it in the midst of a miscommunicated rent situation. To her credit, Cherri did try to call Megan but Megan was preoccupied at the time running away from bounty hunters in Iceland.

Cherri says not to worry though because they’re going to show up at Wanda’s house and take back what’s theirs. Although beware, because Wanda may start shooting at them.

Wanda immediately tells them to go away, and while Megan rants about the social and political hardships of adult entertainers, she sneakily slips in (probably some mushroom-based) substances into her drink. Wanda storms back inside and Megan tells Cherri to just wait thirty minutes for her plan to take effect.

An hour passes by and Megan is now worried that she may have used too much mushroom powder and that Wanda may kind of die. To their relief, Wanda is still alive, tripping and screaming gibberish as she runs out the front door. Megan and Cherri take that opportunity to finally go in and retrieve Megan’s lockbox. Not only do they find Megan’s lockbox, but Cherri also finds the purse she knew Wanda stole from her.

They ditch the scene, giggling, and promising to call 911 for Wanda once they hit the interstate, just in case. When it’s time for them to part ways, Megan offers Cherri a wad of cash in exchange for her bright red car. Another similarity between Megan and Cassie is their willing inability to move around incognito. Also, am I the only one concerned about the pain it would cause to process a title registration transfer?

What are you up to, Megan? You just got rescued.

Team Annie and Max

Despite Annie and Max’s (Zosia Mamet and Deniz Akdeniz) hostage situation with the Diazes (Callie Hernandez and J.J. Soria) back in episode 4 of The Flight Attendant, they still have Cassie’s best interests in mind. They don’t let their near-death experiences stop them from continuing on with their side of the case.

They figure out that the Diazes probably found out where they were because they managed to bug Cassie’s apartment. Thanks to Max’s tech smarts, he was able to find them all and debug them. Though he’s worried about making any more steps in the case because the last time he tried to help Cassie track down dangerous people, he got hit by a car. So, yeah, I’d be hesitant too.

Annie and Max are eventually successful in their heist when they break into the Diazes’ house and leave with their stolen computer.

Cassie’s Inevitable Downfall

The long-anticipated moment has arrived.

Maybe Cassie’s choice of kissing Drunk Ben to taste the alcohol isn’t a direct definition of a relapse, but it sure does get the snowball rolling down the steep mountain. Her old drinking habits inevitably make their premiere in this episode, and it’s not pretty.

She grabs a couple of vodka bottles from a corner store and wastes no time in taking shameless swigs just outside on the street. Already causing havoc back at her apartment by drunkenly knocking things over, she also drunk calls Dot a million times while sobbing hysterically and screaming expletives. She also drunk calls the ever-so-patient Shane, but it’s his boyfriend, Justin (Matt Gould), who answers. Cassie can’t keep her mouth shut when she’s inebriated and stupidly mentions their affiliation with the CIA. So obviously, Shane is now fed up when he’s usually calm and collected with Cassie. He rants to her about the importance of keeping the people he loves out of his professional and secretive lifestyle. Again, Cassie and secrecy don’t mesh well together.

Cassie’s home isn’t the only place breaking down from her poor choices. Now Responsible Cassie in her mind locus is drinking too and everything is falling apart. Now, this is very important and I am virtually trusting every reader into heeding what I say next: never drink and drive. Don’t do what Cassie does to escape the noise in her head.

She arrives at a beach and immediately collapses on the sand. She stares up at the night sky in tears before eventually returning back to her mind locus where even Party Cassie admits to her that her life is tragic, and calls her out on some incidents that happened during the time between Season 1 and Season 2. Turns out that she wasn’t exactly truthful about her full year of sobriety and it might just be 363 days of sobriety if you don’t count March 21st and March 23rd, both in which she gets blackout wasted.

She does have enough moral sense in her to call up her sponsor, and so Brenda shows up at the beach and they have a very insightful heart-to-heart. At least she did call for support and received it instead of leaving the pain to build up and manifest into something as chaotic as Season 1’s Cassie the Drunkard. Brenda assures her that she is not back to square one because she actually never left it. The harsh truth that Brenda tells her is that you have to acknowledge and tell the truth, even when it’s easier to lie.

Final Thoughts on The Flight Attendant Season 2, Episode 5

Cassie’s alcohol problem was an entire personality trait in Season 1, and it was bound to come back in the new season, especially with all of the chaos going on in her life. As much as we all wanted her to tough it out and find newer, healthier ways to cope with her issues, her relapses are just a side effect of reality. It’s surely a deeper problem with roots buried in her childhood, and we’re slowly getting to understand her character more in that way. Also, when Cassie is drunk, it makes for some colorful and entertaining cinematography. The positive thing in all of this is that she recognizes her problem. I do hope part of this recovery involves mending things with Marco.

Megan’s a lockbox herself and we only receive fragments of her story at a time. As mundane of a character she might have been in the first season—at least in the first half—her arc is growing more complex with each new episode. With Cassie’s already eventful life, Megan sure adds more entertaining side quests for Cassie to deal with.

Annie and Max are in like a whole new universe of their own with what they’re dealing with. With Annie’s legal intellect and Max’s tech superpowers, they make a great team. I would not mind a spinoff series in which Annie and Max moonlight as a P.I. duo.

As usual, this episode of The Flight Attendant contained phenomenal performances by its main cast, a groovy score, and many mysteries that have yet to unfold. Things are picking up but there’s still a long way to go to piecing this gigantic puzzle together and finding out exactly who is out there impersonating Cassie.