The Flight Attendant Review: The Reykjavík Ice Sculpture Festival Is Lovely This Time Of Year / Blue Sincerely Reunion (Season 2 Episodes 3 & 4)
The second drop The Flight Attendant Season 2 is somewhat mixed. The series continues to build tension with The Flight Attendant Season 2 Episode 3, “The Reykjavik Ice Sculpture Festival Is Lovely This Time Of Year,” but quickly recovers with The Flight Attendant Season 2 Episode 4, “Blue Sincerely Reunion.”
The thing about these episodes is that “The Rekjavik Ice Sculpture Festival Is Lovely This Time Of Year” needs to exist. It’s a quiet episode that lets all the characters examine where they really are on an emotional level.
One of my biggest pet peeves in a TV series is when the series jumps time and then decides not to do anything with it. There doesn’t always have to be a big mystery surrounding the missing time, but the fact is that people change and if you want to continue a story with characters we love we have to know where they are now as opposed to where they were pre-jump.
In the case of The Flight Attendant, we pick up with this group a year after the event of The Flight Attendant Season 1 Episode 8, “Arrivals and Departures,” where big changes were made and we can’t expect that this group didn’t continue to grow or wrestle with the changes in their lives.
Ani is a good example of this. As a result of her actions on The Flight Attendant Season 1, she got her license suspended and is grappling with who she is. Unlike Cassie who has already made some big changes–and had her job to hold onto ac consistent identity–Ani is rudderless. She isn’t the same person we saw at the start of Season 1, and most of what makes up her identity is in flux.
Zosia Mamet’s outburst at the table where she resents the life Max and his parents are envisioning for them feels very relatable. Ani needs some stability and having three people try to persuade her that she’ll like the West Coast life isn’t the way to do it.
Similarly, we needed to see Cassie alone a bit to get an idea of how she’s handling her sobriety. The mindscape with the past (and possible future) versions of Cassie bring out some witty repartee, but the moments when Cassie is alone in the hotel room balance out the comedy with a bit of seriousness.
Kaley Cuoco really brings Cassie’s anxiety to the forefront in her hotel room and as she deals with a landscape full of potential doppelgangers.
The moment that she finds Megan in Blue Sincerely almost feels like a sigh of relief. There’s something familiar and satisfying about accomplishing her goal, even if she did completely misinterpret the emoji chain.
The Flight Attendant Season 2 Episode 4, “Blue Sincerely, Reunion,” is the complete opposite of the previous episode. While “The Rekjavik Ice Sculpture Festival Is Lovely This Time Of Year” is quiet and contemplative, “Blue Sincerely, Reunion,” is more action-packed and feels more along the lines of The Flight Attendant Season 1 Episodes 6 & 7, “After Dark / Hitchcock Double.”
Bringing back Miranda Croft reminds us of what the series was. There’s a tone shift that makes you think these people are remembering the good old days, even though some time has passed.
MIRANDA: Honestly, I got bored being boss. You know, I thought I’d be happy just telling a small army of very bad people what to do, but turns out I like the chase. So, when I got your little note, I figured, what the f*ck?
Michelle Gomez and Cuoco had a very intriguing dynamic. Cassie and Miranda had the dynamic of a veteran cop and a hapless mark and their banter flowed. It doesn’t miss a beat on “Blue Sincerely Reunion,” even as history repeats itself.
The fight scenes gave this double-header a much-needed boost, and the episode moved very quickly even as Megan, Charli, Miranda, and Cassie are in transit.
It doesn’t hurt that the LA plot has equally high stakes as Ani and Max are held prisoner by the neighbors. The overall tone of their scenes seems to repeat what happened when Max was hit by a car last season with Ani realizing just how much Max means to her.
If you dig into these episodes compared to last season, you can almost pick up a theme of “the more things change the more they stay the same.” You have characters consistently falling into old patterns of behavior despite wanting to change, and nowhere is that more relevant than Cassie sleeping with her handler.
The final scene falls in the “I’m disappointed, but not surprised” category. This scene has been hanging a lantern on the fact that Cassie would slip eventually, and the conditions are ripe for it. Depending on where the series takes it after this, Cassie does still have the potential to come out stronger in the end.
Overall, this installment didn’t move or flow well together, but it does give us a lot of great character moments to sit with for the second half of the season.
Stray Thoughts:
- Cassie really needs to learn to put her phone on silent when she goes on missions. That may be too much to ask, but at least it works out.
- Miranda Ex Machina is the best term for what Miranda did on “Blue Sincerely Reunion.” I thought, “if it wasn’t for Miranda they’d all be dead” multiple times. And she was shot in the leg!
- On that note, it’s also very telling that Miranda is the only one to say no more and stick to it. Go enjoy your olive farm money Miranda and stop getting shot in the leg. (But let’s be real, you’ll be back. Seems to be a theme in this series.)
- Points for slipping in Cassie’s joke about if she’d ever met Cecilia. (Briana Cuoco is Kaley’s sister!)
What did you think of this episode of The Flight Attendant? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Lauren Busser
Lauren Busser is an Associate Editor at Tell-Tale TV. She is a writer of fiction and nonfiction whose work has appeared in Bitch Media, Popshot Quarterly, Brain Mill Press Voices, and The Hartford Courant.