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Nashville Recap: Girls And Boys Behaving Badly

Everyone makes terrible decisions this week! Where to even start:

Rayna

Teddy lets himself get talked into an Evil Plan hatched by Lamar to get Coleman pulled over on his way to a photo op to sign a “clean campaign” pledge. He’s fine with it when it’s just a traffic stop, but when Coleman ends up getting arrested for possession of the oxycontin that Deacon gave him in their last meeting, Teddy gets upset. Lamar makes him quake in his boots for daring to question him and he later lies very emphatically to Rayna that her father had nothing to do with it when she sees the arrest on the news. He may well go all in with this plan, as the person who’s been taking shady-looking photos of him with his fellow embezzler Peggy takes them straight to Coleman, who has about 1,000,000 new reasons to hate Teddy and looks like he wants revenge.

Juliette is hanging out at charity events in an attempt to rehabilitate her image, and meets a clean cut, animal loving, pro football player named Sean. Her PR flack encourages her to go to dinner with him, which turns into a private jet ride to South Beach (on which Sean reveals that he doesn’t drink AND that he plays guitar AND that he knows all of her songs) and a sober — for Sean — night out at a club. On the way out they get accosted by a paparazzo who gets a shot of Sean drunk on RAAAAAGE and threatens to sell it, so Juliette buys it off of the photog with the promise that he’ll be her first call the next ten times she goes out, and then agrees to spend a night in with Sean watching TV and making out like a normal person.

Avery thinks he’s super close to getting a really good opening act gig, which is fortunate because he is behind on rent and has to have Scarlett cover his share (oh, GIRL). While he doesn’t get booked for that particular band, he does get propositioned by an older, attractive booker named Marilyn, who is kind of insatiable sex monster who apparently signs young hot guys after they sex her up. Giving you a big side-eye for this, show. Avery is ambitious so he goes over to her house anyway, knowing what she wants from him, and they make out before he has second thoughts and goes home to Scarlett. Scarlett is wise to Marilyn’s ways though, and finds out that something happened which leads to her dumping Avery and moving into Deacon’s place. Deacon is about to have to eat so many casseroles.

Whew! It felt like this episode was doing quite a bit of set-up for a mid-season finale, which is not a drawback but did make for a very plot-heavy hour. I’m still deeply in love with the show, but I did not love that almost every storyline featured a man disabusing a lady of some kind of way of being — Rayna’s studio magic is conjured up by her male producer and a whole lot of alcohol, Juliette has to be taught how to have sober, clean fun by a sober, clean football player — but given how poorly the men behaved this week, I guess they’re not being let off the hook either. There’s a two-week break and then we’re back after Thanksgiving! See you then.

TAGS: Female Showrunners | Nashville

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