The Flight Attendant: Episode 5 Recap

Drowning Woman opens with Cassie (Kaley Cuoco) waking up from her rendezvous with her CIA handler, Benjamin (Mo McRae). He’s still sleeping, so Cassie snoops around his office and finds photos of dead bodies with her missing red glove and a filled-out psych evaluation. She quickly skims the answers, but none of them are hers. Between this and the mysterious identity-stealing double, Cassie is in deep over her head.

Cassie calls fellow Imperial Airlines flight attendant and part-time CIA asset, Shane (Griffin Matthews). He was with her in Iceland and warned her about not getting involved with Megan (Rosie Perez) anymore. Obviously, it was a warning that Cassie didn’t heed. However, having seen the files the CIA has on her, Cassie needs someone with knowledge that she can trust. Shane asks her to bring the View-Master to their upcoming mandatory continued education for Imperial so that he can see if there are any usable DNA traces.

Annie (Zosia Mamet) and Max (Deniz Akdeniz) are still staying at Cassie’s house to help her solve the mystery. When they notice she’s looking for the View-Master, they tell her that the couple who broke in the last episode stole it. As she’s leaving her house, her boyfriend Marco (Santiago Cabrera) shows up on her doorstep desperate for answers. He’s sick of her evading him with vague mentions of “work things” she has to do. Cassie’s drowning in the conversation, frustrated that there are so many things she can’t tell him, and blurts out that she slept with someone else. Marco breaks up with her and leaves.

Cassie’s AA sponsor, Brenda (Shohreh Aghdashloo), calls her to say that Hildegard aka Megan left without saying a word. Megan is still on the run from the North Koreans, but she booked a flight back to Long Island. She left a lockbox with her friend, Cherri (Izabella Miko), that had documents that she could use to get free from the North Koreans. Cherri tells her that her old tenant, Wanda (Betsy Moore), stole the lockbox when she couldn’t pay rent.

Max has found all of the bugs the mysterious couple planted in Cassie’s house. He can use them to find the couple’s IP address and break into their laptop. However, this couple was one step ahead of Max. While Annie and Max were tied up, the couple had hacked into Max’s laptop and stole a record of all of his hacking clients. Annie gets the grand idea to find the couple, get their laptop, and steal back the View-Master.

After the training, Cassie hangs out with Grace (Mae Martin) who offers her a martini. At first, Cassie resists, but it’s clear that the weight of the world is dragging her down. She’s grasping onto any sense of normalcy with a white-knuckle grip and it’s draining her. Cassie gives in and takes a drink. The next scenes that follow are hard to watch as she buys bottles of vodka from the store and gets roaringly drunk like she used to. Cuoco masterfully acts her way through the pain of Cassie’s relapsing. It’s yet another instance of The Flight Attendant’s high wire balancing act. The conversation between Cassie and her sponsor Brenda about recovery and the challenge of starting over is extremely poignant and powerful.

Annie, Max, Megan, and Cherri are all successful in their missions to retrieve their stolen items. The View-Master and the couple’s computer are safely in Max and Annie’s hands. Not only did Megan get her lockbox back from Wendy, but Cherri found her expensive purse that had gone missing. Megan and Cherri part ways with Megan handing a brick of cash to Cherri in exchange for her car. Megan’s destination is a mystery for another episode.