Nashville recap: Juliette tries to escape from the crazy cult
It’s finally time to find out what’s been happening with Juliette and the Church of Coherent Philosophy down in Bolivia in “No Place That Far.”
We open the episode with Miss Barnes storming up to a member of the church’s management to complain about the “unconscionable” way the place is being run: A woman just fainted because she worked a 12-hour day. The faintee had been put on “extra duty,” which basically meant that despite repeatedly asking for breaks, she was denied any chance to rest and wound up unconscious.
Incensed by the severe mismanagement she’s witnessed over the past few weeks, J takes it to Darius, telling him she can’t stay there after seeing what she’s seen. He tells her she can’t give up on her journey, and that he needs her to help make things right. She agrees to stay for now to help, but then she’s going home!
Later, she’s packing when a couple of stern-looking souls named Bill and Sharon (of course) come by to go over the claims of abuse she reported to Darius. They tell her the volunteer gave a different account of events, and so they want to know why she’s chosen to make such serious false allegations against the movement. Wonderful. Jules sees through their manipulative ways and tells them their act won’t work with her. She tries to leave for her flight, but creepy Bill and Sharon tell her she’s in no condition to travel. J’s all, “Try and stop me,” so they literally do by bringing in a security guard and locking her in her room until she gets out of her “agitated” state.
The next day, B and S want to have a real conversation with Juliette now that she’s had time to reflect. They’ve also installed a woman named Rosa in Juliette’s room to supervise her at all times. They inform her they’re fully within their rights to keep her under supervision since she’s had episodes like this before and tell her they’ll let her go home if she accepts help to understand why she’s so angry and why she makes up allegations. Understandably, Juliette is furious.
After two days, they’re still keeping her locked in her room. Getting desperate, Juliette starts to work on her ward, imploring Rosa to help her. Rosa lets slip that the management doesn’t genuinely believe J is emotionally unstable, they just think she’s a troublemaker. That night, Juliette wakes up and vomits. Knowing her own body, she immediately realizes she’s pregnant. She tells Rosa she needs to see a doctor, but Rosa tells her to keep quiet and do nothing until she returns. When she gets back, Juliette is singing to her unborn child in bed, and Rosa, overhearing, softens a little. She brings J a pregnancy test, and yes, as she thought, it’s positive! Once again, Juliette tries to appeal to Rosa, asking if she could imagine having her child locked up. Rosa, it turns out, doesn’t need to imagine that: The church has her sons on lockdown too. Clearly afraid of the crazies at the head of this cult, Rosa implores Juliette just to submit to them. Ah, but poor Rosa has no idea who she’s dealing with. International country superstar/plane-crash survivor Juliette Barnes submits to no one. But she will pretend to.
The next day when she meets with Bill and Sharon, she tells them her allegations were just a reaction to seeing someone else’s pain. They bring up her abuse, convincing her she lashed out because she was reminded of her own pain. Juliette wipes tears from her cheeks and agrees with everything they say in fake submission. Then she walks out the room and smiles. Girl’s got a plan. (Recap continues on page 2)
Meanwhile in Nashville, in slightly less crazy times, Avery and Gunnar still aren’t talking after Gunnar saw Avery kissing Alannah and stormed out in the middle of a gig. Poor Will’s trying to fix things, to little avail. He winds up going to both of them individually and basically lying about how sorry the other is. Surprisingly, it works, and it’s not long before Avery and Gunnar are making up over beers, with Gunnar admitting he might have overreacted and telling Avery he just wants him to be happy — but maybe he doesn’t need to hear all the details of Avery’s feelings for Alannah quite yet.
Speaking of Alannah, she goes to see Brad Maitland again about signing with his record label. She’s hesitant, telling Avery she doesn’t want to be disloyal to the band, but Avery tells her it’s a good opportunity and whatever happens with the band doesn’t have to change their relationship.
Even after Jessie goes to see Alannah to warn her about Brad being just the worst egg, she goes ahead and signs with his label. She’d kinda figured he was a narcissist but thinks she can handle it. She gets tipsy on celebratory champagne and calls Avery to tell him the news, then kind of babbles on about how she always ruins good things in her life and how she thinks she’ll deserve it if it goes badly with Brad. She gets a bit carried away expressing her feelings for Avery and then gets embarrassed and hangs up, prompting Avery to show up at her place to see if she’s okay. She’s really not. She’s spiraling and feels weird about spewing all her feelings for him. Avery can’t understand why she’s so hard on herself and tells her he’s kind of a mess right now too. They decide to be messes together. Oh, they have no idea how messy it’s about to get.
On the subject of messy situations, Maddie’s love life isn’t quite going according to plan. She invites Twig (her pop-star boyfriend’s bestie) over to play him a new song. He thinks it’s awesome, but then his bubble is burst a little when she confesses she wrote it for Jonah and wants him to love it. Sadly, Jonah is too busy carrying on with his ex-girlfriend/current girlfriend to listen to her song right now, putting Twig in the fun position of knowing he’s being crappy to Maddie but not being able to tell her.
Later, Maddie shows up at Jonah’s place for a date, but he isn’t there. Luckily, Twig’s there to keep her company with pizza and a dance party. He plays her a mix of her song he produced — who knows how he got a recoding of a song she literally played to him yesterday for the first time. She loves it, but just then Jonah gets back and lies to Maddie about being at the recording studio and blames focusing on his music for forgetting they had plans. Maddie relents and forgives him. Then the next day, Twig shows up at Maddie’s place to tell her she deserves to be with someone who really cares about her, but when she gets upset thinking he means Jonah doesn’t care about her, he changes tactics and tries to kiss her. Oh, boy. Maddie brushes him off, telling him she’s in love with Jonah. Poor Twig walks out embarrassed, but they later make up and Twig promises her friendship will be enough for him. Doubt it.
Okay, let’s get back to the good stuff. Back in Bolivia, Jules ropes Rosa into a scheme to steal the key to the office so she can get her passport and get the heck out of there. The plan is pretty much just Rosa flirting with the guard so he lends her the keys and Juliette using them to retrieve her passport. The only snag is that the filing cabinet with J’s file and passport is padlocked. But nothing can stop the tiny country singer! She bashes it apart with an ornament, grabs her file, and she and Rosa make it back to her room unscathed. All that’s left to do is jump out the window and run back to America! Luckily, the crazy cult leaders haven’t had the foresight to imprison her in a higher room (or just a room with locked windows), so J easily jumps out, promising Rosa she’ll be back to save her and her son ASAP Juliette doesn’t get far before a car pulls up behind her — but (phew!) it’s a just a local. She hops in his car, and he offers to take her to the airport!
Juliette’s previous luck with flights notwithstanding, she should be back in the ‘ville next week. I hope she sends Alannah scurrying!
