Nashville (season four)

The new season starts Wednesday – obviously I’m not the only person still watching, since they renewed the show, but I may be the only one willing to admit it in public.

Will Deacon live? Will Juliette calm the fuck down? Will Maddy get her career started or just flounce around being a teenage girl?

I’m ready for some great soapy action, with music.

[ul]
[li]Of course[/li][li]Eventually. Maybe too late to fix her relationships with her husband and child, though.[/li][*]Don’t care. I was listening to the soundtracks on Spotify last week and realized all my least favorite songs are sung by the actresses who play Rayna’s daughters. I’m not a huge Scarlet fan, either, but at least Clare Bowen can sing[/ul]

I want better songs this season. I don’t think I bought anything from last season, but I still love several of the songs from season 1.
Deacon will live. Juliette will (eventually) get a grip. Scarlet will annoy the hell out of me. Her & Gunnar’s band will make even less sense this season than it did last season. The Layla/whats-his-name relationship will continue to be creepy as hell on multiple levels.
But at least according to rumor:

the political plot & Teddy (which never really fit into the story) is going to go away

That would be good news. They did get rid of Powers Boothe, who they never figured out what to do with.

In today’s social climate, the big “I’m gay” announcement from Will should be met with a big “and?..”. They need to give him more to do than be gay, it’s not interesting or scandalous these days.

And I agree they need better music this season.

Though, on the other hand, it seems like a ton of his audience was teenage and 20 something women who were interested in jumping his bones. Perhaps his sales or concert attendance will flag as a result?

Deacon (well, Charles Esten) is scheduled to be interviewed on Sirius Radio tomorrow morning, so I’m guessing that means he is going to be around for the season.

Yeah, didn’t really think they’d do away with him.

Pissed off, irrational Deacon is my least favorite character on this show.

I’m siding with Layla, Rayna did let rocker boy walk all over her G.O.O. debut.
And just when I thought Juliet’s character couldn’t be any cheesier, in comes the “Doctor” to give her all kinds of drugs. Just because she wants her career and not her family, but doesn’t want anyone to know she doesn’t want her family, but needs drugs to not feel the pain of ignoring the family she willingly is avoiding.

He’s not even in my top 5. Scarlet (in all of her guises) is far and away my least favorite character, followed distantly by Gunnar, who’s followed even more distantly by … don’t even know who. The two of them just destroy storylines and characters by walking into the scene.
They really don’t know how to pace Avery’s stories. Last year, he was in the band one week, then out the next, then back in, then back out, then back in, then finally out. This year, he’s planning on staying with Juliet, then out of the marriage, then sticking to the marriage, then out of the marriage, etc. etc. It’s whiplash. They need to stick with one path for at least 2 hours of screentime - maybe 3, and let that state develop. Changing courses every time trivializes the decision.

After this week’s episode, I’m taking the show off of my DVR list. I simply don’t like anyone anymore. Even the baby is annoying (although I wonder why they let that child cry all the time).

The writing is all over the place. There is no cohesive plot. They start storylines, put them on the fast track, and then “solve” them overnight.

For instance, in one episode Scarlett has a nervous breakdown and a pill addiction. Then miraculously she’s cured!

In another episode, Rayna nearly lost her life and career due to a terrible car accident. In the very same season, she and her new girlfriend go on a Thelma-and-Louise joy ride. A real person would be nervous around cars, no? Plus she’s a mother with two kids.

The problem is that they don’t know how to write “normal.” Nobody, and I mean nobody, has that much drama in their life. Everything is written so OVER THE TOP. Deacon just can’t grieve his sister, he has to smash the house up and hold an irrational grudge against Scarlett. Juliette can’t just suffer postpartum depression, she’s got to throw in a pill addiction, too.

So much talent, such crappy writing.

As far as the characters go:

I agree that Scarlett should go. She’s awful. The actress, with that awful clipped dialect that she tries to pass off as a Southern accent, is grating. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to be around that emotional, passive/aggressive trainwreck. And she needs to cut her damn hair.

Scarlett’s spineless boyfriend should have told her to get lost. And, come on, what person other than a musician actually sits down and writes a song for their girlfriend?

Connie Britton is a fine actress but she’s getting a little long in the tooth to be playing a romantic lead.

Daphne is annoying. Maddie is less annoying than last season because they no longer have her acting like a brat. I’ll admit that the Stella girls do have talent, though.

Gunnar is spineless.

Avery is pathetic.

Juliette is ridiculous.

Layla is whiny.

Jeff is slimy.

The new R&R dude is too old and weird.

Teddy is sad.

Will is okay, I guess.

Weirdly, Luke is the only character I kind of like. Last year, they started hinting that he had a dark side, but in another one of their weird story threads, dropped it.

I really dislike how they treat addiction on this show.
Juliette: Hmm, I was addicted to drugs and waking up with a hangover is enough to cure me. Let me flush these pills, now I’m all better.

And has anybody backlashed Will’s coming out negatively except Luke? So far he is the only one who has done any discriminating. I don’t see why he is still in hiding.

I can’t justify in any way that I’m still watching this show.

I think it might have just replaced Dr. Phil as the guiltiest of my guilty pleasures.

No – let’s make him really love her.

And then push him off a roof.

Looks like you get your wish, at least as far as the last item is concerned, in the next episode.

At least they turned that around right away – and judging by the preview, we’ve got plenty more selfish bullshit from her to come.

And I’m glad Will’s BF finally got tired of his self-pitying BS and dumped his ass. Get it together, boy, it’s 2015.

Yeah, that roof scene.

But I have decided that I am going to ride this show all the way down to the ground.

I predict a pregnancy scare for Maddie is coming soon, since they glossed over her deflowering in the tour bus. This is not a gloss-over-glurge type of show, that story is coming back.

And Deacon buying a bar? We already saw that show, it was called Cheers

You know, dear producers of the TV show Nashville, if you are going to air an “in concert” episode with the main characters actually singing on tour, please show more than 30 seconds of each person singing. What a waste.

I think I’m giving the show until the end of February sweeps. It’s gone from being dumb, but fun to dumb and painful. I now mostly dislike nearly all of the characters - they’ve turned them into awful people and . The very few that I do still like are in bad storylines. The music isn’t good enough to make up for it anymore, either.

If they renew for a fifth season (and they probably won’t, since I may be the last person still watching), Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (thirtysomething) will be the showrunners, according to Hollywood Reporter.

I’m still watching but if Hayden Panettiere hadn’t come back I wouldn’t be. I used to give a crap about the characters. I don’t anymore. I wish they’d fix things because I used to really enjoy this show.