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S04.E02: 'Til The Pain Outwears The Shame

ElectricBoogaloo

By ElectricBoogaloo
in Nashville [V]

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Sandman

Sandman

Every time Avery is on screen, I start yelling at my TV, Lucky, wash your hair.

 

Maybe if we all yelled at our TVs simultaneously, the message might get through? I'm willing to give anything a shot, at this point.

 

I don't think there is a single scripted drama on television that has less respect for the audience's intelligence than Nashville.

 

While Ryan Murphy lives, this can never be true.

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Soup333

Soup333

Y'all. I love Avery's hair. What's wrong with me? 

 

I'm not feeling Scarlett's though, which is strange because I always thought I wanted it to be tamed. Now that it is, I'm kinda meh. 

 

I have faith in Rayna that she will get her business-minded shit together and turn HWY65 into the label she wanted it to be oh so long ago. 

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Sandman

Sandman

I'm really surprised the first question out of Beverly's mouth when she woke up wasn't "Where's my hair?" Her later apologizing to Scarlett for being such a shitty mom pretty much sealed her death for me.

 

I could be convinced that Beverly's wig was evil, and making her a bad mother. It comes off, and she's a changed woman!

 

For as long as I've been watching, the show has had a wide streak of sexism, particularly in the ways in which the "empowerment" of its women is in name only -- talked about, but directly contradicted by what's shown onscreen.

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Emily Thrace

Emily Thrace

I still think they are going for postpartum depression with this.

The longer this goes on the more it looks like Bi-polar to me. Jolene(Juliette's Mom) was diagnosed bi-polar and the whole melt down Juliette had on her tour in first season looks a lot like a manic episode looking back. Not to mention PPD is partly a hormonal issue so Juliette should be getting better by now. Even without any underlying condition this clearly about Juliettte issues with her mother as much as anything else. Whatever the case Juliette is headed for a major  breakdown.

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MisterS

MisterS

(edited)

I still think the problem with Nashville is too many stories and characters that don't join up. Layla would never have been left on her own to play the Bluebird by a nurturing label and the show is clearly trying to show Rayna as a nurturing label head if nothing else. But they want to show that Layla is isolated so they do it by making Rayna's business look even more ridiculous by not managing to get a single member of staff to attend. Ditto Jeff because for whatever reason they need him with Juliette. It's just bad writing/story planning if you ask me.

The same thing when they suddenly make the doctor dismissive about Scarlet's music career. This was completely unprecedented and I assume intended to make Gunnar appear to be the man who knows her best/cares about her happiness but they could better do this by keeping the doctor nice, making Gunnar nice to Scarlet (which he isn't) and giving her a proper dilemma. It's such a tired old storyline.

I hate the Juliette and Avery story. I don't think the writers are giving much consideration to the reasons for Juliette's behaviour; they just want to keep J and A apart and miserable. Juliette was always damaged but she was fun. Avery seems really underdeveloped as a character these days. I preferred him when he was horrible.

And what gives with Luke dropping Will? That just seems so unrealistic to me, not that we can expect anything remotely like realism from Nashville. But has there been any indication of a drop in record sales because Will came out? If not then Luke is a nutcase and an irrational homophobe. Oh no, wait! He's just badly written and in a badly handled storyline.

I used to watch for Juliette, Deacon and Rayna and now I'm hanging on by a thread for D/R only and they are still adorable - but it looks like they are about to **** that up too.

On a brighter note, Rayna's hair is much better this season, possibly as a barometer of her personal happiness, which looks like it won't last so they'll probably get the curlers out again shortly.

Edited by MisterS
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Kathemy

Kathemy

(edited)

Well...

 

Nashville is like a classic African dictatorship. Think Zaïre. They love to double down on their mistakes.

 

As I recall, when Mobutu took power in the late sixties, he severed all ties to the former colonial powers and took care to underline the country’s proud African ancestry. A step on the way was renaming the country from Congo to Zaïre, which they believed to be an African name of the Congo river.

