Nashville 3×07 Review – “I’m Coming Home to You”

Rayna does some dirty dealing with Rolling Stone, Scarlett and Terry find their voices, and Javery tries to find a way to work together for the sake of their baby.

This week we all came back to Nashville for a break in tours, to spend time with family, reporters, and Lamaze coaches. There were new relationships formed and details on old relationships traded up in order to parentally protect. We walked the red carpet at the premiere of Will (Chris Carmack) and Layla’s (Aubrey Peeples) FAUX-reality show and confirmed what we already knew, the producer of the show (Briana Venskus as producer Gina Romano) is a beyotch! Juliette (Hayden Panettiere) worked on some new songs and some new stretches while getting ready for the Javery baby to arrive (and girlfriend is looking super pregnant in real life, even tho her character is only about 3 months along). Oh and Luke and Rayna try to navigate blending their families together and things got verrrry interesting on the Layna homefront this week. Let’s jump in and discuss!!

Has Rayna ever read Rolling Stone?

Rayna (Connie Britton) is on a publicity tear these days, campaigning for Entertainer of the Year at the CMA’s, and we have to say we were shocked to see how the chips fell for our Country Queen who normally on this show, can do no wrong. After doing ‘Dancing with the Stars’ Ray gets an offer to do the COVER of Rolling Stone and they want to do a piece on her for the issue. Now, we aren’t regular subscribers to RS but we have read enough of their cover stories to know that they like to write about the juicy stuff and the unknown tales of our favorite musical talents. In the past Rayna has made it clear that she wants to try to keep her private life just that, but agrees with Bucky (David Alford) that she just can’t pass this up. Only problem is that they want to interview Ray this weekend, including following her, Luke (Will Chase) and their kids around to get a glimpse into Ray’s life.

“Transparency of me; not of our kids.” ~Rayna to Rolling Stone writer

Of course things don’t go as planned and who couldn’t see that coming? Rayna and Luke walk into Casa James and find Maddie (Lennon Stella) and Colt (Keean Johnson) hanging out with some dim lighting and with their lips locked. Of course the Rolling Stone guy is there too, and as if Rayna had to ask to verify, he plans to turn the kissin’ soon to be step-sibs into his “angle into Rayna’s life.” Earlier in the ep, we saw this Rolling Stone reporter trying to get info from Deacon (Charles Esten), about the man behind the most successful woman in Country, and D being the gentleman that he is, declines to comment. Too bad Rayna couldn’t have been as considerate. Trading old Deacon war stories in order to keep the kissing kids out of the article was her only option of protecting Maddie and Colt, is what we are sure Ray will tell Deacon. We finally see the Queen make a mistake! And we don’t see this one being a very easy fix. Unless of course, Ray has someone else she can throw under the bus in order to save face with Deacon too.

Scarlett finds her voice again, thanks to Terry

We LOVED seeing Terry (Mykelti Williamson) and Scarlett (Clare Bowen) interacting in the previous episodes, and we squealed with delight to learn more about Terry and to see these two create some killer music together. Terry thanks Scarlett for her kindness and then reveals that his family was killed years ago in a head on collision while he was at a gig. Terry associates making his music with the pain of losing his family and Scarlett asks is Terry will come and write with her for a little while. They have this adorable relationship where they aren’t considered “even” until one of them does another nice thing for the other.

“You know damn well your throat’s not sore.” ~Terry to Scarlett

Turns out this week, that both Scarlett and Terry would “save” each other so to speak, and they would each find their voices and their sound again. After Scarlett convinces Mr. Terrence George (who once even charted!) to perform at the Bluebird, he then convinces her that he can’t do it without Scarlett’s soulful voice backing him up. Turns out he did some research too and he knows girlfriend is faking that sore throat in order to mask her stage fright. Seeing this relationship develop has been such a joy for us viewers, and hearing the sound of the beautiful music they made together was just awesome. It’s good to see Scarlett back on stage at all, and having her find her stage legs again at the Bluebird just makes the moment that much sweeter. We hope this is just the beginning of hearing music from Scarlett and Terry! Well done with that song this week as well, ‘Carry On’ is still stuck in our ear! Sarah Siskind and Julie Lee, we bow down to you! Best song of the season so far!

