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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
41
Mixed:
3
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
Nov 21, 2020
Season 1 Review:
It's a blackly hilarious comedy, a grim character study, a slow unraveling of a troubling past, a dazzling coming-out party for comedienne Kaley Cuoco as a lead actress and, yeah, a vexatiously fascinating murder mystery. You won't be able to take your eyes off of it.
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The Daily BeastApr 21, 2022
Season 2 Review:
This is, again, a fun mystery show, and it’s sexy and hilarious and does those elements—the le Carré-esque mystery filtered through the batty millennial lens—really, really well. But to have the confidence to tread into those human waters, and not somehow feel pandering or patronizing, is so impressive.
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Nov 30, 2020
Season 1 Review:
A jaunty spy thriller score set the tone for what the fast-paced show becomes in episode two once Cassie regularly imagines conversations with the dead guy (Michiel Huisman, “Game of Thrones”) as her way of coping. “The Flight Attendant” becomes a comedic mystery-thriller and Cuoco’s presence and performance capably sell its delicately balanced tone.
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Apr 18, 2022
Season 2 Review:
The writers have had to find new ways to keep their leading lady and the show’s viewers on their toes while digging even deeper into the character’s trauma. For the most part, they succeed. But they might have also done a bit too much in their attempt to reinvent the show alongside its heroine, creating a somewhat uneven second season.
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IndieWireApr 13, 2022
Season 2 Review:
“The Flight Attendant,” like its heroine, reinvents itself in Season 2. The story is streamlined to focus more on Cassie’s own personal development. This might turn off those who enjoyed what Season 1 laid out, but if you’ve enjoyed the characters this far you’ll continue to love Cuoco and company as they try to become adults.
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Apr 21, 2022
Season 2 Review:
As a platform to showcase the star's talent without straying too far from its frenetic narrative path, few shows can match it. Nevertheless, the added mass in this new season drags on the overall velocity that gave prior episodes so much kick. ... There's no denying the soaring pleasure of "The Flight Attendant" despite these minor irritations even so, because Cuoco is simply that good at captaining our way through Cassie's muchness. She is a lot, but it's nothing we can't handle.
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Apr 19, 2022
Season 2 Review:
Cuoco’s proven adept at navigating the hairpin turns in tone that “The Flight Attendant” can take, and the same holds true for her depictions of each new Cassie that ends up haunting the show. ... Making viewers live on the knife’s edge alongside her every fraught choice can be exhausting, but it’s also what “The Flight Attendant” does best.
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The TelegraphMar 19, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Overall, however, it’s a hoot. And a star-making (and Big Bang Theory-shedding) turn from the Golden Globe-nominated Cuoco, who has the requisite magnetism and range of facial tics to make the slip-sliding screwball comedy work. Seatbelts on – it’s an enjoyably turbulent flight.
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Jan 4, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The mystery rights itself before it crashes; we finish the eight episodes because of the show’s aesthetic ambition—clear from its boldly designed title cards, which evoke Saul Bass—and because of Cuoco’s remarkable performance, a breakthrough for the career sitcom actor.
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Nov 24, 2020
Season 1 Review:
It’s a lot of fun, if you’re willing to go along for a ride that doesn’t always track but almost always entertains. It’s a thriller, and it’s a drama, but it’s also almost a comedy, with a brisk pace and a playful tone. It takes itself seriously, but only to a point.
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Nov 24, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The entire story truly rests in Cuoco’s capable hands. Her knack for comic relief is securely intact, but she also easily dives into the depths of Cassie’s terror and uncertainty. Her journey is our journey. Her terror is our terror. She may be an unreliable narrator, but she’s a highly entertaining one. Bottom line? This is a series poised to take off.
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Nov 23, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The whole production is buoyed by Cuoco’s performance, which is a pitch-perfect combination of high-energy franticness and real emotional insight. She rides along with the show’s occasionally bumpy tonal reversals, pulling off both its campy excesses and its sudden swerves into remembered childhood trauma.
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Nov 20, 2020
Season 1 Review:
As amusingly improbable and slick as the show is, The Flight Attendant digs deep when necessary. That comes through especially in how the story depicts Cassie’s relationship to drinking. ... It makes for a strong counterpoint to the somewhat ridiculous world of crime that she’s wandered into; the plot points don’t have to be believable if the character feels like a real person.