 

However, people soon found out that the name was actually Portuguese-derived, but naturally, Mobutu and his inner circle refused to admit their mistake. Instead, now everything was to be called Zaïre. The national currency became Zaïre. The airport was renamed to Zaïre airport. Most national companies were renamed to something with Zaïre. They even encouraged the citizens to name their children Zaïre.

 

Ever since the start of season two, the serious journalists and the entire fandom have been vocal and unison in their criticism. We don’t want our favorite characters assassinated in order to cover up the show’s mistakes. We didn’t want Deacon crashing a car in order to distract us from Rayna lying about his child’s origin for fifteen years. We didn’t want extra after extra after extra being added as increasingly nonsensical roadblocks between the characters. We didn’t want Gunnar behaving like an idiot just to stall the S/G romance. We didn’t want the show retconning his brother raping his ex-girlfriend just so we would feel sorry for her. We didn’t want Layla Grant. God, did we not want Layla Grant.

 

Now, over the next episodes we will probably get the following:

 

  • Deacon and Rayna being increasingly estranged over his guilt over his sister’s death.
  • Avery and Juliette heading into divorce territory and Avery most likely getting a new placeholder love interest
  • Gunnar getting a fourth placeholder love interest to shield him from Scarlett
  • Layla’s screentime multiplying like a cancer with the character flip-flopping between victim, hero and villain from episode to episode

 

The absurd thing is that most people have already given up and the show hasn’t even really gotten started alienating us.

 

The show opened with a 1.2 rating following that up with a 1.1 which represented a series low. As we are heading into midseason territory we will probably see 0.x numbers which is essentially the death knell of the series.

 

All that remains to be seen at this moment is whether they will even come back from the midseason break or if the network decides to pull it and burn the episodes over the summer. Either way, unless the syndication deal calls for 100 episodes this show is definitely getting cancelled.

Edited by Telepath
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Sandman

Sandman

And Gunnar's traumatizing hairdon't drove Scarlett away, turned Doctor Latte into a drizzly douchenozzle, and flatlined Beverly's monitor!

Maybe we shouldn't criticize, in case Callie "Zaïre" Khouri gets wind of it?

Good grief! I just realized that the actor playing Cole (who dumps Rayna and doesn't want his picture taken with Will) is Joshua (Lt. Corwin) Cox! And Noel the Agent is married to Melissa (Jennifer Rose Horton) Reeves. Huh.

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CountryGirl

CountryGirl

Dirty lurker chiming in with some random thoughts.

 

This Juliette is not the one who married Avery and held and sang her newborn baby moments after giving birth. I want that Juliette back.

 

Avery needs to re-join The Exes, but not until he and Gunnar visit a barber with some actual talent.

 

I am happier than I should be to see OH's sleazebag Jeff.

 

I liked Layla's song - Rayna needs to get her perfectly-coiffed head out of her ass and realize she's about to lose Layla and then she'll be left with does-as-he-and-team-please Keene. Talk about putting all of H65's eggs in one shaky basket.

 

Loved Gunnar's smackdown of boring Dr. Caleb (who made me want to punch him in his pearly whites when he disparaged artists), even though Gunnar does grate. The fact that Bev likes Caleb better (which, what do YOU know, coma lady?) does not earn him any points.

 

Speaking of Bev, is it wrong that I spent the better part of the episode waiting for the proverbial scene where someone, likely chattering chipmunk Scarlett, is prattling on and Bev dies?

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Wilco

Wilco

So agree with what seems to be the majority view on this forum that this show is going really poorly in this season so far. So far, this season is making S3 look brilliant (and we all know it was not exactly stellar).

 

The only times I enjoyed this episode was when Rayna and Deacon had their tender & hot moments together and the brief reconciliation of Juliette/Avery. And based on what appears to be coming- once again the PTB are going to screw with them both/keep them apart.

.

Some of  you writing about these characters- Madam Magpie, Telepath, to name a couple- seem to have a lot more insight into the characters than the actual show writers.

 

So sick of these contrived plot devices, unnecessary characters, and poor/predictable storytelling. Why DOES Rayna make the same mistakes in business, and when can we stop with Juliette downward spiral?  They BETTER not have Reyna paired with this Keen and they need to get to Juliette's ultimate breakdown sooner. Surely they won't keep Juliette like this through episode 10 (winter finale)?

