The Flight Attendant season 2 episode 5 recap: Key moments

After being treated to two episodes each week, this time we only got one. And that’s how the episode schedule for The Flight Attendant season 2 will continue until we get to the finale on May 26. Episode 5 was a definite emotional rollercoaster for us and Cassie. So I’m ok with only getting the one episode this week. We’re going to need time to recover!

The April 28 episode took us a little deeper into Cassie’s struggles with sobriety, and this week “Drowning Women” showed us the unfortunate breaking point for the flight attendant. There’s also the fact that she slept with her handler.

We’ve crossed the halfway point for the season and it seems like the show is going to take us on an emotional ride as we head into the finale. Here’s a recap of episode 5’s key moments.

The Flight Attendant season 2 episode 5 recap

What leads to Cassie’s relapse?

The biggest and most heartbreaking part of this episode is Cassie’s relapse. We’ve slowly been building to this, including when she’s at Grace’s house and is tempted to just take a drink. But she doesn’t until about halfway through the episode and that’s when everything goes downhill.

Cassie hits her breaking point as everything comes to a head. There’s sleeping with Benjamin, finding out someone at the CIA fabricated her psych evaluation, the impersonator trying to frame her for murder, and the huge fallout with Marco. She can’t take it anymore and needs a drink.

Let’s start with Benjamin and the psych evaluation. Following their hook up, Cassie wakes up the next day in his office. As she’s leaving she sees a file about her on Benjamin’s desk.

There’s a pysch evaluation she never took and the fabricated answers aren’t putting her in the best light. This understandably freaks her out and she calls Shane and tells him everything – someone’s trying to impersonate her, she thinks it’s someone in the CIA, and she has proof that the death of the two CIA analysts in Echo Park and the Berlin bombing are connected. Yeah, that’s a lot. But Shane actually seems like he genuinely wants to help his friend. Go Shane!

Then we get to Marco. He comes to Cassie’s home since she’s been blowing him off to confront her. Unfortunately, she blurts out that she cheated on him. He asks her why she did it and she says she forgot about him. Ouch! The poor guy is obviously heartbroken and tells her his daughter would have loved her had they met as was planned before saying goodbye.

Cassie drinks again

Once “black market Carole” further aggravates an emotionally unstable Cassie at the flight attendant training, Grace provides some support. When Grace makes a drink we see Cassie tempted to take it. She doesn’t, but she does head to a store with the intention of buying a few bottles where she runs into Jenny. Though she tells her admirer not to drink because of her broken heart, Cassie unfortunately doesn’t take her own advice.

She buys the bottles of alcohol and drinks straight from the bottle right when she gets outside of the store. She comes home drunk and when she sees Marco’s note about picking his stuff up, that just sends her into a deeper spiral. There’s more drinking, crying, and a slew of voicemail messages she leaves the CIA director, cursing her out for not picking up in a sobbing mess.

Cassie also makes a bit of a mess for Shane when she accidentally tells his boyfriend he’s a CIA agent in her drunken state. It’s a really sad scene where Cassie says she misses the friend who would take her out to oyster night. He tells her she needs to sober up and once he tries to salvage things in his relationship, he will keep digging to see what shady stuff is happening internally at the CIA.

Even the sparkly, “good” version of herself in the Mind World is now drinking. She asks, what’s the point of it all and tells Cassie “I’m here to make you feel bad about the woman you’re never going to be.” This is obviously Cassie’s self-doubt talking.

Cassie drives while she’s drunk, something extra heartbreaking because that’s how her dad died as we learned in season 1. She goes to the beach and we find out this isn’t her first relapse.

The Party Girl version of herself from the Mind World takes her back to the night of March 21, six months into her year of sobriety. She ends up drinking. A lot. Only a couple of days later she gets drunk again in an overflowing bathtub where she’s crying and almost drowned herself. She’s in the same outfit of another Cassie version, the one who’s sad and is wearing all black in the Mind World.

But the episode does end on a hopeful note. Cassie eventually calls her sponsor Brenda. She admits this wasn’t her first relapse and she’s been lying to everyone that she made it one year sober. That’s why she moved to LA, because of her slips. Brenda tells her she needs to accept the dark parts of herself before she can start healing and advises her to take the advice of someone who tried drowning herself – it’s just easier to just stop drinking.

Moments of levity

We get some moments of levity with Max and Annie, as well as Megan’s mission to find her lock box between all the heavy but incredibly important scenes with Cassie.

My favorite couple decide to pay the Diaz’s a visit. They find out they hacked into Max’s computer and took the View Master. They drive over and Max sneaks into the house and recovers the items. Unfortunately, he couldn’t track down Annie’s ring which they also stole. He tells her in a very sweet scene that it took him months to pick out the ring and when he saw her face when she opened the box, he knew he got it right. Aah! Give this couple their ring back please!

Megan heads over to the Queen’s strip club in Long Island where she hid her lock box. It’s full of evidence against the North Koreans which she hopes will help her make a deal with the American government so she’s no longer a fugitive. When she gets there, Cherry tells her a bank teller who Cherry rented out a room to wasn’t paying her rent. When she kicked her out, she took everything including Megan’s lock box. The two go on an amusing adventure and are able to get it back.

Things to keep an eye on

Cassie’s missing red glove that she wore in Berlin was planted at Echo Park thanks to the impersonator. This is not going to look good for her!

The CIA director is getting suspicious. She tells Benjamin that she thinks the murders at Echo Park were an inside job. She also asks to review all the communication files between Cassie and the handler.

The Flight Attendant will be back next week with episode 6 on HBO Max.