Pride Month 2020: Hightown's Jackie Quiñones is this year's queer icon despite her cheesy pick-up lines
On the surface, Starz's new series 'Hightown' is a show about drugs and murder in the quaint but proudly queer Provincetown of Cape Cod. Navigating her extremely complicated, dysfunctional, and flamboyant life amid the sinister chaos that plagues the town is marine and fisheries cop Jackie Quiñones -- a fully realized lesbian lead of the show. In ways more than one, the Latina alcoholic uses her cop and badge to lure tourist women, the synopsis had teased. And the initial four episodes released so far will tell you that Jackie's classic male cop tropes also feature incidents of partying too hard and drunk driving arrests. Then why is Jackie the queer icon of 2020, you may ask? Two things: Monica Raymund as the lead; and despite asserting her sexuality at every chance she gets, the plot of 'Hightown' is meaty enough to fit her like a glove. In that, Jackie's sexuality -- even though filled with graphic nudity and a lesbian sex scene in every episode -- is part of a far bigger story. At least that's what the buzzing fandom is touting.
Premiering right in time for Pride Month on May 17, Jackie's arc sees her exploring the nooks and crannies of her hometown as a townie marine cop with instincts sharp as a veteran's. Her life filled with drugs and alcohol is dragged into murderous madness when she takes a hangover stroll along the beach where she lives. She finds a body washed up ashore, and the bullet wound to the head reveals she is a victim of the town's heroin epidemic. The case falls under the jurisdiction of detective Ray Abruzzo (James Badge Dale) and Jackie's increasing curiosity that drives her to personally pursue the case impresses him enough to ask her to professionally get involved. Ray suspects the town's resident drug lord Frankie Cuevas (Amaury Nolasco), but he is incarcerated, so he has to be traced through his right-hand man Osito.
So Ray loops in Frankie's baby-mama and local stripper Renee Segna aka Candy (Riley Voelkel), blackmailing her at first, but gradually developing a romantic interest in her. Meanwhile, Jackie's closest friend and local fisherman Junior McCarthy (Shane Harper) is secretly doing Osito's dirty work -- dumping the dead bodies of people he kills. Thus is woven a complex plot of twists, deceit, and misery where Jackie is also trying to cling on to sobriety after her alcoholism lands a hook-up straight into the emergency room. Amid all the drugs and murder, Jackie works on solving the murder case by digging up the only living witness of the crime, and as Raymund told Advocate, "It becomes more about the murder investigation and my recovery [as Jackie] than it is about me being a lesbian."
Apart from an ever twisting plot, Jackie also manages to come up with catchy quips every now and then, such as "He’s barking up the wrong lesbian," and "Don't at me, bruh" whenever the prospect of male attention arises. Her pick up line specialty sees her say, "I saw a dead body today," and, "I'm a cop" pretty much as often as she mentions she is openly lesbian. Perhaps that's why it has caught on to an intense cult-level fanbase that buzzes on social media every time Raymund, a Dominican herself, just simply exists as Jackie on the screen. As a fan duly enthused on Twitter, "Wait, there’s a show called #Hightown where the lead role is a lesbian Latina, played by an actual Latina (half Dominican) who is openly bisexual, and the show is not JUST about her sexuality but has an actual fu**king plot?!?!"
Another fan broke down this niche obsession viewers can find in 'Hightown', where Jackie's arc represents both the extreme highs and lows of an LGBTQIA++ community without queerbaiting, or teasing her sexuality. Jackie is a multifaceted character as the episodes proceed and in the end, people are just happy to see her striving for a more peaceful life. The show also doesn't portray Jackie as a damsel; the way she fronts of men twice her size and armed with an arsenal is pretty charismatic too, noting which a fan wrote: "Please check out @HightownSTARZ on @STARZ or on @StanAustralia It highlights both the light and the dark within our #lgbtq community. The characters are flawed but fighting to be better, like all of us. It's not all rainbows."
Noting the work Raymund will be doing, a fan had shared ahead of the release how "It will be interesting to see Monica Raymund play a lesbian in #Hightown. On #NBCChicagoFire she was straight and on #TheGoodWife she was pretending not to be bisexual bc she was dating a guy but interested (in) Kalinda Sharma." And if the in-general buzz surrounding the show has to be believed, they will have you convinced there hasn't been a more iconic 'lesbian queen' on television than Jackie - the ever-soaring level of popularity reached in less than a month's time.
If you haven't checked out yet, catch Jackie on 'Hightown' every Sunday, at 8 pm, only on Starz.