‘The Flight Attendant’ EP on ‘Ugly & Dark’ Turn Cassie’s ‘Unraveling’ Takes

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Flight Attendant Season 2 Episode 5 “Drowning Women.”]

When The Flight Attendant Season 2 began, Cassie Bowden (Kaley Cuoco) presented herself as having gotten her life together. She had a fresh start in Los Angeles. She was still a flight attendant, with a side gig with the CIA. She had a new boyfriend. She was sober a year. At the end of the fourth episode, she starts bringing everything down. By the end of the fifth, she’s reached what may arguably be the lowest point that we’ve ever seen her.

Not only does Cassie drink, but as we learn, it’s not the first time in the past year. In fact, the depressed version of herself in her mind palace is the Cassie who drank six months into that supposed year of sobriety. Cassie confesses to her sponsor, Brenda (Shohreh Aghdashloo), that she slipped twice in New York and that’s why she left and wanted to start over in Los Angeles. She didn’t want to be the newbie again in a first AA meeting and didn’t think the six months she had were “nothing.” While Cassie thinks she’s back at square one, Brenda disagrees. “You never left square one. You built your recovery on a house of cards. They fell over. That’s what a house of cards does. Until you take that first step and admit you’re powerless over the dark parts of yourself, you’ll just keep knocking down cards.”

Executive producer Natalie Chaidez tells TV Insider, “Coming into Season 2, we think we’re seeing a whole new Cassie. That is certainly what she’s presenting to the world. She’s got these matching appliances, and she’s drinking green juices and she’s got the perfect boyfriend. In the first four, we slowly chip away at that, until the end of 204, she blows s**t up. She sleeps with her boss. And in 205, we’re really seeing what’s beneath the veneer. And she starts to unravel. And part of that unraveling is going back to drinking. It’s really powerful.

“That episode that Steve [Yockey] and Liz [Sagal] wrote is really moving. It’s funny. But when she does it, you’re like, ‘No, no, don’t do it!’ and then it just gets ugly and dark until she ends up crawling across the sand and ‘f**k you sand!’ It goes to a really deep, dark place, and I think we always intended that because sobriety isn’t a straight line,” she continues. “We took this privilege of telling the journey of sobriety very seriously in having writers and producers who are sober and getting input from them. We knew from the start that was going to be a very important episode and really a key turning point, both in the season and for Cassie’s character.”

Jennifer Rose Clasen/HBO Max

Cassie is still investigating the season’s mystery — and her friend, fellow flight attendant and CIA agent Shane (Griffin Matthews), believes her at least enough to look into the double. “Shane is the type of person that takes all information seriously. I think you have to. There’s nuggets inside of even something that seems like not a big deal. So I think the idea of there being a double feels intriguing to Shane,” Matthews says.

While “their friendship is still just hanging on by a thread, he feels like he’s gotta investigate it,” he continues. “Also the idea of the CIA being dangerous for her is also interesting to think about. A service that is supposed to be good for the world might also have some dark spaces in there, and I think that it provides a new level of excitement and thrill inside of the season when you realize that something could be going down inside of the CIA.”

Before Cassie buys two bottles of alcohol in this episode, she goes to see Grace (Mae Martin), the season’s new flight attendant and whom she’d earlier suspected of being the double. But Grace doesn’t know Cassie’s sober and offers her a drink, which she takes. “I think the reason Cassie gravitates to Grace is Grace is a really non-judgmental person. She’s flawed and probably drinks too much and behaves badly. I think there’s a kinship there and a kindred spirit, so nothing seems to really surprise Grace,” says Martin. “I think Grace definitely is a dangerous influence for Cassie because she’s so cavalier about drinking and it’s always around, so yeah, definitely Grace becomes kind of the devil on Cassie’s shoulder.”

Jennifer Rose Clasen/HBO Max

Meanwhile, Cassie’s best friend Annie (Zosia Mamet) and Max (Deniz Azkeniz) sneak into the Diazes’ house to get the viewmaster and computer the bounty hunters took. This all happens without Esteban (JJ Soria) or Gabrielle (Callie Hernandez) realizing. “I feel a bit embarrassed they even pulled one over on us, that they even got in,” Soria admits.

That was completely a Cassie move, both Mamet and Akdeniz acknowledge. “Instead of dealing with their issues or the resolution of the issues, they take a side journey to help the very spiraling Cassie and put their attention on that as opposed to completely resolving the issues that they had together and I think that’s another trauma [like the Diazes holding them hostage in Episode 4] that’s going to hopefully help them as well,” Akdeniz explains.

While there, Max takes a risk and goes up to the bedroom to look for Annie’s ring as well. “Her accepting that ring, her appreciating that ring and the love and joy it brought to her, even though she wouldn’t admit it, is priceless. So losing that object of her acceptance — because that ring symbolizes her acceptance of him and their love — is quite devastating,” he shares. “It’s not just an object. It’s not just something he bought. It’s something that means a lot more to him. So anything he can do to find it. I think that’s half the reason he agrees to breaking in.”

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Avoidance is nothing new for Annie. “Given [her] past life being a lawyer for the mob, she was more comfortable dealing with murderers than admitting she’s dating a guy or telling him she loved him,” Mamet recalls. “Annie’s a complicated, slightly damaged person, but she’s working through it, but to Deniz’s point, I think a lot of this season, they both throw themselves, even more so without question, into Cassie’s insanity because it keeps them from having to deal with their own issues.”

The Flight Attendant, Thursdays, HBO Max