In The Flight Attendant Kaley Cuoco becomes a Hitchcock blonde for the 21st century

I have to admit, I have been a fan of Alfred Hitchcock films for decades, ever since The Birds scared the bejesus out of my younger brother. I still can stream films like Rope, North by Northwest, Psycho, and Rear Window, even though I can practically go along with the dialogue.

Add to that body of work, decades after the death of the Master of Suspense, The Flight Attendant, an eight-part miniseries, which has dropped recently on HBO Max. It is as if Hitch has returned from the dead and has created one of his twisty-turny suspense thrillers for the 21st century.

The title character, Cassie Bowden, is the center of the story in which she wakes up in a Bangkok hotel room next to the dead body of a man with whom she had a drunken tryst the night before. The incident sets off a series of events in which Cassie is almost murdered herself several times as she seeks to find out why her one-night stand was murdered and why, apparently, whoever did it are anxious to render her the same service.

That Cassie is a flawed human being is putting the matter mildly. She drinks far too much. She is not very discriminating in the men she sleeps with. She makes bad decisions with the same regularity that other people change their clothes. But she has an appealing enough personality that one finds oneself rooting for her to not get killed and to turn the tables on her tormentors. Cassie has enough of that inner strength that many do not imagine they have until it’s needed. And she needs that strength because it is either be strong and be brave or be dead.

The Flight Attendant has a great supporting cast, including a lawyer friend, a woman who seems intent on killing our heroine, and the dead victim who seems to crop up quite a bit in visions. Some may find the artifice of having Cassie doing long dialogues with a dead man annoying, but I found the thing comical and touching at the same time.

Kaley Cuoco, as all the world knows, is most famous as playing Penny, the girl next door in the long-running TV sitcom The Big Bang Theory, who wins the heart of a group of science nerds. Cassie has a passing resemblance to Penny, but the former has to battle demons that have festered since her dysfunctional childhood as well as the shadowy people who are out to get her.

Cuoco has now joined the ranks of Grace Kelly, Tippi Hedren, Janet Leigh, and Kim Novak as a “Hitchcock blonde” but without Hitchcock. The other difference is that her sex appeal is far from icy and controlled as was the case of those other actresses. This is the 21st century, after all, and women can be sexual without being condemned for it. I am also pleased that The Flight Attendant will have a second season in which we’ll see the further adventures of Cassie Bowden. I can hardly wait.

Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration entitled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond. He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner. He is published in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Hill, USA Today, the LA Times, and the Washington Post, among other venues.