 

Does anybody know if there has been in country music or any other type of music where an artist had a successful label that actually launched other artists rather than being what they call a vanity label? I can only think of the Beatles and Apple records but then again, think that partly broke them up back in 1970.

 

Can't see this show lasting beyond this season- and haven't they already said that this season- there will be an even larger break in time from the winter finale?

 

And Avery, please do cut your hair.

 

 

 

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Sandman

Sandman

(edited)

Hey, CountryGirl, I think I might bracket everything Beverly says or does (uh, in watching reruns, now, I guess?) with "What do you know, coma lady?" from now on. Is that okay with you? Hee.

Edited by Sandman
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SailingBy

SailingBy

(edited)

Will tells him that he's going to form his own label exclusively for gay and lesbian artists (or those who are openly supportive) and he can go fuck himself.

 

Please! Not a third Nashville-based label founded, seemingly exclusively owned, and personally run, by country singers who clearly have no qualifications whatsoever for doing so, and who never seem to do any of the things that people heading real companies, of any kind, spend most of their working time doing. Let alone a record label based on such ghettoization.

 

I really only started watching this show again because I was interested in the Will storyline, and how they would deal with the fact that at at the end of season 3, they sort of painted themselves into the corner of trying to put on a convincing fictional portrayal of a situation that has never happened in the real world: a country music star, and major heartthrob with a huge female fanbase, coming out as gay. On the basis of these first two episodes, I have been far from impressed. But hey, it's Nashville. For all we know, a few episodes from now, Will may have been snatched up by some major label (so not Luke's or Rayna's cottage businesses), playing to huge enthousiastic audiences, and it will turn out that the country music audience was never really homophobic at all, it was all just an error of judgment by that newly arrived "expert" on the matter. We're clearly not dealing with anything even remotely related to reality anymore.

Edited by SailingBy
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limecoke

limecoke

(edited)
After Juliette's failed diaper change, she backs out of the bathroom while I'm all, "Wait! Wash your hands!"

So much this!  I was screaming at my TV - reminded me of the Poppy episode on Seinfeld.

 

Right after that, I found myself screaming, "It's called shampoo, Avery.  Look into it."

 

Speaking of hair. How many pounds of extensions are glued into Scarlett's hair.  The actress looks rather wee and that hair is wearing her.  But then the hair styling on this show has never been good.  

 

One last hair thought.  Just when you think Gunnar's hair cannot get stupider, it does.  I'm probably the only one who thinks this, but I like Caleb.  After this episode, I am 100% sure he will get chucked by Scarlett and her Hair and she'll go back to Gunnar and his Hair.  Why can't an aspiring country artist have a successful relationship with a non-music business person, I ask you?

 

I don't think there is a single scripted drama on television that has less respect for the audience's intelligence than Nashville.

You have crystalized my thoughts exactly.

 

On the good side:  Daphne had a short solo.

On the bad side:  Daphne is crushed by restroom mean girl chatter.

Edited by limecoke
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madam magpie

madam magpie

(edited)

What did Daphne overhear? I didn't watch, and it's not in the recap.

Two girls in the bathroom were basically talking trash about Teddy being in jail and saying Daphne and Maddie should be ashamed to show their faces at the talent show. Daphne overheard and was clearly upset, but in true Nashville fashion, that was dropped for the moment. She didn't go back and say anything to her mother or cry or anything. It will be revisited later when the writers need it, I'm sure.

Edited by madam magpie
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Kathemy

Kathemy

 

Speaking of hair. How many pounds of extensions are glued into Scarlett's hair.  The actress looks rather wee and that hair is wearing her.  But then the hair styling on this show has never been good. 

 

 

Nope, that's her real hair.

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amaranta

amaranta

Damn it!  Avery and Juliet used to be my happy place and my favorite part of Nashville.  What the hell are you doing?  If it's PPD, just show it and have them play it out already. And by that I mean have HP and JJ act this story together.  They are dangerously close to reaching a point of no return.  

 

And Rayna doesn't know what the hell she's doing when it comes to her label.

