Nashville Recap: The Marriage Plot

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Nashville Recap: The Marriage Plot

9:30 am, December 6th | by Sarah Devlin

I realize I’m a broken record by now (…get it?) but this show would be so much better if they let Scarlett be a real person instead of a swirly twirly wunderkind. It’s getting old. This week, Scarlett so impressed the bar with her (widely panned) rendition of “Ring Of Fire” that Hailey suggests she try out to sing for a band that’s in need of a lead, partly because she thinks Scarlett is actually good and partly because she’s sick of Gunnar mooning after her, as are we all.

Naturally Scarlett goes straight to Gunnar with this information, and he confronts Hailey, and she cops to wanting to get Scarlett a little further away from their relationship. They break up, he goes straight to the Bluebird Café and kisses Scarlett (who, we should remember, IS SINGLE) and…she freaks out and yells at him for kissing her and tells him she needs a break from their songwriting partnership as though she had no idea that he had feelings for her. Is this girl for real? Her meltdown couldn’t have come at a worse time, because one of their songs has been requested for “holding,” which I believe means someone wants to record it? We end with Scarlett, Gunnar and Hailey clinking glasses of champagne with matching sour expressions.

Also wearing a sour expression for much of the episode is Rayna, who finds out about the incriminating pictures (that Teddy tries to spin as completely innocent, rather than shady for reasons besides having an affair) that threaten to derail the mayoral campaign. She yells at Coleman for blackmailing her family with the pictures but they get leaked regardless. She has even more to be upset about when she finds that Lamar and Tandy knew about the situation all along and have been busily strategizing about how to manage the scandal within the context of the campaign. Eventually she gets on board enough to do a “stand by your man” press conference where she emphasizes that Teddy is “not a cheater,” but she makes it very clear that she’s doing it for their daughters and not out of any sense of obligation to him.

Juliette is still seeing her impossibly pure-hearted boyfriend, who does things like put her robe back on and knot the sash whens he tries to tempt him into some sexytimes. He asks her to meet his parents at church, which she agrees to do, and what follows is such a Taylor Swift-ian dream sequence of events that I would have been appalled if we had been asked to take it at face value. Sean’s little sister worships Juliette and Juliette is incredibly (and believably) sweet to her, agreeing to sing a song with the church choir, which she does with a ridiculously beatific expression on her face, and gifting her with a pair of pink cowboy boots she admired from one of Juliette’s music videos. She gets invited to dinner and joins the family in saying grace with this insane, heartbreaking “OMG this is what being part of a family is like” grin on her face. THEN, when everyone else has retired to the living room and Juliette is helping Sean’s mom clear the table, Mom is like “look, I know your mom’s a drug addict and you’re a shoplifter, good luck ever getting into this family.”

Devastating, right? And what does Juliette do with this information? First she yells at Deacon for checking on her mother in rehab, seeming to blame her past with her mom for her inability to move forward with Sean and with her own life and career. (She also encourages him to stop hanging around Nashville fixing everyone else’s problems and to take a gig touring with the (newly sober) Revel Kings, and when Rayna tells him he should go he seems to agree.) THEN she decorates her pool’s deck with candles and flowers, puts on her prettiest dress, and proposes to Sean. We don’t get to see his answer until January, but who cares? That’s AMAZING. Take that, Sean’s mom.

TAGS: Female Showrunners | Nashville