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Spiedie Fest was near death, saved by buttons and beer
from: yahoo.com
By Ken Tucker
It's Wednesday, which means tonight I'll tune in to ABC's Nashville to - well, not "hate-watch" it; hate-watching is not my thing, and that's so 2014, y'know? But at this point - now in its fourth season, with some of its lowest ratings to date - Nashville puts a pain in my heart, a feeling that this show has never achieved the rich potential it had, and it makes me sad.
Also, ruthless. I've had it with trying to understand why Nashville has taken some of the twists it has (we finally get Teddy shipped off to prison, yet we still have to visit him there, as he sobs into his frowsy penitentiary-beard?), and trying to help the show justify so many subplots that don't go anywhere.
Here's where I stand, possibly for the duration of what looks like may be Nashville's last season. Important note: Please understand that I am not criticizing the actors, who have all done wonderful work executing the neck-snapping switches in personality all the main stars have had to handle. No, I'm calling out the characters (and by implication, the writing of them) that are simply beyond rescue as dynamic sources of drama.
The two most irritating and narrative-dragging characters are Gunnar and Scarlett. I've had it with this pair's trembly lower lips, their sullen resentment of each other when everyone else, both watching and in the show, knows they are Made For Each Other. The seasons-long romance-delay here has become intolerable.
Juliette is irredeemable. Her mood swings, substance-abuse binges, and pleasure-less partying are by now dull. Having brought a baby into the world, her neglect isn't the heart-tugging anguish Nashville wants it to be - it's just appalling child neglect. Oh, how much better Nashville would have been if it had killed off Juliette last season, just as she was about to ascend to the top of show biz for her supposedly searing portrayal of Patsy Cline. Nashville was, as I've written before, upstaged by the fast, coldly relentless pace of another Wednesday night musical, Empire.
The thing is, the history of country music itself is loaded with songs about untimely death and tragedy - the show should have tapped into the very source of its existence. Instead, we get scenes like the stomach-churning Juliette-Luke "Bad Reputation" duet last week. Even drunk, there was no excuse for them to be so bad massacring a JOAN JETT oldie.
The greatest waste in Nashville has been the steady misuse of Rayna James. She should have been the central figure of the series - a strong but flawed woman (artist, mother, wife, lover, business-person) who faced down a succession of tough life and work challenges. Instead, the show turned her into the shoulder everyone wanted to cry on, the sad-faced sympathizer who periodically had to pull herself together to try and make her new label a going concern. Good heavens, what a rich load of material Nashville had in real-life comparisons to the fate of the middle-aged woman in the country-music industry! Why did it not spin great drama out of that?
Given the soap opera drama it always was, I'd even have settled for a good, short subplot in which Rayna, in her quest to make her record label a success, became a ruthless, Mildred Pierce-style stage-mother who pushed her talented daughters to stardom before coming to her senses. (Perhaps by knocking her head on a corner of the Grand Ole Opry stage, where she'd rub her noggin and say, "What was Ah thinkin'? Girls, come to mama and let's git home!")
When Nashville ends its run, I'd love to read an inside-story about how and why the series betrayed the initial promise of the superb pilot written by Callie Khouri. Until then, I can only continue to watch Nashville and seek out the face of Deacon Claybourne, whose constant look of wise, weary sadness has come to serve as an emblem of how many fans feel about Nashville. Deacon, if we ever met in a Cracker Barrel, I'd love to buy you a seltzer and commiserate.
Nashville airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on ABC. |
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