'Nashville' Wedding: Rayna And Deacon, Hitched In Agony
For a TV show whose drama is predicated on keeping apart the couples whom viewers know are destined to be with each other, the Nashville marriage on Wednesday night of Rayna (Connie Britton) and Deacon (Charles Esten) was momentous both in the context of the characters, and in the life of the series. Those of us who watch the show week after week, reveling in what Nashville gets right about the country-music industry and shaking our fists at the TV when it frustrates our needs for logical dramatic narrative, could not help shed a little tear, and tap our toes when Jim Lauderdale sang a beautiful version of the Buck Owens hit “Together Again” during the wedding reception.
Of course, nothing on Nashville is easy, and very little of it consistent. Thus, on their wedding day, Rayna and Deacon were as surprised as we were that Rayna’s kids Maddie and Daphne suddenly went into meltdown-mode over the union. Hadn’t Maddie, whose father is Deacon, always been in favor of her parents marrying up until this point? Hadn’t Daphne, whose dad is disgraced politician Teddy, always adored Deacon as a kindly potential step-dad? Yes, but Nashville writers always throw up roadblocks to happiness as a way of soaping up the TV screen, and so a chunk of the hour was devoted to calming down the brats who can harmonize so sweetly under other circumstances.
One specific source of Daphne’s unhappiness is her experiences witnessing Deacon in a drunken rage. Deacon is used to dealing with temperamental musicians and crooked music-bizzers, but he’s no match for adolescent angst, yelling in anguish about Daphne, “She thinks I’m a monster!” Mothers of teen daughters across America probably nodded knowingly and said, “Now you know what we go through every day, cowboy.” There is always, lurking around the edges of Nashville, a great portrait of country-music alcoholism in the way Deacon reacts to stress, but the show, time after time, just refuses to really commit and Go There. (At the very least, you just know that, given Rayna’s savvy, wealth, and maternal instincts, those girls would be well-Al-Anon’d by now, to know how to think about a parent in recovery.)
Most notable among the absent was Juliette Barnes, still post-rehabbing and who you just know would have made a helluva wedding toast, sober or loaded. Alas, she’s off-camera so that we can concentrate on the ever-increasing crack-up of Avery, who was reduced to curling into a fetal position rather than recite P.R.-scripted lies about his wife’s absence from the reception. And with the return of a now vengeful Layla, his life is about to get worse: He thought Juliette was a difficult artist to produce? Ha!
If Nashville can finally bring Rayna and Deacon together, is it too much to wish they’d do the same with Scarlett and Gunnar, who long ago ran out of plot reasons to keep them apart? Yes. Yes, I think it probably is too much to ask of Nashville. It’s the show that, in the deathless phrase of Hee Haw, exists to deliver gloom, despair, and agony to us.
Nashville airs Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. on ABC.
