The Flight Attendant Season 1, Episode 5 recap: Other People’s Houses

Max and Cassie team-up to do some sleuthing, which results in a visit to Alex’s apartment and a terrible tragedy in The Flight Attendant Episode 5.

By the end of The Flight Attendant Episode 5, it doesn’t look like every character will make it out alive. Before we get there, though, we’ve got to deal with the aftermath of Sabrina’s death. Traumatized yet again, the episode begins with Cassie remembering the day a jet crashed near her house. She tells hallucination Alex that the day the crash happened was the first time she remembered wanting to be a flight attendant because she wanted to help people. In the memory, we see a young Cassie sprinting toward the crash site.

In the present tense, Cassie is being questioned by Agent White as a witness to a potential crime. Annie is in lawyer mode, but Cassie ignores her to snap at White and call him out for not knowing anything. She has a point. The FBI agents don’t seem to be doing any real investigating beyond tailing Cassie. You’d think by now they’d realize something bigger is going on. But as of the end of this episode, they’re convinced Cassie is some major schemer. Cassie tells them that without her, they would have no clue that Lionfish is using jets to smuggle weapons and that the Sokolovs are laundering money through Unisphere.

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Annie leads her away from the agent — and she’s also pissed Cassie just said a bunch of stuff she found out via illegal means to an FBI agent. Cassie apologizes to Annie for it before she bursts into tears. Cassie might make a lot of dumb decisions, but the poor girl has been through a lot. Annie is too, though, to be fair, and she’s doing a lot independently.

At her apartment, Annie leaves to start her dirty work for the Seoul guys (more on that below) while Max and Cassie stay behind. Cassie is determined to fix things because she blames herself for Sabrina’s death and wrecking Annie’s life. She could get disbarred for some of the things she’s done to help Cassie, nonetheless, what she’s about to do.

Her next brilliant plan is for her and Max to break into Alex’s apartment and see if he has a computer with any incriminating documents.  She remembers a conversation she and Alex had where he talked about his doorman, always staring at the giant Vessel sculpture. That makes it pretty easy for them to track down his building, and Cassie lies to the doorman about being Alex’s sister to get into his apartment. She also brings a little Hello Kitty flash drive to transport any important intel they find.

There, she remembers seeing a sticky note with a 4-number code on it beneath Alex’s name in the Sokolov house in Westchester — we saw it too in Episode 3. I love when shows put cool clues and foreshadowing in like that, and this show has lots of it.

Inside Alex’s house, they quickly find his computer and even the password, but Alex has a two-factor authenticator on his computer. They’ll need a second code to get into it. Max recommends they find a key fob in the house, as that’s likely where the code will arrive. They scour the entire place. Cassie finds a lot of strange things in her search, including a collection of vintage Playboys.

In her brainscape, she and Alex fight over how she’s judging and perceiving him based on things she’s found in his house out of context. Alex does the same thing with his apartment and calls her an alcoholic, like her father. It cuts deep.

Also in the closet, though, is the key fob. However, before she and Max can use it, Miranda shows up at Alex’s house. After killing Sabrina, Miranda reaches out to a contact in the company she works for named Cecilia, who warns her that they could both be killed if Victor finds out she didn’t leave the country as he ordered. “You know how agitated I get if something is unfinished.” Miranda tells Cecilia that Sabrina told her about Cassie’s alias “Alessandra Richie” and that Alex has a private workstation in his house. So that’s where she heads next.

Miranda gets into Alex’s computer as easily as Cassie and Max did, but when she can’t get the code, she destroys the entire thing — all while they’re locked in his closet. When she leaves, Cassie is frustrated that Miranda has wrecked the computer, but she finds mail from Lionfish with the official company address stamped on the envelope. Cassie realizes they don’t need his computer.

Of course, not long after leaving the apartment, Cassie and Max run into Buckley. I know this guy is involved in everything; the timing is too suspect. Cassie promises to text him back later as they rush off toward the mysterious address. They find a mostly empty warehouse, except on the second floor is a unit of high-tech servers. Max hacks into the server, and they find out that Alex transferred $250 million from Lionfish into an offshore account — unclear where.

