Nashville Recap: Country singers are as damaged and slutty as rockers

Recaps

By SourCake | Friday, October 12, 2012 | 1:37 pm | 12 Comments
Tagged: , , , ,
Posted in: Nashville, Recaps

Hello all and welcome to my first full-length recap for the ‘gasm. I was lucky enough to be assigned Nashville. Or perhaps unlucky as this show is GREAT! It’s hard to snark and smirk at a show I am genuinely enjoying on a not-at-all ironic or postmodern level. I’ll do my best to be funny but I’ll warn you in advance – some of my commentary might be genuine and sincere discussion rather than just throwing shit at people who can’t fight back.
We meet our lead character Rayna Jaymes – if that’s not a porn name, I don’t know what is – as she competently manages to be a wife, mother and superstar. She has genuine talent, which you can tell by her not-obviously Autotuned voice and her wardrobe choice of pants. Pants that come down to her ankles! Can you believe it? A singer who doesn’t have to have her cooch on display to get people to pay attention to her?!?

Pants, sleeves and no choreographed dance moves?  Are you sure this show takes place in 2012?

A performer who does need to hike the skirt up to Catholic schoolgirl heights is Juliet Barnes, played by Hayden Pantalette – honestly, I can never remember how to spell her name properly and Pantalette is fun to type and a real word. My first impression of her is that she is shiny, sparkly and ice-cold. She’s also smart, as evidenced by her (likely ghostwritten) book and perfume deals.

As everyone knows now, in order to get ahead in today’s entertainment industry, it’s not enough to be talented. You need to be a BRAND. You’ve got to have the perfume, the movie deal, the literary agent, the modeling contract, etc. Juliet is in it to win it, obviously. Going into the show, I thought they would play Juliet as some fakey virginal sweetheart. But no! Juliet is no one’s sweetheart. I know a lot of people are comparing her to Taylor Swift but I don’t think it’s apt – at least based on this one epi. Taylor is all hand-hearts and gosh and kittens and pumpkin lattes. If anything, I think Juliet is more of a Carrie Underwood-type – cold, calculating, polished with a veneer of sweetness that doesn’t quite cover up she’s a raging bitch on wheels.

For all of Rayna’s empowered self-made talk, she is the daughter of a rich, powerful man and the wife of a rich, powerful man (before he lost it all in some ill-advised financial scheme). Juliet appears to come from a seriously hardscrabble background with a drug-addicted mom and a who-knows-how-worse dad. Sure, she uses sex as a weapon but isn’t that incredibly common? She survived by becoming sexually alluring to men, she made them want to take care of her because it’s pretty obvious that her mom never could.

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SourCake
About

Situated in the Canadian hinterlands, SourCake can be (and has been) described as layabout, gadabout, welfare mom, world traveller, SAHM and a fairly good time at a reasonable price. Past interests include hotboxing and kickboxing but not foxxyboxxing. Current interests seem limited to diaper changes and scrapbooking.

12 Comments

  1. 1
    ChaCha
    Posted October 13, 2012 at 8:11 am

    Can’t believe no one else has responded yet. Am I the only ‘gasmii that has watched this entertaining show? Good job recapping, SourCake. I’ll keep watching the show and reading your recaps.

  2. 2
    eyediosmio eyediosmio
    Posted October 13, 2012 at 9:22 am

    I haven’t seen this yet but it’s only list of shows to see! Lived this recap, can’t wait to read more!

  3. 3
    CrazyTrain CrazyTrain
    Posted October 13, 2012 at 9:23 am

    Thanks for the recap! The show was a little confusing, and this helped alot. I really actually like the show too. :)

  4. 4
    Hayley
    Posted October 13, 2012 at 2:45 pm

    I was so excited for this show to premiere, but didn’t want to get my hopes up too high just in case it flopped. I thought it was a strong pilot, and am really anticipating watching next week. I’m a Nashville (the city) lover, and will be going to college down there next fall, so it was pretty easy for them to hook me into watching. I wouldn’t be surprised if the show does well and the city sees a big increase in tourism. It’s really a gem of a city that not very many people know about.

  5. 5
    crazy rooster
    Posted October 13, 2012 at 3:31 pm

    Great recap! Connie britton is a great actress plus her hair is just gorgeous. I have high hopes for this series. Powers Booth scares me tho. He is like J.R.Ewing on steroids.

