Nashville - Season 1 Episode 3 - Recap and Review - Someday You'll Call My Name
Now that Nashville is off and running with its disparate plot threads, it can now begin the business of joining those threads together. "Someday You'll Call My Name" deepens several of its characters via the relationships that have molded them into the artists they are today. In particular, Rayna (Connie Britton) comes to understand just why her father, Lamar Wyatt (Powers Boothe), has been so stringently disapproving of Rayna's career choice. We also develop Juliette (Hayden Panettiere) by pitting her youthful, sexed-up image in contrast with her world worn, drugged-up mother. We also get some pretty substantial movement in the love triangle between Gunnar (Sam Palladio), Scarlett (Clare Bowen), and Avery (Jonathan Jackson). While it's still not the ideal arrangement for the show, with far too much time being refocused on the question of whether Deacon (Charles Esten) will choose Rayna or Juliette, it feels like we're actually going somewhere. Hopefully, the show eventually gets around to delivering on the premise of Juliette and Rayna going on tour, since Rayna's pride is kind of off-putting when pitted against the possibility of her family's financial ruin.
Juliette is still working Deacon over, trying to sell him on signing an exclusive touring deal. But there's a kernel of something more behind Juliette's motivations. After a customary roll in the hay, Juliette proposes they run off together, forget about the industry and the big tours, and just play music for its own sake. It seems like a tempting proposition for Deacon, but it's all too similar to his past with Rayna, in which a music partnership quickly blossomed into a romantic entanglement, until both Deacon and Rayna were synonymous with music in one another's lives (Rayna says exactly this to Deacon, and it could well be what gets him to stay with her, as opposed to signing with Juliette). Although, while things don't work out here for Juliette, we're given a deeper sense of her talents as a musician, owing to a mournful ballad called "Undermine," written about her destructive mother. It's easy to see how Juliette's upbringing informs so much of the facade she projects to the world, a high-gloss image of youthful, confident exuberance, of having one's life in order, and living on one's own terms. Juliette struggles to break ties with her past, and this is most apparent when her mother drops by her mansion to ask for money and a place to stay. Though Juliette turns her away, citing that there was once a time Juliette needed her mother every bit as much as her mother needs her now, her manager feels it would be best to keep the drug-addled woman close, rather than letting her roam the streets, creating one public relations disaster after another. She and Rayna have more in common than either of them want to admit, between the partnership with Deacon and the presence of an emotionally-abusive parent looming over their lives, even through the height of their success.
Credit: ABC
Rayna confronts her father upon learning from her sister, Tandy (Judith Hoag), that their mother had an affair with a singer-songwriter, which is the cause of Lamar's disapproval of Rayna's career choice. It's a pretty flimsy excuse for such a decades-long resentment, particularly since Lamar admits that he loves his daughter and genuinely cares about her happiness. Lamar stops just short of calling Rayna on endangering her family's financial well-being over a matter of pride, instead claiming that her pride keeps her from seeing what's best for her family, namely Teddy's mayoral candidacy. Rayna doesn't take kindly to the inference that she's somehow a bad wife and mother, and claims that if he was even half as abusive to her mother as he was to her, then her mother likely felt she had no other choice but to have an affair. Harsh. And not entirely untrue. And really, I probably harp on Rayna too much for her vanity, since she's more than earned the right to call her own shots, having provided for her family all these years while her husband notoriously crashed and burned on the credit union he once ran. I know I'd rather be following Rayna and her issues than following Teddy (Eric Close) and his managing of household expenses.
Rayna's storyline also gives rise to some of the most amusing aspects of the episode, particularly the performance of Rayna's two daughters, Maddie and Daphne (Lennon Stella and Maisy Stella), at their school talent show. It's telling that they opt to perform Juliette's "Telescope" instead of one of their mother's hits, and the lyrics ("You left your troubles in my head, in my head; You left your secrets in my bed, in my bed") skew a bit older than what the young girls probably should be singing, but it's such a winning moment in the episode, with Rayna beaming and seemingly starting to realize what she's been missing in her daughters' lives. It's also a much better version of the song than Juliette Barnes performs, an uptempo acoustic take with sweet, lilting vocals.
But the best story of the evening comes from the business with burgeoning songwriters Scarlett and Gunnar. Upon reporting to the studio to record their demo with Watty White (JD Souther), Scarlett has trouble acclimating to singing in a studio environment. She basically chokes, and it takes an encouraging talking-to from perpetually-jealous boyfriend Avery, to get her back in the studio. It's a strong story primarily because of the parallels between Gunnar and Scarlett's relationship and Rayna and Deacon's. There's a mirror effect going on here, with Rayna and Deacon representing what the future might hold for the young musicians, while Scarlett and Gunnar provide a window into a more innocent time in the lives of the veteran songwriting duo. There's also an undercurrent of manipulation, as it would appear that Avery's sudden supportive turn was motivated less by wanting to encourage his girlfriend, and more by his desire to kick-start his own career by meeting the legendary Watty White. It shows the values dissonance between Scarlett, who seems hesitant to eclipse her boyfriend's musical aspirations, and Avery, who has no problem throwing his girlfriend into alien territory if it means he can get closer to superstardom. Of course, this is only my interpretation, and the narrative will do a better job of clarifying as the weeks go on.
"Someday You'll Call My Name" is a great piece of character building, and provides some great music along the way, particularly the closing duet, "Fade Into You," which I've embedded below. It's as good as the premiere's "If I Didn't Know Better." All the music from Nashville is available on iTunes, and while it's as hit or miss as the setlist of any other music show on TV, there's still a pretty interesting mix of original songs and obscure covers. I'd definitely give it a look. As for now, Nashville seems to finally have gotten the ball rolling, even though Juliette knowingly shoplifting in full view of a group of iPhoning teen girls has to rank up there with "Giving Honey Boo Boo a second season" on the list of the worst decisions of the past few months. But then, we've gotten the rise (in Scarlett/Gunnar), so it wouldn't be a music industry tale without the fall.