Nashville 3×04 Review – I Feel Sorry for Me

Breaking up is hard to do for Avery, Rayna takes a wild ride, Zoe goes from green with envy to red with embarrassment.

This week on Nashville, we watched as everyone dealt with relationships both old and new, and good and bad. Rayna (Connie Britton) is trying to forge a new relationship with Sadie Stone (Laura Benanti) while visiting an old one in trying to support Juliette. Meanwhile Avery is trying to forget his last relationship, though no thanks to the booze and the news of Juliette starring in the Patsy Cline biopic he can’t seem to pull himself out of this heartbreak. Juliette, trying to prepare for this baby and apparently her upcoming stay in hermit-ville, is realizing her relationship with her manager Glen is more than just business. The relationship with the most drama this week was definitely Gunnar and Zoe, and boy was she looking green with envy. Zoe even went as far to freak out on her bestie Scarlett and accuse her of trying to get too close to Gunnar. (Does Zoe forget that Scarlett dated Gunnar first? And that Zoe started dating Gunnar in secret? Minor details, we suppose.) So pull up a chair and sit for a spell, let’s talk Nashville!

Rayna takes a wild ride for Highway 65

After Jeff Fordham busts in on Rayna’s girls school’s music department fundraiser, we knew Rayna was going to make a move for Sadie Stone. It was nice to see a fun side of Rayna, she’s been so serious this last season or so with all the car accidents, daddy drama, etc. We loved seeing Rayna in that beautiful wedding gown! We found ourselves covering our eyes in that paparazzi chase scene in Sadie’s red hot mustang! (Real subtle getaway car, by the way.) When the gals started singing Gasoline & Matches we knew we heard some more of music producer Buddy Miller’s genius. Did you know he wrote and recorded this song originally? #Download Alert!

“You don’t wanna be Rayna James. You want to be the one and only Sadie Stone.” ~ Rayna

Rayna and Sadie have a really great connection and we loved when Sadie admitted how in awe she is of Rayna when turning down her offer to sign with Highway 65 instead of Edgehill and slimy Jeff Fordham. Sadie doesn’t want to work for Ray, she wants to BE her. Maybe a little creepy but that could be all the horror flicks we’ve been watching given the season). At that point we weren’t sure if we could trust Sadie. Obviously Edgehill can afford to pay her a lot more money, but Sadie seemed so genuine in her scenes with Rayna. As usual though, the awesome writers at Nashville keep us guessing and the next morning Ray finds out Sadie signed with Edgehill over Highway 65. Rayna intends to fix it and jets off to Sadie’s concert to convince her to sign with her, and in the process does a great job of sticking it to Jeff Fordham by announcing it and performing on stage at Sadie’s concert. It was nice for us to see Ray have to work for something for a change. We were starting to get annoyed with how easily everything always came to her and how her character seems to be written as if she can do no wrong. Fingers crossed for an affair with Deacon to cross of that second pet peeve with her character’s direction. Oh and Jeff Fordham? Don’t think he is just going to slink back into the shadows after this major dig from Rayna. We suspect the slimeball is going to use Mayor Teddy to get to the girls and try to make them famous. Which we all know Rayna has expressed in the past she does not want, but if that phone call from Jeff to Edgehill about a contract for a minor with only one parent signature wasn’t foreshadowing enough for us, Teddy and Jeff exchanged a very sly look that made us want to take a shower. While Oliver Hudson is very handsome, we wouldn’t mind if he left Nashville and never came back.

Juliette faces some hard truths

Since Juliette (Hayden Panettiere) has opted to have her baby with Avery (Jonathan Jackson), even though he’s spending all his time drinking and wallowing, she needs to find discreet healthcare. Her plan is to continue with her tour, and wrap up the movie quickly enough that she won’t be showing a bump. Her assistant Emily says what we’re all thinking and says she will absolutely be showing or at least, noticeably heavier. Juliette has a solution for that too of course, she gained a few pounds to play Patsy and she will likely get an award nod for it. Being that she seems to have it all figured out, we can’t help but have a feeling that a major wrench is going to be thrown in Juliette’s plans to go into hiding and have her baby without anyone in the press finding out. The moment we have been waiting three seasons for came tonight, in the form of a scared Juliette going to Glen (Ed Amatrudo) for comfort. We have always known that Glen has Juliette’s best interests at heart, but we have seen her be pretty harsh to Glen over these last three seasons and just as recently as last week she called him her employee! Glen continues to go to bat for Juliette and goes to Avery to try and convince him to speak to Juliette so she can tell him the news at least. It was nice to see more of Glen in a more fatherly role with Juliette and we are looking forward to seeing how this pregnancy is going to continue to shift the relationships in Juliette’s life. The scene of her in her house, a beautiful house with photos of her all over the walls… but empty. Broke. Our. Hearts. We hope that this pregnancy storyline (influenced by her real life pregnancy?) brings some goodness and love to our girl Juliette, she has had a rough past two seasons!