Cassie wonders if Alex was killed over the money or if they think she knows where it is, but while she’s spiraling, Max shows her a bunch of IDs. Cassie’s is among them, and it’s labeled pending. Miranda’s is also pending — and her real name is Elena King. The IDs seem like a hitlist of some kind. Some are listed as “closed,” meaning dead. So how many people want Cassie dead? She starts freaking out that a sniper might get her right then, and Max assures her that won’t happen — until the server kicks him out.

He realizes someone knows they’re there and is likely on their way right now. Cassie grabs the flash drive, and they take off running. But a car veers toward Cassie while they cross the road. Being the good guy he is, Max pushes her out of the way, getting hit in the process. Cassie rushes toward him and tries to revive him, but it looks hopeless. Is Max really dead!? He was so charming. I hope not. Also, who wants to bet Buckley was driving that car?

In the final moments of the episode, Miranda gets another call from Victor. He obviously knows she didn’t return to London, but she lies to him and claims she did. It doesn’t look good for her.

At the end of The Flight Attendant Episode 5, we return to the memory from the episode’s opening. This time, hallucination Alex tells Cassie that she’s lying to herself. She says she wants to help people, but really she’s just attracted to disaster. Looking at the face of young Cassie sprinting toward that crash site — she didn’t look sad or determined; she looked excited at the prospect of ruin.

Annie carries out the mysterious favor in The Flight Attendant Episode 5.

While Cassie and Max are out playing detective, Annie is called to meet with the Seoul guys to figure out how she has to repay her debt. They give her a small brown envelope and tell her to sneak it into the prison and give it to one of her firm’s clients. Annie doesn’t want to do it, but they tell her that her next task will be more difficult if she denies it, so she accepts.

She tries calling her boss Diana to see if there is any wiggle room, but Diana just scolds her for talking bout any of this on an open phone line, especially when she explicitly told Annie she didn’t want to know anything. Stuck without any options, Annie cleverly sews the envelope into her coat lining and goes to the prison. She sticks some electronics into her coat so that when it goes through the scanner and beeps, they just think she’s forgetful and forgot to remove her phone. The security lets her in to see the client.

Annie slips him the envelope and tells him that his family will be taken care of — a message from the Seoul people (I don’t know what else to call them because the show hasn’t really told us who they are yet, Lionfish maybe?). He opens it and finds two pills inside. We don’t see him die, but I’m assuming the pills are for him to commit suicide. Annie is deeply troubled by what she’s just done and calls Max after.

Getting his voicemail, she asks if they can just watch a stupid movie and eat leftover pasta together later so she can be distracted for a while. It’s even more heartbreaking because the episode uses a split-screen to show Annie’s call side-by-side Cassie trying to resuscitate Max.

Megan continues being shady in The Flight Attendant Episode 5.

Whereas Annie wants to get out of bed with the Seoul clients as soon as possible, Megan wants to get more deeply immersed in the criminal enterprise. She tries calling Cassie again to catch up, as they haven’t talked in a while. But Cassie ignores her call. Instead, she calls the Seoul guys, but she does leave a voicemail for Cassie — potentially by accident — of her talking in Korean to the guys on the phone.

As I mentioned earlier, this episode, in particular, seems to have several clues toward the final three episodes. At the Lionfish warehouse with Max, Cassie listens to Megan’s voicemail and hears her speaking in Korean. It’ll be interesting if she revisits that later. As for Megan, she’s ready for the next assignment. She agrees to meet with one of the Seoul representatives at a shady, low-rent motel, but Bill follows her there.

He says he happened to see her standing in the parking lot while driving from work. He thinks she’s having an affair. Megan manages to divert quickly, claiming she was trying to set up a dirty roleplay scenario for his birthday the following week. He seems to buy it. After Bill leaves, Megan meets her contact and gets another huge wad of cash.

What did you think about The Flight Attendant Episode 5? Let us know your thoughts and opinions in the comments below.

The first five episodes of The Flight Attendant are now streaming on HBO Max. New episodes are available on Thursdays.