Nashville 1.15: "When Your're Tired of Breaking Other Hearts"

“Let it go, man. It is some dark crap. And there is nothing there for you. You wanna hang on to something? Hang onto her.”
-Deacon

This particular episode of “Nashville” just made me feel sad. The characters are just really being put through the wringer. Even if some of them seem to be sort of working towards some equilibrium, they’re all facing some serious drama. Granted, this is television, and a drama at that, so this is to be expected, but it would be nice if at least one or two characters could be in a good place in any given episode. Just to provide a little respite from all the emotional turmoil happening in everyone else’s lives. Everybody is just a mess right now, and I don’t see them finding any happiness any time soon. Some are just more of a mess than others. Mainly Gunnar. He’s beyond a mess right now, and it’s just sad. Mostly because when he and Scarlett sing, it’s just gorgeous, and I want to hear more of it.

There’s a lot going on in this episode. There are a bunch of small groups of characters, each with their own subplot. Mostly, everyone seems to be continuing to make bad decisions. Well, Rayna and Juliette’s plots sort of overlap a little bit, so we’ll start with them. Rayna and Teddy are still working on how to treat each other like human beings through the divorce process. They’re squabbling over who gets to see the girls when. Really, Rayna ought to just break out the “Deacon is Maddie’s biological dad” card, although I guess that could cause a whole new set of problems. Speaking of Maddie, she still thinks both her parents are lying liars who lie, so she’s being all teen emo. Meanwhile, Juliette is still being her incredibly self-centered self. She blows off family therapy with her mom, whining about how her mom keeps just digging up one “poor me” story after another. Then she tells the Edgehill folks that she’s going to be her own manager for a while, and she doesn’t like the “conventional” plan they’ve come up with to market her next album.

The rock bottom of Juliette’s antics come when she decides that a small concert she was supposed to give for her fan club should be open to anybody who wants to show up. She accomplishes this by tweeting the location of the concert. A ton of people show up, including Maddie. The crowd gets unruly, and several kids get injured, including Maddie. Rayna is in the middle of a showcase with Scarlett (more on that later) when she gets the call and rushes to the hospital. Maddie’s a bit banged up, but she’ll be okay. Nonetheless, Rayna feels like she need to be there for her daughter, and the resents that it’s supposed to be Teddy’s week with the girls. Teddy, in turn, resents that Rayna doesn’t seem to think he knows how to take care of his (sort of) children. They end up reaching a sort of truce when Rayna asks Teddy to let her see Maddie for Maddie’s sake, not Rayna’s sake. Rayna ends up giving Maddie her first guitar, telling Maddie that she can use it to work through her emotions about the divorce. Remember that this is the child of Rayna Jaymes and Deacon Claybourne. Holy pressure, Batman!

Juliette at first is rather blasé about what happened at her concert, refusing to accept any of the blame and getting pissed off at television reports that try to assign her any blame. The angry call from Rayna ends up causing a much welcome change, though. Juliette appears to (again) start taking interest in her mother’s recovery. She apologizes for a specific incident her mother had been complaining about earlier, and she offers to bring her mom and her mom’s therapist along on the next leg of the Red Lips, White Lies Tour. She also wants to go pay the medical bills for all the kids who were hurt at her show. Which could actually probably cause more problems that it would solve, considering the kids’ health insurance would have a field day with that one. But whatever, I get what the show was trying to convey. Now I guess we should start the countdown until the time when Juliette inevitably sleeps with the therapist.

There’s some messed up stuff going on in the realm of Gunnar/Scarlett/Avery. For some reason I can’t quite comprehend, the creative team seems to be trying to turn things on its head and make us hate Gunnar and like Avery. It didn’t work on me for this episode, though. If Gunnar keeps up his assholish ways, I may just root for Scarlett to choose herself. She’s better than either of those two idiots, really. Anyway, Gunnar and Scarlett are all mixed up in morning after awkwardness and Jason grief. At some point in the episode, each says sleeping together was a mistake, more to hurt the other than anything else. Gunnar goes off to drink and/or get revenge, and Scarlett ends up having to perform at and Edgehill showcase (Rayna’s showing management the artists she wants to sign to her label) all by herself. She rocks it, but she’s understandably pissed at Gunnar. He’s having a tough time, but they could have rescheduled the showcase if he had said something.

Meanwhile, Avery’s just being plain stupid. Dominic plays one of Avery’s tracks he has completed, and Avery is alarmed to discover that his song has been turned into dub step. Dominic basically says he owns Avery, and Avery’s sound is going to be what Dominic wants it to be. Avery’s not having this, though, and he makes the very dumb move to burn all the masters. Dominic throws him out of the studio for that one, and he threatens that Avery will never make it in the music industry thanks to the stunt. I kind of don’t blame Dominic for that one. While I feel slightly bad that Avery got taken for a ride musically, he had plenty of warning, and his reaction to the situation was just plain unprofessional. When we next see Avery, he’s back to performing open mic night at the Bluebird.

Anyway, Gunnar runs off (again) to go get revenge on the punks who killed his brother, and Scarlett is very worried, so she enlists the help of Deacon. Deacon’s been having his own issues, what with a new dog (named Sue!) and a romantic liaison with a veterinarian to handle, but he manages to swoop in and be the hero yet again. He finds Gunnar in full hoodie mode and manages to talk him down from trying to tussle with the punks. Gunnar continues to have unkind words for Scarlett until the two of them just can’t help themselves and sleep together yet again. It seems like this time the coupling might stick, but there’s another whopper of a problem. Scarlett gets a phone call from Bucky saying that the label wants to sign her as a solo artist.