There may be hope for Javery ‘shippers yet!

We don’t want to sound like a broken record here, but PLEASE NASHVILLE GODS let there be hope for Juliette (Hayden) and Avery (Jonathan Jackson)! This week we watched as Juliette realized that it was just her and her baby and she needs Emily to not only to be her assistant and friend, but also to be her Lamaze coach. It’s understandable that Avery is having a hard time with getting close to Jules again, but this is your kid we’re talking about here. We had to agree with Emily when she went to Avery to let him know that Juliette was asking Em to be her coach. We know Avery isn’t as tough as he’s letting on though, being that he picked out a top of the line crib for baby Javery, and upon promptly finding out that Juliette had changed her mind about Baby’s sleeping arrangement he returned to the store to get her new request without as much as a roll of the eye.

“Don’t you wanna be there to witness a miracle?” ~Emily to Avery

We were so happy and of course, screeched at our televisions with glee, to see that Emily was able to change Avery’s mind about Lamaze classes with Juliette. And that song from Juliette this week? “Everything I love slips through my hands.” Beautiful sadness coming from the heart of Juliette! While she wasn’t able to impress Rayna with her earlier songs, we have a feeling this one could be a hit. We really want to see Avery and Juliette making beautiful music together again, figuratively and literally. We like to think that this episode is the beginning of seeing that happen! Hooray!

CONCLUSION/FINAL VERDICT

This episode was well-written overall, and it’s nice to see our characters all moving forward within their individual storylines. All this hype about the CMA’s, has us actually excited to see who in the cast is going to win a trophy! While it looks like mostly everyone is on the road to happy, poor Deacon can’t catch a break with getting hit with both a cold and a major betrayal by Rayna this week. We might be a little too excited about Rayna being a tad snake-like this week, because Lord knows Saint Rayna hasn’t had any kind of tarnish on her record on this show, well, ever. Things are about to get very interesting all around. Will the reporter keep his word and keep the kids out of the Rolling Stone article? Will Javery keep moving to a happy place, and can we just dream out loud and say get back together and live happily ever after? Because that would give us a reason to ‘Carry On’ with this show.

QUESTION COMMENTS AND CONCERNS

• We are kinda happy that Deacon and Pam are still hanging out, since we have a feeling Deacon’s going to need a friend after he reads that Rolling Stone expose’.
• Also, it was pretty adorable when Deacon told Pam “You helped me find my music.”
• Let’s not forget the premiere of “Love & Country”, Will and Layla’s reality show. Layla is pretty upset she’s being given the “Chicken of the Sea/Jessica Simpson” treatment and Will is being portrayed as a shirtless heart throb.
• As we all know (but we guess no one ever mentioned it to Will or Layla), Reality TV is heavily edited and we rarely see an actual reality. As evidenced here when the producer reminded Will he may not want his throngs of screaming fans seeing the real truth on the show.
• Gunnar got an insta-fam this week, as Kylie decided to take off and go to be with her boyfriend in Oklahoma, leaving Micah behind with his new Daddy and Zoe.
• And um, WHO JUST LEAVES THEIR KID? Bye Kylie, you’re terrible.
• No Mayor Conrad or slimy Jeff Fordham in this episode? We assume that’s because they were together in Vegas with some escorts or something equally as gross.
• No Derek Hough (Noah) this episode either. Should we assume Juliette is done with filming the Patsy Cline biopic?
• ‘Christmas with Nashville’ came out this week, and of course we downloaded it so we could tell you about it! The cast version of ‘Celebrate Me Home’ and Clare Bowen on ‘Santa Baby’ has us in the Christmas spirit already! (Forget #RespectTheBird, we are ready for a ‘White Christmas’ with Nashville!)