The Flight Attendant

What’s great about “The Flight Attendant” is that it’s airy fun but it’s also well-plotted with an eye toward satisfying viewers. Many characters from season one pop in, often in the most unexpected moments, and it’s a delight.

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.

Put fears to rest that this is an unnecessary extension of what could’ve been a wonderful mini-series, as networks are often known to create — this is some gripping television, expanding on a story while honoring its starting point.

“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.

Pulling all of this together, and pulling it off, largely depends on Cuoco’s performance as Cassie, which continues to anchor things impressively.

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.

Season two of The Flight Attendant has demonstrated it understands how to build up to an inevitable emotional crash. Whether or not it ultimately achieves another smooth landing, it’s fun to see the show return to dizzying heights.

The result is a less tight whodunnit, but something that remains at its best when Cassie is complicating her own life, doubling down on mistakes while struggling to convince herself and everyone around her that she’s simply cruising.

It’s still a delicious mix of pulse-pounding thrills, razor-sharp comedy and surprisingly meaty psychological drama.

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.

The dialogue is as snappy as ever, and the spying scenes are just as tense as you’ve come to expect. If anything, these elements have only been sharpened in Season 2.

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.

The comedy is still there, as are some cringe-inducing moments and head-scratching decisions, but there is also a more serious, introspective tone to the new episodes.

Overall, season two of “The Flight Attendant” doesn’t mix things up much from its first season, and that’s both a blessing and a curse.

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.

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.

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.

On the evidence of its opening double bill, The Flight Attendant is suffering a textbook case of second series syndrome. Fasten your seatbelts and say a prayer. We’ve encountered TV turbulence.

The mystery here proves more convoluted and difficult to track. ... It seems fair to say "The Flight Attendant" is a whole lot less fun than it was.