♪ Oh the weather outside is frightful / But the fire is so delightful / And since we've no place to go / Let's watch ABC's hit musical drama Nashville on Wednesdays at 10/9 Central. ♪
Rayna
Rayna is being fitted for her wedding dress, when who returns but Tandy! Remember Tandy? She was exiled to California for getting a Cynthia Nixon haircut. The sisters commiserate over gowns and husbands, and Tandy asks if Deacon’s going to pull a Benjamin Braddock and try to bust up the wedding. She asks if Rayna is happy. Rayna says yes with her mouth and no with her eyes. She also tells Tandy that she and Luke are soooo popular, that their honeymoon tour may be extended for another year. Rayna just wants her normal life back! Tandy reminds her that normal may be different now.
More wedding planning! Luke wants Tim and Faith to sit at their table rather than the kids, and I agree with him! What is protocol? Anyway, Rayna tells him she doesn’t want to do the extended tour, that she promised the kids only a year. Luke says he only wants to do it if she wants to do it. Crisis averted! Or is it???
Rayna goes to talk to her daughters and tells them she doesn’t want to do the extended tour. They are like, “Um, why? We want u 2 follow ur dreamz!” Instantly overplayed their hand, amateurs. Turns out they just realized they are children of immense privilege, and want to go to a fancy boarding school where you get your own horse. They can just fly out on stepdad’s private jet whenever they want to see their mom. No one’s even been around, they said. Plus Luke’s already looked into it! Now Rayna is mad, having not been privy to that conversation, and says NO BOARDING SCHOOL. Usually when a stepparent tries to send the kids away to boarding school it is evil and the kids don’t want to go, but these kids seem smarter than most. Send them away, I say!
Luke has a bunch of missed calls from Rayna about this boarding school conundrum. He says it came up at dinner with his kids about a week ago. His kids go to boarding school because it gives them some stability, which is a good enough answer. But Rayna does not agree. He apologizes, she half-forgives, and the pair head out to the rehearsal dinner. Rayna doesn't like that People magazine is there. Luke doesn't like that Maddie mentions "her dad" Deacon before the girls sing a wedding song. But the show must go on!
Post-dinner, Rayna confides in Tandy that she doesn't feel like herself anymore. Her old self was a world-famous multimillionaire recording artist who is respected in her town and industry; her new self is a world-famous multimillionaire recording artist who is respected in her town and industry who sometimes has to give interviews and be on television. Rayna looks at the gown. Rayna looks at the ring. Rayna looks at Rolling Stone. Rayna tells Luke that she can't marry him on the day of the wedding. He cries and tells her that he loves her. She is like, "I can't make you a casualty of my life." Very savvy move, to call off the wedding day of, if you are a celebrity who hates press.
Rayna is the worst.
Deacon and Scarlett
Luke’s last tour stop is in Memphis, and he, Deacon and Will are all on stage, singing their little hearts out like the Bell Biv DeVoe of country. Luke thanks Deacon after the show for his professionalism, and shakes his hand like a gentlemen. Deacon finds this difficult. (Luke, for some reason, is the one who needs to go away.) Scarlett, who you can help for only nine cents a day, has popped down to Memphis to see her uncle, and they decide to spend a couple of days in town rather than return to Nashville. Deacon decides this because of Feelings, Scarlett decides this because she doesn’t want him to “mope around,” but the real reason is she doesn’t have much of a life.
The dynamic duo check out the most exciting thing in Memphis, some ducks. Deacon reminisces about the one happy memory from his childhood, but is saddened again when a rude rando drops not-USA Today with a giant headline about Luke and Rayna’s wedding. They also head out to find a karaoke joint and talk about Scarlett’s sudden lack of stage fright and also Gunnar. They karaoke. Not since Michael Bluth and Maeby Fünke has an uncle/niece karaoke duet been so weird.
Scarlett has made some real human friends at the bar, and Deacon heads back to the hotel. He sees a magazine cover with Luke and Rayna. Ohhhh shit guess who's back? It's SMASHIN' DEACON, the smashin'est sonofabitch this side of the Mississippi. He flings the magazine on the minibar, which has like 25 cute lil' mini-bottles of booze set upon it. Soon, a panicked Scarlett finds him passed out on the floor and is unable to revive him. She calls 911. Now awake in the hospital, Scarlett tells him she found him face down on the floor. While passed out drunk, face down is the way you want to be. But he wasn't drunk! He didn't drink.
Nope, just cirrhosis and maybe cancer.
Will and Layla
Slightly less villainous Jeff Fordham tells Will that the online gay rumor mill Studztown (I did not make that up, that is the name and how it was spelled) has a post about him. Will suggests suing, and Jeff tells him that he would end up perjuring himself if they did so. HISTORY LESSON TIME: That’s more or less what happened to Oscar Wilde. His lover’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, absolutely hated him and was calling him a “sodomite” all over town. Wilde sued him for libel. Problem was, womp womp, it wasn’t actually libel because Wilde was gay. Queensbury was acquitted and Wilde had to pay his court costs and was bankrupted. Even worse, he was arrested after the trial for sodomy (a criminal offense at the time), was convicted, and ended up in jail. Thus concludes my extended digression on the life of Oscar Wilde in a recap of ABC’s Nashville. Anyway, Jeff suggests Will “butch it up.”
