Nashville - Recap: Appearances Can Be Deceiving
Recap and review of Nashville - Season 2 Episode 3 - I Don't Wanna Talk About It:
Oh, Nashville. What am I to do with you? For every confidence-inspiring episode like last week's stellar hour, there are episodes like "I Don't Wanna Talk About It," which, ironically, I don't actually feel like talking about. This isn't because it was a bad episode in and of itself. In many ways, it was a perfectly acceptable, if even occasionally fun, hour of television. But where it went wrong was in how it undid many of the interesting story directions from last week, opting instead to place our central protagonists on a trite, cliche path of bad decision-making and soap opera excess. It's kind of wrong to judge an episode based on the direction it sets the storylines on, but it's hard to feel all that comfortable with the direction they're headed, as the Juliette storyline, in particular, feels like a retread from last season. In short, the show is better than having to repeat itself. I know because I'm an unabashed fan. I've seen the show at its best, and last week was much closer to that plateau than this.
On the plus side, the series keeps its storyline firmly ensconced within the machinery of the music industry, as Rayna (Connie Britton) looks to get out of her Edgehill contract by finally completing the album she began working on last season. To this end, Rayna looks to bring Liam (Michiel Huisman) back into the fold to help produce the album, feeling that he was the mastermind behind some of her most inspired work in years. However, Liam is still bitter that she stood him up at the airport last season to go declare her love for Deacon (Charles Esten), so we get a perfunctory storyline in which Rayna does her best to get Liam to agree to help her finish what they started.
Thankfully, this conflict is resolved relatively quickly, as Rayna and Liam not only end up making up, they wind up in bed together. Free of the strains of Deacon and Teddy (Eric Close), Rayna is inspired to do whatever the hell she feels like, and if that means sleeping with Liam and blowing off new Edgehill president Jeff Fordham (Oliver Hudson) when he asks her to perform at a “stockholder showcase” for the label, that's exactly what she's going to do. However, there is another motivation behind refusing to perform at the showcase, other than simply sticking it to Fordham: Rayna has lost her voice due to the intubation from her long hospital stay. Britton does the best she can with the material, but the whole Liam relationship feels like a retread, and not even a terribly interesting one, as I don't really feel that the pairing has much chemistry. I'd argue she actually has more chemistry with Hudson's character, Jeff Fordham, and it wouldn't surprise me if that were the direction the show was actually headed in down the line. As long as the series takes a long break before even broaching the subject of Rayna and Deacon again, I'll be thankful. I know we're probably going to get there eventually, but the longer the show prolongs the separation, the more meaningful it will be if/when they get back together. And really, it just doesn't make sense from a character perspective to have Rayna even consider Deacon right now anyway, so this might be as good a direction as any for the character. I suppose we'll see.
Credit: ABC
But I'm not sure the direction for Juliette (Hayden Panettiere) will prove to be any better than it ended up being last season when she got herself into situations as similarly problematic as tonight's situation. Juliette performs at a birthday party for the wife of a man who just happens to be the son of the extremely wealthy and influential Wentworth family. The man, Charlie, comes across as the perfect husband to his wife, Olivia, on whom he has no problems spending loads of money, having shelled out a cool million to get Juliette to appear. But appearances are deceiving, and it's a theme that carries throughout the episode. When Charlie mistakes Avery (Jonathan Jackson) for Juliette's boyfriend, she adamantly states that he's simply the hired help and nothing more, a line which Avery overhears. He confronts Juliette about the way she treats people, going as far as to accuse her of purposely going out of her way to remain unattached, unavailable, and emotionally unreachable.
Unable to hear the truth, Juliette fires Avery, essentially undoing the encouraging friendship they've been slowly building over the last two weeks. Then, as if that wasn't bad enough, Juliette ends up succumbing to the advances of Charlie, who plays the role of the loving husband only to prove himself to be as lecherous as all the other men in Juliette's life. It's a complete and total regression for the character, who had made such progress since the end of last season. Sure, it could be undone in the span of a week or two, but it begs the question of why this was a storyline that even needed to be done in the first place, unless the idea is to stall for time as we build to Juliette and Avery getting together. And even then, there have to be better ways of going about this path.