 

Stupid show.  

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TWP

TWP

I don't think there is a single scripted drama on television that has less respect for the audience's intelligence than Nashville.

 

You apparently don't watch Castle, where after 8 seasons, they've just started rehashing Season 1 all over again....

 

Hairwise, Scarlett is a millenial caricature of Dolly Parton. And I think they've done it on purpose.

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tennisgurl

tennisgurl

 

Damn it!  Avery and Juliet used to be my happy place and my favorite part of Nashville.  What the hell are you doing?  If it's PPD, just show it and have them play it out already. And by that I mean have HP and JJ act this story together.  They are dangerously close to reaching a point of no return.

It makes me so sad! Their cuteness and functional ways were my favorite part of the show! I just want them to have them acknowledge Juliette having PPD, so she can get some help and things can get better! Stop dragging this out!

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smiley13

smiley13

It makes me so sad! Their cuteness and functional ways were my favorite part of the show! I just want them to have them acknowledge Juliette having PPD, so she can get some help and things can get better! Stop dragging this out!

So PPD is supposed to make someone a drunk?  She had been shown in the past drinking sometimes and over imbibing a little, like when she slept with Jeff, but not like she has been since she ditched her family.

 

I think Juliette is an alcoholic, taking after dear ole Mom.

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Scout Finch

Scout Finch

(edited)

Not that it excuses Juliet, but why would Avery continue to stand there with a crying baby and not take her somewhere else?? Granted, to me the sound of a baby crying is second only to that of a leafblower or chainsaw, however, I think it would definitely make it more difficult for a performer to focus. It was also extremely inconsiderate to those in the audience. It didn't even occur to him that even though she had ear protection, maybe it wasn't completely helping and she was in pain?

Edited by Scout Finch
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Soup333

Soup333

I had the same thought about the baby. They definitely should have gotten a sitter. Way too much stimulation even with the headphones, which probably just annoyed her. No wonder she was crying. 

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KaveDweller

KaveDweller

I had the same thought about the baby. They definitely should have gotten a sitter. Way too much stimulation even with the headphones, which probably just annoyed her. No wonder she was crying. 

 

I didn't mind them bringing the baby, but Avery should have left the room when she was crying. First to take care of the baby, but also because of how annoying it would be for the other people there.  

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kassa

kassa

(edited)

They don't need a sitter, they need a nanny.  I think there was an early scene of Avery pooh-poohing the very notion, but it's unrealistic in their situation not to have ANY household help for a newborn, especially when Mom has a movie coming out (even had she tanked the album for a while).  They have the money -- there would have been no shame in having somebody take the occasional night shift and make themselves scarce any time Juliet and Avery wanted alone time with the baby, and take over when Juliet didn't want to be around the baby.  Which, given the PPD might have been a lot... but the baby would be safe, Juliet could have been reassured that when she wanted help, it was there for her, and Avery could have skipped the trip back to Bedford Falls, where apparently his parents thought he'd ditch a lucrative career as a producing/songwriting/national stadium-level touring guitarist in favor of... getting on with the local DPW or something.   

Edited by kassa
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Clanstarling

Clanstarling

(edited)

 Not to mention PPD is partly a hormonal issue so Juliette should be getting better by now.

It took me 9 months to get help for my PPD, maybe it just goes away for some people, but it sure as heck didn't for me. That being said, what Juliette is doing doesn't resemble anything I went through - except for cringing at screaming babies (I did that when I didn't have PPD). I understand it manifests differently in different women. I wouldn't trust Nashville to get the details right in any case.

 

Speaking of which, Deacon lifting Rayna up, only five weeks after having a liver transplant? No way. I had major abdominal surgery and was told not to lift anything (not even my 6 month old baby) for six weeks. Plus, you'd think the recovery period for a transplant recipient would be a little longer, and they'd frown on sleeping in hospital room recliners and around all kinds of germs. Don't most transplants take all sorts of meds to prevent rejection which would lower your resistance?

 

Count me as one of those who knew Bev was headed for the great beyond the moment she smiled at Rayna.