Will comes home and is pretty friendly with Layla. He asks her to go on tour with him in Australia, but she is busy sending flirty texts to Jeff, her hot and evil hookup. She says she’d rather stay in Nashville for a while, and Will asks if she met someone. She says nope. This is actually kind of a hard decision! Would you rather go to Australia with your gay BFF (that you happen to be married to) or hang out in town and flirt with/do sex to a tall dark and handsome villain (that happens to be your boss)? Please share your answer in the comments.
The duo go to a bangin’ party. Layla runs off to flirt with Jeff and Will is left watching this flirtation happen from a distance. He is a weird kind of jealous. The kind of jealous that is more protective than anything. He tells Jeff to back off. Jeff mentions the hookup. Will says all the texting and flirting has made it real in Layla’s head. Jeff says he only hooked up with her to … give her sex … so she wouldn’t have sex with a stranger … since she can’t have sex with Will? Great logic. Way to take one for the team, bro. Will tells him to crush Layla’s feelings real good so she’ll go to Australia with him.
And he does! He crushes her hard. He’s very mean and she is drunk and crying, the worst look for a girl at a party. Will watches from a balcony like a reverse Cyrano. Layla kind of figures out that it’s Will’s doing, but it doesn’t really matter. Jeff gives her some pills to “take the edge off,” and guys, if I can impart one bit of knowledge (beyond the goings-on of Oscar Wilde), it is that pills and booze don’t mix. Afterwards, a very unprofessional freelance lady journalist seduces Will basically by calling him gay. It works, because Will is very insecure. Woozy camera on drunken Layla, who walks into the room while Will is, like, literally inside that lady.
Guess who takes too many pills? Guess who is face-down in the pool? (While passed out drunk, face-down is the opposite way you want to be if there is water around.) Guess who, instead of calling 911, calls his buddy the mayor? Is she alive? Is she dead? Find out next year!
Gunnar and Family
Gunnar’s out-of-nowhere kid has grandparents on his mother’s side, and they arrive with a court order saying they’re his legal guardians and want to take him back to Texas. With the paperwork all in order and knowing that his son has a good relationship with these blood relatives, Gunnar says goodbye to Micah and we never see him again.
Oh, wait.
He immediately goes to a lawyer and sets up an emergency hearing in family court. But first he has to get a paternity test to confirm he IS the father. The lawyer also suggests being nice to the grandparents, which, duh. I really want to get rid of this kid, guys. He’s showing his grandfather around Gunnar’s house and is all, “My room here is way bigger than the one at your house!” and I’m like, wow, bye. His grandmother is making good points like, “Kids can’t eat junk food all the time,” but it’s coming off as overbearing, but only because Gunnar is incompetent; basically a child himself.
I really like Micah's grandma. Gunnar is Our Hero, obviously, so we are only privy to the story from his side, but everything she's saying makes total sense from her perspective. She meets Gunnar and his brother who are jailbird troublemakers. Her daughter is pregnant and they move and never hear from the brothers again. They spend 10 years basically raising this kid because their daughter is all messed up. Now the kid's (ostensible) dad that he only met a couple of months ago wants to raise him full-time? Come on. Come on! Fathers have rights, of course, but again — come on. Anyway so they have it out and the kid overhears and now everyone gets to go to court. Hooray.
Congratulations to the commenters who figured out that Micah was Gunnar's nephew, by the way. I had totally forgotten his brother even existed.
Avery and (Barely Any) Juliette
Juliette and Avery are folding up baby clothes and discussing what they are going to do about spending time with the baby once she’s born. Juliette tells Avery he should just move into the guest room for the time being. He agrees. He wonders what they’re going to tell the baby about how/why she was born (a topic that really won’t come up for a few years dude, come on) and Juliette says she came from a place of love and now mommy and daddy are great friends! Juliette is, obviously, scheming like a master to get Avery back and I admire her long game.
He calls his mom and tells her how stuff is "weird" between him and Juliette. His mom had shipped him a bunch of baby stuff, and he brings it home to Juliette. He says it's too hard to be friends, and he can't do it any more. It's not right for the baby. A tearful Juliette asks him what he wants to do. He says he wants to marry her. She says yes and they kiss. It is probably the worst proposal I have ever seen. But there is a wedding this episode, even if it's not Rayna's: Juliette and Avery go the baller route and have a courthouse wedding and it is adorable.
Our City's Mayor/Sadie
Teddy is making time with his best girl, the really classy escort lady that he buys sex from. He feels sad about it now, and all messed up.
Sadie is also in this episode. She gets socked in the face by her terrible abusive ex-husband.