Credit: ABC
The show, however, does do a better job in further individualizing Scarlett (Clare Bowen), who gets a complete makeover for her performance at the stockholder showcase. Her performance is a terrific number of a song called "Waiting On A Broken Heart," and it's the best tune of the season so far, as it's a very smoky, sultry song that paints Scarlett in an entirely new light. Yet while she cautiously navigates the ins-and-outs of the music business, she still ends up having awkward confrontations with Gunnar (Sam Palladio), who is more than a little jealous to be in the crowd watching Scarlett and Will (Chris Carmack) getting to perform, instead of being up there himself, even if he is comforted by flirtations with Scarlett's best friend Zoey (Chaley Rose). It's particularly painful in the case of Will, as Gunnar can only stand by and watch as his best friend sings a song he wrote and sold to Edgehill as part of the publishing deal from last season. I don't think it's a coincidence that the in-progress version of "What If I Was Willing" performed by Gunnar is better than the finished product performed by Will, as the series seems to suggest that Will may have the look and the charisma of a star, but he doesn't have the passion or soul of a real musician the way Gunnar does. Once again, appearances continue to deceive.
Credit: ABC
This is a theme carried over into the episode's best storyline, as Deacon struggles to come to grips with his alcoholism and the destructive role he's had in the lives of his loved ones. Coleman (Robert Wisdom) accompanies Deacon to an A.A. meeting where he encourages him to confront the complicated feelings he has about his own alcoholic father. Deacon, however, resists confronting the comparison, and instead seeks out Teddy to tell him that he won't try to interfere in Maddie's life, since he doesn't want to ruin hers the way his own father ruined his. Yet Teddy says Deacon has a responsibility to Maddie (Lennon Stella), whether either of them like it or not. It's too late to go back, since Maddie knows the truth about her parentage. And so Deacon decides to make an honest attempt at overcoming his father issues, going back to the A.A. meeting with Coleman and recounting a story of a particularly traumatic family dinner from his childhood, in which his drunken father beat his mother and terrorized the family.
Charles Esten is outstanding here, taking an expository monologue and transforming it into something deeper and more cutting. The pain on his face is apparent even without the tears, yet by the end of the speech, it's possible to see the beginnings of healing in him. Of course, with that healing comes the potential for more damage: after coming to the realization that he needs help for the pain in his hand, he accepts his doctor's offer of painkillers. Could Deacon simply be trading one vice for another? I sure as hell hope not, because Deacon the Addict is far too exhausting a storyline for the show to keep relying on. There needs to be change or growth in some substantial fashion. There needs to be real progress, and not just the illusion of progress, even if the central theme of the hour is deception.
On that latter point, we have Peggy (Kimberly Williams-Paisley) continuing her long con on Teddy, feigning a pregnancy. She says she expects the child will be a boy, and she intends to name him "Theodore," after his father. While Teddy still doesn't seem to want to be involved in the child's life, he slowly softens to the idea once it becomes apparent that Deacon, whether he wants to or not, presents a real threat to his fatherly role with Maddie. He's also vulnerable due to he and Rayna having finalized their divorce. Though Peggy and Teddy end up in a liplock by the end of the episode, it's hard to imagine that this storyline is headed anywhere substantial, although the soap opera potential of this plot is through the roof, so it should at least be interesting for that reason.
Credit: ABC
Ultimately, "I Don't Wanna Talk About It" is a mixed bag of missed opportunities to advance the story in encouraging ways. We get more soap opera melodrama in lieu of substantive conflict and character development, and what's most frustrating is that the episode ends up reverting Juliette to her old, destructive ways. Maybe that's the point, but even then, it's a point that was already made last year. Nashville needs to look ahead to the future now. Rayna sleeping with Liam, and Juliette having sex with a married man are all interesting enough, I guess, but they don't really do anything for the world this show has created, other than get us farther away from it. Simply put, there are far more interesting paths for the series to take than these.