Hightown series premiere recap: Was Junior involved with Sherry’s murder?

The Hightown series premiere kicks off with Monica Raymund’s lady-loving, coke-sniffing, “law enforcement” member getting into heaps of trouble.

Former Chicago Fire star Monica Raymund is a much different character from Gabriella Dawson in the Hightown series premiere. Here, she plays a National Marine Fisheries Services agent named  Jackie Quiñones, who is an alcoholic, drug-used, lesbian.

She enjoys partying and one-night-stands as much as she likes dabbling in cocaine and whiskey. After a particularly adventurous evening, Jackie walks outside to pee and finds herself face-to-face with a waterlogged dead body washed up on the shores of the great and mighty “P-Town” or Provincetown, as it is formally known.

Let’s hit the rewind button for a moment to the Hightown series premiere’s cold open, in which meet two soon-to-be critical players in the story. Sherry Henry (Masha King) and Krista Collins (Crystal Lake Evans) are two friends sitting in a car somewhere dark and creepy on a rainy night. You know something terrible is going to happen even before Sherry whips out the fentanyl.

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Krista has to pee (sensing a theme of outdoor urination here) and leaves Sherry alone for a few minutes to do so. Sherry isn’t worried, she says she has a cop looking out for her (more on that later). But we quickly learn that Sherry should have been worried, very worried.

While Krista is emptying her bladder, Sherry is shot dead and shoved into the trunk of her car. Poor Krista is left crouched in the bushes, horrified by what she just witnessed.

Back to the present, Cape Cod Interagency Narcotics Unit Detective Ray Abruzzo (James Badge Dale) was the cop “looking out” for Sherry. She was his criminal informant.

He’s pissed when he finds out she’s dead because now he needs a new informant. The detective’s hunt for a new C.I. leads him to a stripper named Renee Segna (Riley Voelkel), who happens to the be the baby mama of Cape Cod’s opioid ring leader Frankie Cuevas (Amaury Nolasco).

Ray visits Renee at the club and tricks her into putting herself into a compromising position so he can have leverage over her. He wants to know everything she knows about Frankie’s operation, especially since Frankie is currently behind bars, meaning he couldn’t have killed Sherry. But that doesn’t mean Sherry wasn’t shot on Frankie’s orders. She was a “snitch,” after all.

The only thing Renee gives Ray is a generic description of a big, tall black guy she thinks could be capable of murder. It’s not much to go off of, but as Renee puts it, she doesn’t want to be a snitch and end up like Sherry.

Renee visits Frankie in prison, and he wants to know if any cops have been sniffing around. Ray and Frankie are not on the best of terms since, according to Ray, he’s the reason Frankie is behind bars. Surprisingly, Ray isn’t upset about the cops sniffing around Renee. He wants her to get close to Ray — keep your enemies closer and all that.

So how is Jackie’s storyline going to tie into all of this? Well, we’re getting to that.

Jackie’s crazy night resulting in finding a dead body doesn’t rattle her as much as you might expect (or so she pretends). She’s back in action the next day in celebration of the giant Pride Carnival event.

That night gets even wilder than the previous one as she hooks up with another girl who gives her cocaine, resulting in a terrifying car crash that leaves the mystery girl injured and in the hospital and Jackie in a jail cell. Don’t try to fondle your passenger and drive drunk, folks.

Well, Jackie could get charged with a felony DUI since she injured someone. The best way for her to potentially alleviate her sentence would be for her to get proactive and check herself into rehab. Luckily she has Ed, her work partner, in her corner. Not only does he bail her out of jail, but he sets her up at a nice-looking treatment center and drops her off.

Jackie is reluctant to get treatment since she doesn’t want to admit anything is wrong, but a no-nonsense therapist helps break through her hard exterior. By episode’s end, she is settled into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, which is a start. Except then the camera zooms in on the corkboard at the back of the room and guess who else attends this specific treatment center? Yep, Krista C.

One other key player we need to introduce is Junior McCarthy (Shane Harper). He is a lobster fisherman and friend of Jackie’s that spends a lot of time around bars. Like Jackie, Junior is an addict who gets his 90-day sober chip in the Hightown series premiere. At first, it seems like Junior might be a good role model for Jackie, until the final moments of the episode.

While cleaning up the fishing boat with his partner (dad?), Junior notices a familiar-looking fingernail on the deck. If you recall, Sherry was excited about her fancy new red-and-black manicure and guess what color the nail is? Yep. Junior quickly tosses it overboard, which isn’t sketchy at all!

Odds & Ends

• I don’t know that this will come back into play, but Sherry was found wearing a “LYLAS” — or Love You Like A Sister — necklace, Krista is wearing a matching one.

What did you think of the Hightown series premiere? Do you think Junior had something to do with Sherry’s murder? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

New episodes of Hightown air Sunday nights at 8/7c on Starz.