You Are a (Glossy) Star!

So maybe Nashville isn’t L.A., but Nashville is, just without the ocean, palm trees, hot tubs, glitz or star power. Hey, look, there’s Café Coco! There’s that dude that works at Sony! There’s that dude that manages that one dude! There’s 12th & Porter, really packed! Still, the producers are the same people who brought you the glossy thrill of spoiled, navel-gazing teens on Laguna Beach and The Hills, and Nashville gives Nashville the same rosy red-carpet treatment.

I’ll bet you’ve never seen Lower Broad look so, uh, glossy, or the terrifically sad way raindrops can glisten on the bed of a pickup truck with all the shimmer of failed dreams. The dudes are earnest and sincere and tryin’ to make their mamas proud. And the ladies? Well, they’re drop-dead gorgeous—if a bit outdated—with their big fake blonde hair and shockingly (glossy) pert breasts.

So I’ll concede that maybe I’m living in a microtrend-filled microcosm, but shit, the world portrayed in this heavily staged and awkwardly scripted show about would-be country stars learnin’ the ropes and ropin’ their dreams looks about as familiar to me as a power lunch at The Palm. And I, like, totally live here. Maybe I’ve been going to too many house shows.

Who are these people? Are they really this tan? Do the manager men-folk really talk shop over bonfires and brews about hit songs and fresh meat, and give their female clients an eerily pervy once-over after showcases and awkwardly proclaim in a paternal, robotic tone, “You are a star”? Do they really use discarded demos for target practice when they shoot guns out on their sweet ranch estates? God, I hope so.

In a particularly memorable moment during episode two, a trio of female singers—Sarah, Lindsey and Rachel Bradshaw (daughter of quarterback Terry Bradshaw)—hook up a gig at Tootsie’s, where they’re asked if they’ve ever played a showcase before. The camera cuts back to the three girls looking dopily, cringe-inducingly uneasy, and, well, I’d tell you what happens next if that one chick’s ginormous jugs weren’t so frighteningly distracting.

And that’s the thing about Nashville: you don’t even notice half the music-industry stuff because you’re so busy following tight shots of heavily made-up faces and Faith Hill manes, eyelashes batting about in wonderment, girls chatting dumb about boys, simple platitudes about the biz and the various romantic trainwrecks.

Well, OK, I’m really rooting for that one kid Matt—he’s got a voice like a young Randy Travis and seems genuinely aw-shucks nice. But the real conductor of this retrograde choo-choo train is Clint Moseley, the city’s supposed most eligible bachelor. He has no musical connections that I can tell: his family sells jets or something, and I still have no idea what his actual purpose is on the show, unless it’s to play the role of the I’m-not-trying-to-play-you-dude who’s playing every XX chromosome in the 615. Watching this dude is like watching an infection spread: in every scene where he appears, his slithering, predatory clutch on the wide-eyed, disturbingly naive ladies deepens, and it’s one head-shaking step back for the progress of all mankind.

There are a few showcases—cut to the hopeful parents with tears glistening in their eyes while their baby makes a play for the big time—and every five minutes there’s a meeting about label interest. And, just as you suspected, the phrase “bring your A-game” is used about a bazillion times, but mostly you’re waiting for those little doe-eyed lambs to be led to the Clint Moseley slaughter.

So I guess it’s no surprise the ratings were for shit—supposedly half the viewership tuned out halfway through the first airing. Nashville is probably uneasy with the idea of itself as a Nashville anyway. It just ain’t us. Maybe we’ll get there, but for now, we’re still a tertiary market, a landlocked city with an inferiority complex, and that’s part of our scruffy charm. Watching Nashville is kind of like watching the shy, nerdy girl get a babelicious makeover in a teen romantic comedy and stumble awkwardly in heels for the first time. You’re kinda rooting for her to become the sophisticated lady you know she can be, but secretly you wish she’d just had the balls to stay weird.