Hightown – Season 2 Episode 8 “Houston, We Have a Problem” Recap & Review

Houston, We Have a Problem

Episode 8 of Hightown Season 2 begin with Jackie waking up on a horrible comedown. She’s at Ray’s and it doesn’t take long for the subject of Daisy to be brought up. Given she’s missing, Jackie is adamant on finding her no matter what. She wants to throw herself into her work; ignoring the blistering pain of slipping back into the throngs of addiction again.

Meanwhile, several gunshots piece the air as Renee is rattled. Outside in the garden, Frankie begins showing Frankie Jr (who’s 5) how to shoot. Renee is shocked but for Frankie, his paranoia is getting worse. He wants to learn how to defend himself and believes that teaching this 5 year old how to fire a gun is the way to do it. Whoever killed Jorge is coming for him next, at least that’s what Frankie believes anyway.

Naturally, Frankie goes on the hunt to find the weak link in the chain. He visits Osito, who’s not best pleased that he has a new physio as Janelle is gone. Frankie accuses him of killing Jorge. Osito scoffs and plays it straight, admitting he’s not responsible but if it was him, he’d have sent a note alongside the body if it was.

Char next receives a visit from Frankie. He’s going to start driving her around, unsure whether she could be connected to all this.

Frankie isn’t the only one investigating though, Jackie continues to try and find Daisy. After talking to Daisy’s daughter, Jackie is more sure than ever that she’s dead.

Jackie feeds this news back to Ray, who quickly learns that he’s been fooling around with Renee. However, Renee’s intel is solid, with a meet at 11am the following day for the private jet. Jackie sees this as a big win and hastily visits Leslie that night to let her know. After some convincing, she agrees to set up an operation.

On their stakeout the following day, Jackie apologizes to Leslie. Leslie though admits she feels awful regarding what happened but after catching Frankie, suggests they go for a drink together to bury the hatchet. When Frankie picks up Char, he avoids the airport altogether and switches up the operation.

When Frankie heads home we find out why. He found the tracker under Renee’s car. He knows the police are after him and he’s going to do everything he can to try and evade them.

That night, Renee and Ray wind up taking, with Jackie jumping in to the call. Renee claims she doesn’t know anything about Daisy but given Ray forced her to join him on the pretense that she does, it causes everything to blow up in a big way.

Jackie heads straight over to Alan’s place, but her erratic attitude and relying solely on tips from Ray makes Alan begin questioning how sober she actually is. In fact, he’s going to start conducting urine tests on her every week to make sure she’s sober. But of course, she hasn’t been.

When Jackie heads home, Frankie is there waiting for her. He’s not alone either, but this is a warning shot – especially when he tells Jackie that he’ll see her soon.

The Episode Review

Hightown returns with another dose of drama this week, as all our characters continue to tumble down the proverbial rabbit hole. There’s a lot of contrivances with this show but the biggest by far is how Jackie has been handled. After flying off the deep end last episode, she just gets straight back into working again. That’s not how addiction works. Given she was smoking crack, which is known to be highly addictive, she’s not exhibited any signs of relapsing. At least not yet anyway. If there’s no repercussion for her flying off the deep-end then that really will be a disappointment.

The situation is really starting to heat up now though, and everything looks set for a dramatic final two episodes to the season. While this has been an improvement over season 1, it’s still not great when it comes to character development. The case itself also doesn’t feel that intense, which is strange given how many shocking twists there were during the midway point.

Will Frankie get his comeuppance or will the gang find him slip through their fingers once more? We’ll have to wait and see!