 

Gunnar continues to be terrible - and at one point he was my favorite character. That makes me sad.

 

Greg is attracted to young singers with broken wings, isn't he? Not in a skeevy way, but that's his specialty.

 

How did Rayna manage to not only get on the same flight, but the seat next to the guy she was stalking. I don't think airlines release that sort of information these days. Unless you can just pick wherever you want to sit in first class - I wouldn't know.

Edited by clanstarling
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kassa

kassa

Speaking of which, Deacon lifting Rayna up, only five weeks after having a liver transplant? No way.

 

 

Especially since earlier in the same episode she fussed at him for lifting a light chair by the bedside.  

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wendyg

wendyg

wilco: In folk music, arguably; probably also in traditional jazz - both music genres that are not of great interest to the music business and where many performers put out their own records. Folk Legacy, for example, one of the most respected labels in folk music, was founded by a husband-and-wife performing duo, Sandy and Caroline Paton, not really specifically to put out their *own* music, but that of traditional musicians whose songs they'd collected and that they admired. The label has put out albums of dozens, even hundreds, of folk artists over the last 50 years including the Patons themselves.

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fastiller

fastiller

After Juliette's failed diaper change, she backs out of the bathroom while I'm all, "Wait! Wash your hands!"

Yep! Me too.  More proof that Juliette's a terrible mother, or poor writing?  You make the call.

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kassa

kassa

I'm willing to give the PPD storyline some slack.  Brooke Shields' memoir of her PPD was really enlightening.  She had the help, so help wasn't the solution -- she really, really, really wanted to get away from that baby.   She WANTED to WANT to be with the baby, and she feared judgement, and wanted to do it right, and had looked forward to it so much, so she was desperately disappointed in herself... but her hormones had her in full panic flight mode at the thought of being alone with her.

 

Given Juliette's history, running out on the road and reverting to old behavior does make sense in that context.  It's AVERY's behavior that doesn't make sense to me, personally.  Avail yourself of the pile of money and resources that Juliette is in no way denying her daughter and do your suffering without that sweet little baby in your arms!  Divorce if you must, even.  But you don't have to play the martyr when the situation already sucks enough that everybody's on your side.  Way to spend the first weeks of her life, in that kind of emotional upheaval.

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Clemgo3165

Clemgo3165

So Avery's just supposed to hand her over to a nanny and move on? Seems to me that he's trying to be a father to his daughter, I think that's a good thing, especially since her Mom isn't around. Though I will say he should not have agreed to bring her to the record launch - no place for a baby - for the baby herself or for the listeners.

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fastiller

fastiller

 Though I will say he should not have agreed to bring her to the record launch - no place for a baby - for the baby herself or for the listeners.

True, but it did give us the great funny shot of the tiny, tiny baby with the entirely not tiny noise-cancelling headphones!

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Guest

Guest

And the ridiculous implication that when a performer's newborn baby comes on tour, it sits in the audience for every single show.   And the superstar has to go change its diaper in a public restroom between sets.   Because you know these stars don't have dressing rooms or buses or hotel rooms or anything, along with not having security personnel or nannies.  Juliette's personal assistant isn't even around anymore.  I guess PPD is all the more dramatic when you have no help at all.  

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LeGrandElephant

LeGrandElephant

How old is that baby supposed to be, three months maybe? I was yelling at the TV, why would anyone think it's a good idea to bring a three month old baby to a nighttime concert? Of course she started screaming, what do you expect? Why not take her out of there, or have someone to hand her off to? Would have made much more sense to leave the baby with a babysitter or nanny for the night, and have Avery go on the red carpet with Juliet.

If everyone is acting like Juliet has to change diapers and feed the baby while she's in the middle of performing, no wonder she doesn't want the baby along on tour. They need a middle ground - a nanny who takes care of the baby while both parents are working, and parents who can spend some time together and also time with the baby when they're not working. Obviously Juliet is more in the wrong for just repeatedly running off, but Avery also fired the nanny and refused to set up any kind of childcare, and acts like it's perfectly normal to cart a tiny baby around to nighttime adult concerts and let her scream while Juliet performs, which isn't helping.

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