REVIEW: THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT

 THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Very late to the party but here we go- script analysis.

APPLAUSE:
-- THEME: Cassie coming to realize her skewed perspective of her childhood. Many people invalidate other's feelings because of what they believe is true. What would the world be if we all walked through life the exact same way? We'll never know because we don't. 
-- PROTAGONIST: Very bold move for the writers to write a very unlikable protagonist. 

CRITQUE:
-- PROTAGONIST: Cassie is terribly unlikable. I'm not rooting for her. I actually want her to fail. I only continued watching so I could write this critique. Though it's clear that her arc is going from a terrible person to a slightly better version of herself, she's selfish and privileged, and I want her to go to jail for killing Alex even though she didn't do it. 
-- FLASHBACKS: Feel forced to create empathy for Cassie. Tonally, they feel out of place. Darker/deeper/more grounded than what the show is. If they weren't so overused, they may work. That overuse will be interesting to track in Season 2, if I care to watch. 
-- THE ROOM/GUILTY CONSCIENCE: Very overused. To the point that it pulls us out of the story (maybe purposefully because she's being pulled out of the moment). If it happened 2-3 times per episode vs 20 times, it would work. 
-- EDITING: This note is to reiterate the above. There are choices to cut to moments of Cassie's childhood randomly and most of the time I'm wondering why I'm looking at that in this moment.

Cool visual elements can't trump connecting to your protagonist. That only works for so long before the audience realizes they're being manipulated. 

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AUTHOR

Shannan E. Johnson is a former creative executive at The Syfy Channel turned CEO + Head Consultant of The Professional Pen, a script consultancy that develops screenwriters from idea to pitch to become more confident storytellers ready for a professional screenwriting career, and consults with scripted development teams at entertainment companies to streamline their notes process to get to pre-production more efficiently.