By Angel Cohn
We're back in Nashville and Juliette and Dante are still having all the sex, but MethMom doesn't exactly approve of the situation. But Juliette is ruled by her ladyparts and ignores her crazy mom and sends her cry to her new sober companion (can it be Watson? Please?). But that sober companion is doing a pretty shitty job because MethMom stalks Dante and discovers that he's making out with some chick named Esme downtown. Juliette gets her poor put-upon assistant to bring Esme to her backstage at her concert and yells at her a bit, but Esme says that Dante just helped her out and now she's in real estate and has a gross house with lots of giant windows that would be just perfect for Juliette to settle down in. Yeah, Juliette's dumb enough to believe that. But after Jolene freaks out again, and some pills make Juliette think that she's off the wagon, they take her home and get ready to send her back to rehab. But while Juliette is slowing realizing that the incriminating drugs are actually a medication that Jolene is deathly allergic to, Dante and Esme are making off with about half a million dollars of Juliette's money. Meaning, MethMom was totally not that methy (this time) and Juliette is alone again… naturally.
Teddy's all pissed off because he found out that Peggy leaked the information. She tries to turn this on Lamar (but she really doesn't have a leg to stand on), so he kicks her to the curb. He also decides to cut Lamar's company out of any contracts with the city (now that he's got the big Subway deal, and no, this show does not make me want to eat those sandwiches any more than The Biggest Loser and Chuck did). My knowledge of politics is limited to Scandal and Parks and Recreation, but can Teddy just make these arbitrary decisions without some sort of cabinet or council vote? Whatever, I so don't give a crap about this storyline and I refuse to believe that anyone watches this show to see this nonsense. Carl is pissed, so he meets with Tandy to figure out how to take down Teddy. See, Tandy's all pissed because now that Lamar's home from the hospital and reconciled with Rayna, he thinks that Tandy's pushing him out of the business (and she totally is) and makes her the scorned child. There is only room in his heart for one daughter at a time, apparently.
Scarlett has a cute dinner with Deacon where he tells her to grow a backbone and ask for what she wants (i.e. tell Rayna about Gunnar's dead brother) and she tells him that he's got a nice girlfriend in Stacy and he shouldn't screw it up. Then she does ask Rayna to get Gunnar some sort of a deal, but Gunnar is what you'd call remarkably unappreciative. Now that he's got his hot-as-heck buddy Will around teaching him how to have confidence, he only needs Scarlett for one thing and it isn't music. He sings a song (with lyrics ripped from his dead brother's journal) and it is great. Maybe the best song this show has had in a long time. Good for dead brother, because Gunnar gets approached by a music producer who wants to cut his demo (though Gunnar lies and says he wrote this song, and if this "stolen from a dead guy" story plays out the way it did for Adriana on , it won't go well). Avery sees this music producer exchange and just looks on with his sad eyes. And when Scarlett is backstage at the Red Lips/White Lies tour and sees Avery humping gear, she looks at him with her own sad eyes, and then he takes her to stand on the stage post-concert so she can get that big arena vibe. The difference between being Rayna's kid and a person on her label are that the kids actually get to play music during sound check. Still, who cares about those two mooning at each other when we've got Will and Gunnar to get back to. And I know what you're thinking, who the hell cares? But trust me. Will is comforting Gunnar and sitting way too close to them, and I started thinking, wouldn't it be awesome if they totally started making out? And then realized I've been on Tumblr a lot lately and that's just rife with gay 'ships of all variety so my perspective is skewed, and then Will totally just hauled off and kissed Gunnar. Gunnar didn't take too kindly to this, of course, but for a minute there… kind of hot.
Speaking of kissing, Rayna's hooking up all around Nashville. When she stepped off the plane all cuddly and flirty with Deacon, I started to wonder if I'd missed an episode, but turns out that he's still with Stacy and that's just how she behaves around him. Wonder if Stacy has turned the picture from that big ad campaign of Rayna's into a dartboard yet. And Rayna's home but doesn't have her kids, so instead she hooks up with Liam. She happily tells her sister, "We went to second base… does that make me slutty?" Well, that doesn't make you slutty, but the rest of the episode does, in the Rayna-gets-her groove-back kind of way. Liam invites her to go to St. Lucia for a long sex-filled weekend (the sex-filled not outright stated, but heavily implied) and then he is all over her on stage (so much for keeping it professional) while they are singing a song that she wrote with Deacon. Deacon can't watch and his little domestic bliss with Stacy is over faster than you can open a can of SpaghettiOs. He professes his love to Rayna, and she tells him she's planning on banging the hell out of Liam on the beach and he should go back to Stacy. But then, because it's Rayna and she's nothing if not indecisive, she decides not to go to St. Lucia and instead goes to Deacon's house to tell him that she's in love with him. Thankfully, he did not take her advice and get back with Stacy (because that would have been awkward for Stacy). So they finally have sex and they both seem pretty happy about it. Poor Liam, he never stood a chance… even with the promise of far-off lands.