Every once in awhile, I feel as though I am too harsh on the current state of cinematic entertainment, so I’ll attempt to remove all of my pre-conceived notions, avoid any and all issues I may have with a subject-matter, and dive into one of the ‘new releases’ floating around one of the streaming sites. “You never watched it, so you don’t know what you’re talking about” is the sentiment that I constantly battle in my head. While, in general, it is almost always a disingenuous argument coming from someone attempting to shut down any criticism of their beloved show, nonetheless, I still fight an internal struggle. Questions like “When will I know if they ever get better,” or “Maybe I really am over-exaggerating,” or simply “What if it has all the awful things you expect, but you still enjoy it,” all take turns beating me into submission. For “The Flight Attendant,” none of these questions surprised me. And, while detractors may believe that I get some sort of sanctimonious satisfaction out of this fact, I really don’t. I honestly love story-telling and go into everything I watch with optimism. I really do.
Lifetime’s most recent Thriller, The Flight Attendant–oh, I’m sorry– I’m being told it was not Lifetime but…HBO?? Really? Well then, HBO’s The Flight Attendant is about a 30-something year old flight attendant living her movie-star life of chaos and self-indulgence until it all comes to screeching halt when she wakes up next to a dead man, covered in blood, in a Bangkok hotel. We, then, get to see our protagonist, Cassie Bowden, make a mess of the whole situation as she goes through a series of panic attacks and poor decisions, fueled by her alcoholism, as she tries to clear her name whilst also dealing with all of her inner demons.
On it’s face, the plot seems fine enough; a wealthy, beautiful, high-functioning alcoholic, flight attendant caught up in a murder on foreign soil. You could easily see how such a scenario would provide a great deal of freedom for the writers. Audiences would be prepared to accept almost anything thrown at them, one would think. But even with such a generous premise, that show fails on so many writing levels, which I find surprising considering it was based on a novel.
One expects a certain amount of woke out of anything made post-2015, and it’s certainly there, but I’ll go over that later. I’d like to start with the plot devices. I’m not sure that I’ve seen so many poorly contrived plot devices in 8 42-minute episodes in all my days. Whether it’s random memories that Cassie gets right when she needs them, extremely convenient societal failures created simply to allow the show to continue, or an unhealthy amount of very unsatisfying red herrings, the story just falls further and further into the realm of aggravating with each episode.
And if ever there were a company that stole the intellectual property of a MacGuffin factory and used it to crank out twice the amount at half the price, this show would be it’s biggest client. The trick in this show is not to try and figure out what pieces of information are relevant (they show up out of thin air), but rather to try a figure out how they are going to make you care less about the story with each new piece of information. At that task, they do deserve commendation.
As for the woke, it’s certainly not one of the worst offenders. The plot does not depend on it, which almost makes it worse. Rather than having a story that uses woke as it’s end all and be all, it highlights the fact that it was inserted merely for virtue signaling and almost more aggravating. If you were playing the “wait till I see the first straight white male and he’ll be the bad guy” game, you’ve spoiled it for yourself. And, of course, it’s not just one. The awful alcoholic daddy (who’s really responsible for everything), the evil head of assassins, the murder victim himself (whom we aren’t real sure about throughout the show), the victim’s evil weapon-smuggling father, or the dunder-headed husband of her colleague, played by Terry Serpico. Rest assured that any straight white male you come across will be either stupid, evil, or both. Duh.
Perhaps my loudest eye roll came when the fierce woman POC FBI agent woman-splains to her straight white counterpart how he only has his job because of the FBIs preference for “pale, male and yale.” I had to choke back vomit. I’d have no trouble believing that today’s movie makers all have a team of oppression-finders that scavenge around the internet to find any piece of oppression that ever was, could’ve been, is, might be, or never was, but would make sense if it were. I’d like one of those salaries. And, of course, the female assassin that must turn good, kicks every guy’s ass she comes across; naturally. Everyone else in the show are good guys, nay, great! And they’re all women, POCs, or gay. So there’s that.
On the whole, this show has about 4-5 episodes of passable entertainment. Like many shows today, this is an hour and a half movie that is drug out into a TV series format that doesn’t have the writing talent to sustain it. A person could either just watch the 1st episode, get the premise, and let your own imagination complete the story(preferred), or watch the whole thing for the lolz.
[Quick Note–Full disclosure: I am not terribly familiar with this genre, which I characterize as a kind of “very intentionally woman-centered, usually mid-30s, thriller/mystery”-type thing. I read the first 3 Gillian Flynn books and enjoyed them. I also read The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (meh). So, while I’m not completely oblivious, I am by no means, an expert. ]
AgingMillenial 