Nashville - Recap: Taking Care of Business

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The focus on the industry, relative to the characters, is immediately made apparent from the opening. We learn that Edgehill Records has been taken over by a wealthy businessman named Jeff Fordham (Oliver Hudson), who presents a magnanimous front to Rayna (Connie Britton) and Juliette (Hayden Panettiere), but immediately sets about turning their world upside down. Rayna is still trying to get her life and career back on track after nearly dying in the car accident, which leaves her open to Fordham's business advances. However, Fordham wants nothing more than to get access to Rayna's back catalog, in addition to poaching Will (Chris Carmack) from Highway 65, Rayna's label. Fordham believes that Will is the next big thing, and has no faith in Rayna's ability to help Will realize his full potential. His lack of faith also extends to Juliette, as he recommends that she return to her pop roots to sell more records. Of course, ever the businesswoman, Juliette decides that she can kickstart her sales by taking a documentary film crew for CMT back to the trailer park in which she was raised. In essence, Juliette's big plan for solving her career plight is to exploit her own past. Avery (Jonathan Jackson) is skeptical, but Juliette is certain she knows what she's doing.

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Of course, it naturally turns out that Juliette isn't as savvy at this as she expected, as she apparently wasn't prepared to actually have to confront her past in any realistic sense once the plane landed. She ends up running into an old family friend, a neighbor who'd helped raise her on the days when her mother was either working or too wrecked to care for young Juliette herself. This unexpected confrontation with the neighbor, who's made a quilt for Juliette out of baby pictures (tearfully adding that she's followed Juliette her entire career), prompts Juliette to open up about her past. She reveals the entire sordid history of her family, including the death of her father, a story even people in her inner circle ididn't seem to know about, and Panettiere plays the scene with such a wounded sensibility that it's both difficult to watch yet hard to look away. It's some of her best work of the series, to see the vulnerability of someone so forthrightly committed to the facade she portrays to the world. This is a girl who doesn't mind exploiting the fact that she came from nothing, even while she continues to try her damndest to forget that these were her beginnings. When Avery offers his sympathy, Juliette wipes away her tears and states that it was all an act to help sell singles. But we all know better, and it's sad, in many ways, that Juliette isn't able to acknowledge her emotions to others in any meaningful respect.

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Ultimately, baring her soul to sell digital downloads only works in the short term. Though her new single immediately leaps to #1 on iTunes, Juliette is quickly unseated by the latest hot act in country music, a runner up in a reality singing competition who comes across as Cassadee Pope by way of Danielle Bradbery. Even more unpleasant for Juliette, she learns this at the same music industry function where, only moments earlier, she'd learned her own single had taken the top spot. And the awkwardness doesn't stop there, as the girl in question, Layla Grant, is there to perform one of the songs that helped her make it to the finale in The Voice-like competition, a "Juliette Barnes classic." Panettiere is great here, between the spit-take and the barely-restrained eye rolls of having to put up with this girl trying to take her spot, as Juliette doesn't really buy the "fresh off the bus" act. It's a great scene made all the better by Scarlett (Clare Bowen) sharing in Juliette's exasperation with this pop-country wannabe. But Scarlett has much bigger fish to fry than a hot new country singer.

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Scarlett is at the end of her wits with Deacon (Charles Esten), who continues to live in a perpetual state of self-pity. His hand injury from the accident has him in a cast, and in desperate need of physical therapy. However, Deacon continues to refuse to see a doctor, and even when Scarlett is able to convince him to visit one, he refuses to undergo the necessary therapy, opting instead to simply allow his career to drain away, presumably as some sort of penance for causing such damage to Rayna. But Scarlett has had it with Deacon and his crappy attitude, and it leads to some of the best moments the Scarlett character has ever had to work with, in particularly one scene in which she confronts her uncle about his self-defeating attitude. She tells him that he spent all this time trying to avoid becoming like his abusive, alcoholic father, yet here he is, acting like a coward, yet he doesn't even have his father's excuse of being drunk. Her no-nonsense speech prompts Deacon to call Rayna to try and receive some measure of closure on their relationship. They meet up at the site of the crash, where a memorial has been set up (to which Rayna glibly remarks that it's almost like their fans expected them to die). There, Deacon offers his apologies for how things went between them, with Rayna adding that while they gave their romance a try, they just can't work as a couple. Rayna suggests that perhaps the accident is simply the cue that they should try and move on with their lives, and she returns Deacon's ring. Faced with giving up or soldiering on, Deacon decides to saw off his cast and begin working on regaining strength in his arm by practicing his guitar.

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What's heartening about these stories are in how the main female cast are in no way beholden to their male counterparts any longer. Not only does Rayna officially make her break from Deacon, she puts an end to the arrangement she has with Teddy (Eric Close), in which they pretty much "play house" for the benefit of the girls. Like she declared last week, Rayna is looking ahead without letting the past rule her life anymore, and it's an ideology that extends to Scarlett, who seems somewhat exasperated with Gunnar (Sam Palladio), who torched her couch in the process of getting over her. Gunnar also isn't half the songwriter he used to be without Scarlett, and even though he receives some help from her best friend, Zoey, his new music doesn't exactly measure up to his old stuff. Like Rayna, Scarlett is no longer defined in relation to the men in her life, ditto Juliette, who affirms her friendship with Avery, but remains single nonetheless. All three women are focusing on their careers, and it's heartening to see a major network show remove itself a bit from the romantic-centricity of a standard primetime soap. Even Maddie (Lennon Stella) gets a chance to show that she won't be defined by who her father is/isn't, comforting Daphne (Maisy Stella) by telling her that, from here on out, it's just the two of them. It's an effective bit of storytelling, far more effective than the episode's one dud, in which Will struggles to remain closeted despite signing with Edgehill, whose marketing/PR rep is one of his former flames. It's not a bad story per se, but it just isn't up to snuff with the other considerable material in the episode (seriously, Juliette on Conan!).

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"Never No More" is a uniformly solid episode of Nashville, and among the best of the series (I'd rank it right up there with the series pilot). If the show continues to find a way to intertwine the character growth with the incisive look into the country music business, the show has a real shot at rising above the standard primetime soap label.