Nashville: Butch It Up
That's what Will is supposed to do to protect his image now that a website is speculating that he's gay. Will wants to sue for slander. It is legally slanderous to speculate that someone's gay? Is that still a legitimate thing? I have a headache.
Juliette and Avery have conveniently decided to move in together "just for now" "for the baby." As you do.
Rayna's sister is back! I've missed Tandy. Rayna lies to Tandy that Deacon isn't speaking to her because of the Rolling Stone article. And the tour that Luke and Deacon were out on is finally over, thankfully, and they exchange some passive aggression before packing up and taking off.
Oh and Gunnar's kid's maternal grandparents showed up as his legal guardians. He goes and meets with an attorney who's going to set up a hearing. I know we're all on the edge of our seats.
Teddy is on a date with the escort he has a crush on. This time he's paying! He's just the mayor, what could go wrong?
Deacon and Scarlett are watching some sort of duck race. I don't understand what's going on, but I like ducks.
Sadie's ex (the actor looks soapy, do we know him from daytime?) shows up and is very menacing.
Apparently Luke's been chatting up Rayna's kids and getting them excited about boarding school. Rayna is less than pleased. They have a conversation about it and he apologizes. I'm sure that wraps up that storyline! All is well!
Layla is all ga-ga over Jeff Fordham, much to Will's chagrin. Well, Will doesn't know yet that it's Jeff but he does know Layla has a dude. Will and Layla are at some party with lots of liquor and thumping music, and just looking at it on my screen gives me a headache. Will spies Layla being all schmoopy with Jeff and assumes Jeff must be working some sort of angle on Will. Jeff classily claims that he's just basically keeping her warm so she won't expose Will's queermo tendencies, but she's taking it seriously so Will demands that Jeff makes sure Layla will go out on tour with him.
Scarlett is flitting about town being an insufferable manic pixie dream girl and has made Deacon sing karaoke with her because WHIMSICAL!
Jeff tries to shut Layla down, which you should really never do to a girl when she's that drunk. It cannot end well. Will watches all this go down and feels some sads. Some reporter chick hits on Will, complete with disrobing in front of him. Rejecting her is apparently is "proof" that he's gay, so naturally he sexes her up to prove otherwise. Since that's not a "tell" right there, Will!
Micah's grandparents and Gunnar have a big nasty argument and, naturally, Micah overhears the whole thing because this is television.
Teddy gets a text from his daughter from the rehearsal dinner while his prostitute is showering. Said escort wants him to put her on retainer for two nights a week, and Teddy realizes it's a little twisted that he has to pay someone to hang out with him while his ex-wife is getting remarried.
Layla walks in on Will with the other girl, so she is even sadder and expresses this with lots of booze and pills.
Gunnar gets a call from his attorney and, according to the lab results, Gunnar isn't Micah's father after all. D'oh!
Scarlett finds a very passed out Deacon on the floor of a hotel room and calls an ambulance. I'm sort of confused. He's surrounded by bottles, did he fall off the wagon? Because if he did, they didn't show it. They just showed him throwing a glass of water after seeing Luke and Rayna on a magazine cover. (Okay, they explained this later. He didn't drink.)
Avery proposes to Juliette!
Sadie's ex punches her right in the face!
Will finds Layla face down in a pool!
Jeff calls Teddy instead of 911!
Rayna calls off the wedding!
Luke kicks and throws a bunch of stuff!
Deacon has cirrhosis of the liver!
Micah is really Gunnar's nephew!
Avery and Juliette get married!
And that's the mid-season finale!
See you in February?
(I hate everything about prime time programming right now. This 6-8 week hiatus every show takes during the most depressing time of year is utterly unacceptable in every way.)
Now that Layla is dead (or just possibly dead), maybe someone will finally mention Brent. BRENT!
Posted by: C | December 15, 2014 at 12:27 PM
When did the hiatus become a thing? Everyone does it now including "mid-season finales" (which is totally an oxymoron) is it because of the USA shows because they seem to be the ones that started the trend.
Nashville has been difficult for me... I started with it and lost interest pretty fast because a) I'm not a country music fan and b) I find I have little patience for soaps that I didn't grow up with. But I think I also need something to really invest in and I didn't really have anything.
But then I binge watched over the weekend whilst unpacking (just moved into a house of my own so yay!) because I had seen the Juliette/Avery stuff and was like, okay, that might be worth investing in. Dammit. They are.
And I also laughed mightily anytime Scarlett was on due to all of the 'chipmunk' references from here.
Posted by: Dande | December 15, 2014 at 12:28 PM
Juliette and Avery make everything better or as I think of them Lucky Spencer and Sarah Roberts from when soaps were good,
Posted by: Helen | December 15, 2014 at 07:21 PM
Nashville has not been the best this season; Gunnar's nephew/son plot is the worst, Rayna is very out-of character and annoying, and poor Deacon needs some serious self-respect. But Juliette and Avery have been so cute recently, and this episode made me swoon although I wish they had more screen time (I assume the reason they haven't is due to Hayden's pregnancy). Also, I recognized Sadie's ex as Jay Wilkison, Riley Coulson from OLTL. I really liked him on there and hated how things ended for poor Riley, I was so excited to see him pop up!
Posted by: Bridget | December 17, 2014 at 05:11 PM
Yes! Thank you, Bridget, I knew the actor had that ABC Daytime face!
Posted by: Louise | December 17, 2014 at 09:21 PM
I loved Riley,and his story ended really badly. I knew I recognized that guy from somewhere. I will have to go back and watch again.
Posted by: annabel | December 18, 2014 at 06:21 PM
OMG! I thought that was Riley! And I denied it because I thought he was so adorbs on OLTL that I didn't want him to be playing a brutal, face-punching douche-canoe.
Posted by: Dande | December 19, 2014 at 05:42 PM
I don't think "Nashville" can rightly be called good TV, but Juliette and Avery are still lots of adorable to watch. Also, I keep telling myself that eventually we'll see Scarlett's horrible, violent death. That has to be coming, right?
Posted by: Sarah M | December 23, 2014 at 03:14 PM