First Impressions: Nashville ‘Pilot’ – Thank God For Auto-Tune

With lots and lots (and LOTS) of promotion from ABC, a considerable amount of critical hype, and Connie Briton (of course), Nashville was one of the fall’s most-anticipated new shows, even despite some disparaging remarks from other network execs on what they would’ve done with the show. But like many highly-anticipated shows backed with a huge network budget, the pilot is a half-cooked mess, packed to the brim with intermingling story lines and cardboard characters making decisions and choices we can’t even begin to understand, thanks in part, to the forced dialogue and predictable plot twists. There were some pockets of promise early on, but the last half of the pilot grew more and more painful with each scene. To say I’m disappointed is an understatement.

On the most basic level, the show fails to even earn its name. There’s two lines in the entire pilot that reference Nashville as a town, leaving everything else to some stock Nashville footage of green pastures and blue-collar life. Outside of that, there’s no reason for anyone to believe the show is actually taking place in Nashville, which would give the show a much richer history and context than the heavy family dramatics packed into each of the show’s many plot threads.

Having actors who can’t sing live music really doesn’t help: I want to applaud them for including so many musical numbers, but they were all so over-produced and synthetic it was hard to get engaged in them (especially when white people bobbing their heads out of sync to the music is supposed to suggest “this shit is hot right here!”). Without having the ambient sound of the audience or happenings in the background, the songs lose their soul – and with so many songs being used as a lens to see different characters, it plays heavily into the poor character construction affecting the center of the show.

I’m not going to even start deciphering the bazillion interconnected story lines introduced, mentioned, or alluded to in the pilot: I’d have to draw Charlotte’s fucking Web to try and make sense of it all. Every scene is another plot, either tossing in random back story pieces (Juliette’s mom smokes drugs! One of Rayna’s kids isn’t her husbands! Dirty politics!) without ever anchoring its characters down – save for Rayna, thanks to Connie Britton’s talents and the show’s clear decision to make her the show’s protagonist (no matter how much cheating she did, or bitchy behavior exhibits… every show has a ‘goodness’ heirachy).

Look at Juliette for example. She literally sleeps with four or five different people in the pilot (and propositions a few more), but we don’t get into her libido at all. She just looks at someone, and then fucks them. All we’re supposed to know is she’s hot, popular, and ruthless – traits we don’t even learn from her own actions. And we don’t even learn anything about her from her own words or actions, except she gets what she wants by banging her way to it – in fact, the only time she gets characterized is by the studio heads talking while she records, a conversation that amounts to nothing but chauvinistic grunts about her questionable talents, hot body, and over-sized libido.

There’s obviously a lot of plot for this show to dig into: the pilot shows us that the creators and writers don’t lack for a collection of stories. Problem is, they are all variances of “I’m doing what I want” or “I’m doing this to cover up this” or “ominus statement that will play into plot point later on, when we probably have sex with each other”. Deacon’s going to be in the middle of the coming Rayna/Juliette war (as is the other producer Juliette slept with who’s name I can’t find in my notes), Rayna’s going to regret getting married to Mr. Failure, who is running for mayor even though he’s a professional failure: just because he’s backed by the current mayor, Rayna’s father (obviously corrupt), we’re supposed to just believe he’s got a chance in the race.

Of course, there’s still time for Nashville to right the ship, but with all the flash, pretty hair, and romantic issues, I just couldn’t find anything to connect to in the show. Should I be attached to Rayna, a delusional woman who’s hung up on her own ego and past mistakes? Or should I be interested in the talent vs. no-talent war between Rayna and Juliette? What about those kids singing songs in the bar? … Disappointingly, Nashville makes the mistake of trying to Big Talk and Big Event us to death, rendering everything ineffective in the process.

Grade: C-

Other thoughts/observations:

– Bunny Colvin!!!

– A young star with unstable parent(s) who want to manipulate them? Such an original idea they use it twice on the same show!!!

– one old radio jockey is the definitive voice (at least for Rayna) that Juliette isn’t a flash in the pan? That’s just silly.

– seriously, Juliette is going to be banging Rayna’s father by the season finale, simply because there will be nobody left for her to fuck.