Nashville 1.05: "Move It on Over"

“Well, Jeanne said ‘the best version of myself,’ so I thought maybe I’d wear my red boots, but then I thought maybe that was the deranged redneck version of myself.”
-Scarlett

“Move It on Over” was a kind of predictable episode of “Nashville,” although it did have its share of painful, raw moments. Deacon and Rayna are kind of acting like a couple going through a bitter divorce. Juliette reaches the last straw with her mom (although she doesn’t seem to be suffering any consequences for the shoplifting incident). Avery finally shows his true colors and blows a huge opportunity for Gunnar and Scarlett. Yet for some reason Scarlett is still with that ass and Gunnar has found another lady who actually appreciates him. Go figure. And Teddy’s shady dealings are shady. Despite Lamar trying to intervene on his behalf, it looks like Teddy will get his one way or another. And I hope that happens sooner rather than later. He’s such a tool. I much prefer Rayna with Deacon since Deacon actually seems to have some substance to him, although I think at the moment Rayna disagrees. She’s bound and determined to stand by her man even if it means cutting off contact with the love of her life and staying with a slimeball.

Anyway, the episode opens on Juliette, who is throwing herself into her work because she doesn’t want to go home and deal with her mom. She’s driving her band crazy because she doesn’t want to leave the recording studio. She keeps insisting they do take after take of every song, even after they get really good takes. Juliette just keeps making excuses for why the tracks aren’t quite perfect enough. Deacon’s playing with Juliette’s band now (I guess because Rayna fired him), so he tries to intervene. As a recovering addict himself, he offers to help Juliette get her mom into rehab. Juliette’s more interested in wallowing than trying to be proactive about the problem, though, so she finally leaves the studio. When Juliette gets home, the house is too quiet. Her mom is usually in the living room watching television, but there’s just silence. Rather predictably, Rayna finds her mom passed out with booze and pills all over the place. This is the final straw for Juliette, and she tries to throw her mom out of the house. Her mom won’t leave, though, and Juliette finally calls Deacon for help.

Deacon does come over, and after putting on an act of being so excited to meet a semi-celebrity, Juliette’s mom (Jolene) finally admits the truth about her addiction. She’s still kind of reluctant to do anything about it though, especially with Juliette snarking in the background. Deacon finally has the sense to send Juliette out of the room so the grown-ups can talk, and he actually makes a break-through. He helps Jolene realize that Juliette is really hurting and needs her mom to be clean. The three of them go to Deacon’s former rehab, but Jolene has second thoughts at the last minute. She starts ranting about Juliette forcing her to go to rehab, and she slaps Juliette across the face. Jolene realizes this is wrong as soon as she does it, and she gets herself into the rehab after all. Later, Juliette and Deacon have a nice conversation about friendship. Juliette says she doesn’t really have friends, and Deacon tells her she needs to get away from Nashville for a while to get a little perspective and recover from her mom’s emotional (and sometimes physical) abuse.

We’ll go with the Gunnar/Scarlett/Avery plot next since it was pretty self-contained. A record label bigwig is coming to visit Gunnar and Scarlett’s publisher, and they’ve been invited to play for him. It’s almost like a private writers’ showcase, and it’s a huge deal that could lead to one of their songs actually selling. The bigwigs at the publisher, however, want another guitar player to join them to round out the sound for the showcase. Avery hears Scarlett talking about this on the phone and tells Scarlett he’d be happy to be their second guitar player. Because that will end well. Scarlett is overjoyed because she thinks Avery will help calm her nerves. The actual showcase is kind of a disaster because Avery decides to showboat with his guitar playing. It’s supposed to be about Gunnar and Scarlett’s song, not his guitar skills. Avery and Gunnar get in a huge argument about it after the showcase, and Avery doesn’t really feel bad about what he did until he sees Scarlett’s crestfallen face. Then he only feels sort-of bad. At the Bluebird the next day, Scarlett tries to give Gunnar the “there can’t be anything between us speech,” and Gunnar pretty much says that yeah, that’s right because he’s with Hayley now. It was hard to read Scarlett’s reaction on that one, but she (unfairly) didn’t seem especially pleased about it. Hayley texts Gunnar, and Gunnar says it’s news about the results of the showcase. Later when Scarlett has a big argument with Avery, we learn that they didn’t get the deal because Avery’s showboating ruined the song. Avery just wants their relationship to go back to how it was, which (rightfully) pisses Scarlett off because it means going back to her not having a career.

In this episode we finally learn most of the story about Teddy’s shady past. In an info dump conversation with Peggy, we learn that Teddy and Peggy embezzled money from the credit union (to try and save the bad real estate deal) but paid it back later. Peggy wants to go to the feds and confess because of the audit, but Teddy wants to lie low. Later, Teddy is in a debate against Coleman, and it gets quite nasty. Coleman does a helpful info dump about Teddy’s past. Apparently Tedd comes from a long line of rich industrialists, but his father kind of sucked and so does Teddy. Teddy ends up making the oh so brilliant move of telling Lamar everything about the bad real estate deal and the embezzlement, and Lamar says he’ll make sure Peggy doesn’t go to the feds. Lamar does this by having a chat with Peggy and promising the problem will go away. By the end of the episode, Peggy tells Teddy that the auditors just randomly left. A PI is watching their conversation, though, and snapping away with the camera.

Rayna spends a good chunk of the early part of the episode shooting a rather horrid commercial. Rayna’s never agreed to do a commercial before, but now she needs the money. Some of the lyrics to the song have to be tweaked to fit the company she’s advertising, but Rayna’s manager ways that Deacon (who co-wrote the song) won’t approve the changes. Rayna figures Deacon is just being stubborn to get her to call him. Rayna does one better and asks Deacon in person to sign off on the lyric changes. Deacon refuses, because music is the one thing he thinks he does well, and he doesn’t want to sell out. And I think he’s also bitter at Rayna firing him (understandably). Rayna decides that the solution to this problem is to try writing songs on her own. Well, there’s also the pesky issue of all the other good artists she could potentially collaborate with being busy.

Meanwhile, Deacon may have succeeded in helping Juliette, but his own life is starting to fray at the edges. Deacon picked up some pills that Jolene dropped, but he ends up turning them over to Coleman instead of actually taking any. Then when he does his usual set at the Bluebird, he gets heckled by some guy who wants to know where Rayna is. After the show, Deacon gets in a fight with the heckler, and next thing we know, Rayna’s getting a collect call from Deacon in jail. And she actually doesn’t accept the call, which makes me sad, considering that even though he’s in jail, Deacon is still less of a slimeball than Teddy. Juliette ends up being the one to bail Deacon out. The next day, Rayna records the first song she wrote, and all her handlers say it’s amazing. I was pretty meh on it, myself. The only songs I’d ever listen to on my own are the Gunnar and Scarlett songs. There’s just something about the way their voices blend that is beautiful to listen to.