Hightown – Season 1 Episode 5 Recap & Review

The Best You’ll Feel All Day 

With the recent news of its renewal, Starz Original Hightown returns this week for another episode that does little to change the earlier opinions of this show. If anything, it actually reinforces those feelings, with unlikable protagonists fronting this series and an investigation that leaves little to the imagination. There’s no mystery here and while the accurate portrayal of flawed characters is welcome, it ultimately results in nothing with a plot that doesn’t do an awful lot to inject excitement into proceedings.

Episode 5 of Hightown begins with Jackie waking up hungover after a heavy night of drinking. Even worse, she finds Ron with her stark naked. After cleaning up, she prepares for the day ahead and heads back to the bar, drinking again.

While there, Junior spies her drinking and tells her to take things seriously otherwise the Judge will come down hard on her. When she waves away his concerns, he changes his stance and asks questions about Krista. When he fails to get anywhere, Junior eases up on the questions.

Meanwhile, Ray presents his case to his boss in a bid to investigate Osito. Before things become too heated, Alan manages to convince him to leave the room. Ray heads straight to the garage and tells the workers there to play ball. They’re having none of it though and refuse to give up Osito or any information about their operation. Back in the car, Alan and Ray discuss the next steps to try and bring this man down.

At the prison, Junior invites Osito to speak with him. As the meeting adjourns, Frankie meets with Osito and Junior in private, berating them for messing up. Frankie tasks Osito to “take care” of Krista and Jackie but Junior manages to convince him not to hurt Jackie. After some contemplation, he agrees for them just go after Krista – with Junior the one to make this happen.

Jackie goes completely off the rails and continues to drink and do drugs, destroying everything around her. Eventually she gets kicked out of the club while Ray heads out on a date with Renee, accompanied by little Frankie who tags along too. Afterward, they head home and make love.

Junior and Osito head out to visit one of his contacts where he manages to get some gear to help take out Krista. With this in hand, Osito tasks Junior with getting rid of the young girl, dropping him off at the motel room she’s currently staying in. With the drugs in hand, he convinces her it’s a new batch and this free sample is for her. As she starts to shoot up, she has second thoughts and decides against it… until Osito heads in and bashes her face in with an iron to make sure there’s no mistakes this time.

Jackie meets a couple of girls and continues to spiral out of control, kicked out of a taxi on a road trip out of town and stuck in the middle of nowhere. Ray receives a call in the middle of the night telling him Krista has been killed while Jackie wakes up from her drug-induced state and hears the voicemail from Krista. As he rings her back, Ray picks the phone up and reveals that Krista has been killed, which is where the episode ends.

Why did Osito fly off the handle like that and kill Krista with the iron? Given how calculated his moves have been up until this point and the emphasis on doing things as quietly as possible, outright murdering the girl and showing she’s been murdered rather than an accidental drug overdose is careless and feels out of character. Why didn’t the duo just hold her down and inject her with the needle?

Alongside this though, the episode doesn’t do a lot for either of our main characters either. Ray spends the entirety of his time trying to woo Renee, who has her own agenda. Jackie meanwhile abandons all the good work done for the past 4 episodes and continues to drink, rendering all that time at rehab pointless screen-time and doing little to advance her character. Hopefully Krista’s murder is just the wake-up call she needs now to make a change in her life but has it arrived too little too late?

For now though, Hightown bows out with a pretty disappointing episode. Hopefully though things change in the weeks to come.