“I wish I never met you.” ~ Avery

Avery can’t be convinced to talk to or forgive Juliette and is still only interested in drinking and freaking out on everyone around him, as evidenced by his freakout at Zoe’s surprise party (more on that later). When he gets kicked out of the party and stumbles into someone’s car for a little nap, he gets arrested. When it comes time for his one phone call, the only number he remembers is Juliette’s. In that moment, we had hope! The reconciliation was going to come, she was going to tell him about the baby. But no, he insists Juliette is loving seeing him like this and he rants on and on about how much he hates and loves her and then delivers the line that broke our hearts, “I wish I never met you.” Listen, we grew to love Avery again after season 1 when he became a total fame obsessed jerk. We really are starting to dislike this side of Avery. Jonathan Jackson is amazing as always but we want to love him again. We are starting to tire of the “poor me” drunk guy he’s turning into.

Surprise! You were a jealous jerk for nothing!

We all saw this coming, Zoe is green with envy over Gunnar (Sam Palladio) and Scarlett ( reconnecting, and she suspects it’s not only musically. Chaley Rose was great in this episode and the writers really fleshed out her character more than we’ve seen in the past. We can’t really say we would blame her though. They have done a very good job of making it look like Scarlett and Gunnar were drifting back towards each other, with all the singing and writing and meeting in stock rooms over cases of rootbeer, we mean ketchup. Bad cover Gunnar! When you’re planning a surprise going away on tour party for your girlfriend, have some excuses lined up for your shady behavior. This may help with the jealous girlfriend behavior. Just sayin. With Zoe going on tour with Juliette though, we wouldn’t be so sure that jealous behavior is going anywhere anytime soon. Gunnar did ask Zoe to move in not that long ago, which we are sure he wouldn’t have done if he wasn’t serious about being a one woman kinda guy and it seems like we are the only ones who remember it. After this sweet party, and the reassurance that Scarlett and Gunnar were only being secretive because of the party planning, we hope Zoe cuts Gunnar some slack.

“Then why did he want you to stay so badly?.” ~ Zoe

“Why didn’t you?” ~ Scarlett

This week’s episode also gave us another look into the friendship between Scarlett and Zoe. They still call themselves best friends but lately they seem like anything but. The fact that Zoe jumps all over Scarlett about spending so much time with Gunnar hardly seems like BFF behavior. Zoe seems most bothered that Gunnar was so desperate for Scarlett to stay in Nashville and Scarlett admits that she’s upset that Zoe didn’t even seem to care that Scarlett was leaving town. We did find it odd that Zoe didn’t fight for Scarlett to stay in town, even more so now after hearing that birthday speech she gave about singing with Scarlett in her bedroom as a little girl. With Zoe going on tour, we don’t think we will be getting any slumber party, hair braiding scenes with these two, but it’s nice to see Zoe take a chill pill and try to appreciate her bestie.

FINAL VERDICT

Nashville really tugged at our heartstrings this week. We saw real and raw emotion from actors Hayden Panettiere and Jonathan Jackson. We were crying right along with Avery in that final scene! Maddie is growing up, as is the actor playing her (Lennon Maisy), so we were glad to see more screen time of her interacting with her family and friends.  While this was a packed episode, it still feels like we are standing still in these storylines. The other issue for us though, is that the music isn’t bringing it like it has in the past two seasons. We know that T Bone Burnett is no longer in charge of the musical direction of the show, so musical director Buddy Miller, please hear our call for more great music from these characters! The tracks we downloaded last season are getting lonely in our iTunes library! Besides Juliette’s rendition of ‘Crazy’, we can’t think of any other memorable musical moments from this season. Did we miss one? Help us out and tell us in the comments which Nashville tune you are playing over and over again!

Questions, Comments, Concerns…

• Pam the backup singer appears to be trouble. Deacon should go with his gut and stay away!
• But how about that song on the bus with Deacon and Pam? Sounds like it could be a hit!
• Gasoline and Matches is on repeat over here! Thank you for hearing our cries for more new music!
• Yay for the Stella sisters duet! We love when those girls are on stage.
• Just when we were starting to have a heart for Teddy again, he drifts into slimeball territory by making deals with Jeff Fordham. Say it ain’t so Teddy!
• No Will & Layla this episode? Is it weird that we missed our weekly dose of country crazy??
• Now that we have seen Glen without his TERRIBLE toupee, can he just ditch that bad rug? He doesn’t look bad without it! Seriously!
• Scarlett is still not able to perform live, judging by her reaction to Zoe’s request to sign with her at her party. Come on honey, you gotta get past this and bring us some good tunes! Clare Bowen’s voice is too special not to use in every episode!
• Who else screamed at their TV several times this episode? “TELL HIM JULIETTE!!!” We just wanted her to blurt it out already!!