[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Flight Attendant Season 2 finale, “Backwards and Forwards.”]
The Flight Attendant Season 2 didn’t just leave Cassie (Kaley Cuoco) in a good place when it comes to her sobriety — 30 days, but seemingly in a better place to reach the one year she’d claimed she’d had but really didn’t — and her work (she unraveled the double mystery) and friends. It also gave hope for what’s ahead for her relationship with her mother, Lisa (Sharon Stone).
But first, we had to actually meet Lisa, something that executive producer Natalie Chaidez pushed for. “I was initially resistant to it because I thought we dealt with the dad in Season 1. It feels like now to hand over to the mom, I don’t know what that’s gonna feel like, but Natalie was persuasive and we went in that direction and I think it was the right call,” executive producer Steve Yockey explains to TV Insider.
“I will say as much as I wanted to do the mom story, Steve really protected it not ever becoming saccharine because there were pressures: Is she too harsh? Is this too much?” adds Chaidez. “When Sharon came in, the slap and all that, we really fended people off who wanted to soften that.”
That slap came in Episode 6, when Cassie’s brother Davey (T.R. Knight) — who got in on the action this season, “more fun” than mostly being “relegated to phone calls” in Season 1, Yockey notes — tricked the two women into a family reunion. At the time, Cassie had slipped again, and Lisa told her she loved her, but didn’t like her, after their history.
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But in the Season 2 finale, Cassie called Lisa to tell her mother she heard what she had to say during that visit. “I know that I hurt you a lot and you probably don’t believe a word I say or believe me when I say I’m changing, but I am,” Cassie said. “I’m trying and I hope you can see that and I know it might take a while, I mean, hell, it took decades to get to this phone call. I know I’m not going to be better overnight and I want you to know I’m taking the steps I need to take to get here and I just hope you can maybe watch from a very safe distance.” Lisa said she hoped they could talk again soon, and both said “I love you” before hanging up.
With that storyline, it’s about, “How do you ever reconcile with the parent that remained and was still there and wasn’t the one who died and you’ve had this ongoing conflict with as an adult?” Chaidez says. “It’s really baby steps, all the small details, like they only talk once a year at Christmas and all of that stuff. The scenes are so powerful and Sharon’s performance is so powerful. You really understand Cassie and her drinking and everything about her in a different way.”
And by ending the season with their relationship where it is, “it was just really such a powerful place to take her, where they’re just making that tiny step,” the EP continues. “Kaley’s so good in that scene and that scene’s so wonderful on the plane. That was important to us to just show that she has grown and she’s taking that step, but not to over-promise because the person who slapped her is not gonna just turn around and be cookies and hot tea and cuddly.”
Adds Yockey, “We do sort of see in that last scene, like Natalie saying you see a baby step from Cassie, you see a baby step from Lisa. She’s like, ‘I hope we can talk again soon.’ That’s a far cry from where they were in Episode 6 when she slapped her daughter. Sometimes those baby steps are enough to show you that it’s going in a good direction.”
We’ll have to wait to see if we see any more of those “baby steps” in a possible third season.
The Flight Attendant, Seasons 1 & 2, Streaming Now, HBO Max