  6. 6
    April
    Posted October 13, 2012 at 6:42 pm

    I also am in love with her hair Crazy Rooster.

    I live in Chattanooga so about 2 hours from Nashville. I about had to smack my hubby though because every time they showed the Nashville skyline he yelled out “Batman building!”. If you don’t know what that is there is a building that looks like Batman’s cowl thing with the pointy ears going up. Nerd….

  7. 7
    chaosbutterfly
    Posted October 14, 2012 at 8:48 pm

    This show was surprisingly good.
    I wasn’t sure that I would like it, but I got sucked in pretty much right away, and was even a little sad when it was over.

    At the end though, when that producer guy came to Juliette’s house on a booty call, who was the dude on her couch? Was that Deacon or Avery? I hope it wasn’t Deacon. I was so proud of him for standing up to Juliette when she tried to sexually assault him outside of the lounge.

    And I hope Scarlett doesn’t get added to Juliette’s nasty tour.
    What should happen is that Rayna should start grooming Scarlett to eventually go head to head against Juliette. Like how Dumbledore prepped Harry to eventually beat Voldemort. If the show is real-life based though, I bet money that Scarlett won’t ever become as popular as Juliette. Nobody ever pays attention to talented people nowadays. Don’t know why.

    About Juliette being compared to Taylor Swift, I actually see that very clearly.
    Number one because like Juliette, Taylor Swift cannot sing worth a lick and everyone knows she cannot sing, but people stay falling all over her anyway.
    Number two because like Juliette, Taylor Swift projects this sweet image to her fans, but she’s actually a black-hearted, soul-sucking bitch. I know people probably would not agree with me on that, but she is so false and sinister to me. If China ever successfully enslaves the U.S., I bet Taylor Swift will be behind it somehow, somewhere.
    Number three because like Juliette, Taylor Swift is a sexual predator and no one seems to notice or care.
    The only way that Juliette and Carrie Underwood have something more in common than Juliette and Taylor Swift is that Juliette and Carrie are both pretty. Can’t say that for Taylor.
    Man, I hate Taylor Swift.

  8. 8
    itchy itchy
    Posted October 15, 2012 at 6:28 am

    I made it only 15 minutes or so. The show takes itself way too seriously (which it has no right to do), and to top it off… there’s country music in it. Maybe if it was funny. Even cheesy funny. But it’s not.

    Short recap: This show is about the conflict between old-style country and newfangled country. The loser: my ears.

  9. 9
    Jessi
    Posted October 15, 2012 at 11:33 am

    I watched this with great trepidation the other day, but I really enjoyed it! Hopefully it’ll be a fun ride. So glad you’re recapping it! I had a hard time keeping all the white guys straight, too.
    Chaosbutterfly, you make me laugh.

  10. 10
    April
    Posted October 17, 2012 at 7:48 am

    Okay I like Taylor Swift’s music and I find her super pretty but that is about all I know about her.

    Except that she dated Taylor Lautner the love of my life and broke that poor sweet boy’s heart. He totally loved her and for her birthday he flew across the country to surprise her and brought her roses and apparently she then broke up with him. Then she wrote that song apologizing to him and acting like she wanted him back, but apparently he was done with her at that point. He started dating Lily Collins.

    So I don’t like what she did to Taylor. He is a sweet genuinely nice guy and she is a total man eater.

  11. 11
    chaosbutterfly
    Posted October 20, 2012 at 12:25 am

    I think TS is homely as heck.
    She looks like someone who was pretty once upon a time, until God’s hand reached down and squeezed her face so hard that when he let go, her features never unscrunched themselves.
    Just homely.

    And she looks mad sinister about the eyes. Like she’s always planning some deviously evil shit. Which I’m sure she is.
    If North Korea ever successfully blows up the other countries, Taylor Swift will be in Pyongyang, pressing the buttons and sipping mimosas with Kim Jong Un.

    And I’m sure she knew where Osama was the entire time.

    Department of Homeland Security is wasting their time with black ops and phone bugs. What they need to do is apprehend Taylor Swift.

    *throws holy water at Taylor Swift*

  12. 12
    niknakflipflop niknakflipflop
    Posted October 20, 2012 at 2:40 pm

    @chaosbutterfly-your comments are truly epic. I love it!

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