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Nov 18, 2020
Season 1 Review:
A fast-moving mystery anchored by Kaley Cuoco's versatile lead performance, The Flight Attendant is the TV equivalent of a beach read, pure and simple. Only what it accomplishes is actually not so simple; most shows of this type tend to get weighed down by the clumsiness of broadcast storytelling or the pretensions of cable prestige. The Flight Attendant seems happy to be enjoyed and disposed of. It has a confidence of identity that I appreciated.
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Apr 20, 2022
Season 2 Review:
Mostly she’s confronting past versions of herself who try to lure her back to drinking, but we also get surreal synchronized swimming sequences that are both gloriously goofy and disturbing. There’s a real-life meeting with her embittered mother (Sharon Stone), too, that’s hard to watch as parent and child put each other through agony. Some fairly static subplots involving Cassie’s bestie, Megan (Rosie Perez), and her lawyer pal, Annie (Zosia Mamet), pale in comparison to her own heightened internal struggles.
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Nov 25, 2020
Season 1 Review:
With an actor less capable than Cuoco, it might be easy to turn off the TV when it gets too awkward. But it is precisely Cuoco's deft handle of dark comedy and drama that makes "Attendant" fly, as she switches from emotional outburst to drunken escapade to terror and back again with ease.
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Apr 20, 2022
Season 2 Review:
In a welcome contrast to the show’s first year, the whodunit and sobriety storylines are far better integrated, providing not just a moving but also bracing portrayal of alcohol dependency amid crisis. Still, it’s difficult not to notice that the overstuffed season — which adds Sharon Stone, Cheryl Hines, Margaret Cho and Mo McRae to the cast — is missing some of the series’s signature propulsiveness.
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Apr 13, 2022
Season 2 Review:
If you weren't on board with how things worked themselves out in Season 1, you won't be in Season 2 either, which really pushes the credulity boundaries (just because a character notes that something is a huge coincidence, that doesn't exactly absolve the sin). But for those willing to go along for the ride, you're in for another romp of a caper, one that works because Cuoco delivers a knockout performance once again.
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Nov 25, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Messy as all that sounds, it mostly works thanks largely to Cuoco, "The Big Bang Theory" star who doubles as a producer (along with writer Steve Yockey and the prolific Greg Berlanti), and manages to convey the darkly comic aspects of Cassandra's plight without undermining the thriller-like foundation.
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Nov 25, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Reconciling these two stories is a real trick; the four episodes made available for this review (out of eight) certainly achieve the story’s nonstop anxiety level, but one gets the feeling that the whole thing would come apart without Cuoco’s impressive grip on the character: a woman who is out of control, expertly played by an actress who demonstrates such precision.
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Nov 23, 2020
Season 1 Review:
There are some seemingly unnecessary detours involving supporting characters like Cassie’s best friend Annie (Zosia Mamet) and co-worker Megan (Rosie Perez). But the main plot moves briskly, even as the investigation forces Cassie to turn inward and figure out how she became the ungainly disaster whose friends indulge her only because she’ll make good story fodder later. Cuoco is sharp and likable throughout.
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ColliderApr 13, 2022
Season 2 Review:
While The Flight Attendant's first season had Bohjalian's book to work from, Season 2 aims to move past that completed story arc and away from the source material, but only to varyingly rewarding returns, and continues to stumble over the same issues Season 1 did in regard to balancing its main mystery with everything else happening at the margins.
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Nov 20, 2020
Nov 25, 2020
Season 1 Review:
There is, even so, a sprightliness to this lurid tale, though a kind that goes dead, much like a stalled engine. ... The show’s tone is at its best in the real-world snappy exchanges between Cassie and her loyal if confused band of fellow flight attendants who notice her air of disconnectedness—and liveliest in her talks with her lawyer friend.
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RogerEbert.comApr 21, 2022
Season 2 Review:
There is more emotional violence and brutal sucker punches of honesty in the sixth episode of “The Flight Attendant” than entire seasons of other shows. ... I could almost forgive the inert storytelling of the five episodes before it. But I cannot, because it is an insult to Cuoco, especially, for the writing to relegate her to cartoonish ditzy bumbling blonde territory for five hours, and saving the raw devastation of Cassie’s interiority for its final moments.
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