The Flight Attendant Recap: Planes, Boats, and Automobiles

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Season 2 Episode 4 Editor’s Rating4 stars ****

Photo: HBO Max

I apologize to everyone involved in The Flight Attendant because I love it, but after this episode, all I want in life is a Miranda spinoff. I could watch that Scottish firebrand cuss and kick her way through all the countries like an R-rated Carmen Sandiego all day long. Hell, I’d even watch a show about her chilling by her pool and cold-pressing olive oil into tiny little bottles while barking orders at poor Cecilia. I just adore her to pieces. I’m so thrilled she returned to Cassie’s life, but she’s already gone, and there’s a little Miranda-shaped hole in my TV-loving soul that will forever need filling.

On her way to Iceland, Cassie sent a cryptic text for help to Katherine O’Brien, which turned out to be the glorious Miranda. How Miranda figured out how to find Cassie on only a “Help Me” GIF and a brief text, we’ll never know, but we can make an educated guess based on the fact that Cassie most definitely does not know how to turn Location Services off on her phone. Girl doesn’t even know how to put her phone on silent.

At the top of the episode, we pick up with Megan updating Cassie. I was mistaken about Margaret Cho, a.k.a. Charlie, being Megan’s lover, so I apologize for jumping to conclusions there, but other than Charlie’s comforting presence, Megan’s life has really not been great. She’s trying to dodge an assassin named Hawk, the same bad dude that Shane warned Cassie about earlier. Megan and Charlie were planning to K-I-L-L him using the mushroom powder, and due to Cassie’s unexpected visit, they decide to move their murderous plot up to that very night.

But of course, before the guy can take a sip of his poisoned old-fashioned, Cassie’s phone goes off. Not great. It would have been a tragedy, really, if not for Miranda. She swoops in, effortlessly stabs the guy, and then wrangles the troops for a wild escape across Iceland. Miranda’s assistant Cecilia (Briana Cuoco) kind of aids in their escape but also hinders them as well. At first, Cecilia gives them up because she says the North Koreans pay better, but really, it’s because Miranda food shamed her pregnancy snack. Never food shame a pregnant woman. Ever. It might cause you to get shot in the leg by North Korean assassins. And you’d deserve it.

As the group flees, they race over various gorgeous Icelandic landscapes and eventually reach a helicopter perched on a picturesque seaside cliff that’s being bombarded by violent waves. Everyone’s ready to go, but Cassie just has to take a phone call from Shane. (It’s okay for calls to go to voicemail, girl, I promise you.) They both play their little cat-and-mouse game where they’re both totally lying the entire time while still communicating love for one another. It’s sweet because Shane is sweet, and we know he’s genuinely looking out for Cassie’s best interests (we cannot say the same of Mr. Benjamin Barry, but we’ll get to him), but it’s also kind of a gut punch to realize that Shane is hot on Megan’s tail and Cassie is refusing to help him in any way. Much like her friend Miranda, Cassie is just chasing thrills. And unfortunately, this natural high only fuels her desire to drink even more.

Megan and Cassie get spirited away on a private jet chartered by Miranda. This brings up a big logistical question: Did Miranda just pay to charter a jet from Iceland to Los Angeles because she’s fond of Cassie? It sure looks like it. She also had Cecilia procure some chic clothing and a little good-bye present for Cassie. Let’s just take a second to recall that, at the end of season one, Miranda had taken the password chain to unlock the $200 million that Alex Sokolov had stolen from his clients. And, at least in this situation, Miranda seems to be putting that money to good use.

Cassie’s present consists of a jar of Mace, a personal alarm, and a teeny bottle of Miranda’s very own olive oil. Upon landing, Cassie gives the Mace to Megan and unceremoniously drops her at her very trusting sponsor’s house. Brenda is confused, but she accepts her houseguest for a single night. Cassie and Brenda have a Very Special Episode moment about sobriety struggles. AA talk is often cliché and trite, but these two commit to the seriousness of the subject and somehow make it work. The moment when Brenda tells Cassie she looks tired and Cassie gets momentarily flustered is laugh-out-loud funny and breaks the weight of the conversation.

Cassie is trying her best, but she’s really a terrible friend. She’s lying to Shane (well, really, she’s lying to everyone), she’s totally blowing off Marco, she’s leaving her hunted fugitive friend with her potentially unstable sponsor, and she left Ani and Max in her apartment with a deadly doppelgänger on the loose.

After Cassie drops Megan off at her Westwood hidey-hole, she meets up with Ani and Max. They tell her everything that happened with the unhinged criminals that broke into her house. Esteban and Gabriele are pretty hilarious. They feel like cartoon villains from an old episode of Inspector Gadget. They threaten violence and acts of crime, but we haven’t really seen them do anything too drastic yet. Why didn’t they kill Ani and Max after they found what they needed in Cassie’s apartment? An even better question would be: Why didn’t they kill that incessantly barking dog at the neighbors’ house? If these two want to be taken seriously as criminals, they have to do better than just trotting out some instruments of torture.

Thanks to Ani’s confession about working for the mob — which Gabrielle seemed to be interested in before she quickly dismissed it as a lie — it comes out that Gabrielle isn’t the doppelgänger, even though she totally looks like Cassie with her new blonde locks. Gabrielle vehemently denies looking to frame anyone for murder. Also, she didn’t dye her hair until after the mark was killed in Berlin, and she seems way too into Esteban to cheat on him with some rando in Germany, so we can safely rule her out. My money is still on Dot, but only time will tell.

Whomever the doppelgänger is, he or she was very busy killing CIA operatives at the Lady of the Lake statue in Echo Park while Cassie was in Iceland. For those keeping score at home, this is the second time a View-Master slide has corresponded to a murder committed by doppelgänger. Unfortunately, Cassie doesn’t really have an alibi for the Echo Park murders because she flew to Iceland under Carol’s name and then flew back on the Miranda Express, so there’s no paper trail. Yikes.

All the stress is too much for Cassie, and she needs an outlet. Throughout the back half of her ordeal in Iceland, her mind palace was a bit muted and mostly just focused on potentially losing Marco. By the end of the episode, Party Cassie is getting confrontational about two mystery dates — March 21 and March 23 — and Young Cassie is building a giant replica cathedral while the entire ceiling starts to flood. None of this is really explained, but at the end, as Cassie initiates steamy couch sex with a very drunk Benjamin Barry, it seems very connected to Cassie’s inability to hold onto meaningful relationships.

As she cheats on Marco, the cathedral in Cassie’s mind palace collapses and Responsible Cassie storms out, angrily throwing her would-be engagement ring down as she leaves. And Party Cassie is soaking up everything like she’s a battery that runs on chaos.

We’ve made our final descent into the end of the recap, so please make sure your tray tables and seats are in the upright position. Until next time …

Checked Baggage

• After Charlie meets Cassie, she pours a round of celebratory shots for everyone. Cassie frantically declines, yet Megan pressures her to drink anyway. Pressuring people to drink or questioning abstinence even when people say no is such a weird quirk of our culture, and I wish it would stop. Friends let friends pass on drinks, no questions asked.

• When Cassie meets Cecilia at the airport, she asks her if they know one another. I do not recall the two crossing paths in the first season, back when Cecilia and Miranda both worked for the crime kingpin Victor, so this line has to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that the two are sisters in real life. Fun!

• Max is able to break his zip ties using friction from his shoelaces, which is a cool trick, but Alexis Rose from Schitt’s Creek also taught us that you can just lift your hands over your head and bring them down into your stomach really fast and they’ll pop open! TV saves lives!

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