“Nashville” is back from the holiday break, and they have hit the ground running! This week’s episode seemed especially juicy to this writer (or perhaps it was because I’ve been in new episode withdrawal for the last few weeks).
Juliette eloped with her chaste football player beau just so she can have sex with him. His parents, Brock and Deb, aren’t too happy and insist on a proper church wedding. Juliette tries to dodge out of it using her impending tour with Rayna, but Deb pushes up the wedding to accommodate her busy schedule. As you can imagine, the issue of inviting her mom comes up, and as Sean’s mom is as manipulative as Juliette, she uses that bit of knowledge against her.
Gunnar and Scarlett are in that awkward phase where he confesses his love to her and she doesn’t quite reject him but doesn’t run into his arms either. It’s a big strain on their professional writing relationship.
Meanwhile, Avery has the daunting task to tell his bandmates that he’s signing with Dominic as a solo artist and leaving them all behind. Accused of being a fame whore (and rightly so), his friends turn their backs on him just as he’s done to them. Feeling particularly alone, he goes over to return his house keys to Scarlett and ends up hooking up with her instead. When she finds out that he’s dumped his lifelong friends for a record deal, she tosses him out of her bed and out of the house.
Rayna has troubles of her own with her husband and her dad. She wants out of Nashville with all that’s going on with the political campaign and the scandal with Peggy in the hospital. When she threatens to take the kids out of school and on tour with her, Lamar gets wind of it and threatens to tell her oldest daughter, Maddie, who her real dad is. What?! Real dad? I guess we can assume her real dad is Deacon.
Deacon, no longer with Rayna’s band, is now a member of the Revel Kings, but he doesn’t seem to be happy. Even with a hot female reporter (with whom Deacon’s had a past relationship) writing a feature about him, he seems to be out of sorts and just not used to the lifestyle of being part of a rock band.
A pissed Scarlett runs into JT, Avery’s former bandmate, and offers to front the band for one night so they don’t have to cancel the gig. Fueled by her anger, she lets her hair down and shakes her groove thing on stage. We get to see a different side of Scarlett as she sings the band’s “Twist of Barbwire.”
JT asks her to join the band permanently, but she eventually declines because she realizes she likes singing her own songs. It’s this realization that brings her back to Gunnar, and they settle back into their writing relationship.
Juliette, resplendent in her wedding dress, receives Sean’s grandmother’s necklace to wear for the wedding. With the necklace on, she heads to the church — so we think — but we find the chauffeur has brought her to the airport instead. She leaves the necklace behind and with it, Sean, as she boards the plane for her tour.
The song to download this week is the aforementioned “Twist of Barbwire.” The other song from this week’s episode, “Change Your Mind” featuring Clare Bowen along with Sam Palladio, is also a great song, but I found “Twist” the better of the two.
As Juliette is already married to Sean, how does her runaway status affect their marriage?
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