Rachel Bellwoar reviews the first episode of Nashville season 5…
Thursday night CMT treated viewers to an early look at the first half of Nashville’s two hour fifth season premiere. ‘The Wayfaring Stranger’ marks the first episode of Nashville on its new network, CMT, and the first under new showrunners, Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (Thirtysomething). Resurrected after ABC cancelled the show in May, fans who campaigned to have it saved won’t be disappointed.
That’s not to say the show doesn’t feel a bit different under new management. Where old Nashville might’ve strung viewers along about Juliette’s fate, as it did with Rayna and Deacon’s constantly in flux walk down the aisle, new Nashville doesn’t. Season four ended with Avery waiting at the airport for news of Juliette’s plane, which had sent a distress call. That Juliette would be killed off, without Hayden Panettiere wanting to leave the show, seemed unlikely, but it wasn’t unwelcome to have confirmed, before the first cut to commercial, that Juliette’s plane had crashed but she had survived. The rest of the episode, including one earlier, opening scene with Rayna, takes place three weeks later.
Rayna and Juliette have always been the ladies at the center of Nashville and ‘Wayfaring Stranger’ is smart to center on the Jaymes-Claybourne and Barnes-Barkley families, without feeling compelled to check-in on everyone else. Newly re-coupled, Scarlett and Gunner, appear in a few scenes with other characters, and Will is included in the montage of people learning the news of Juliette’s plane crash, but their personal storylines are left to be picked up another episode (or maybe in the not yet aired second hour).
Physically Juliette isn’t in the best shape. While the doctors say her x-rays show good signs of healing the fact of the moment is Juliette is in a wheel chair. She doesn’t want to sugar coat the possibility of not walking again and she’s equally brutal about the realities of Avery being back in her life so quickly. Their phone call last season shone hope, but on a relationship that had a lot to repair from. With all that’s happened Avery is ready to change course from small steps to jumping back in. Love was never something either lacked for each other and this is not a solution.
Juliette tells Rayna she thinks her self-destructive behavior is behind the crash and remembers an angel singing to her. Finding that angel later, in the form of a human choir singer, Juliette has a lot of healing ahead of her but is more prepared than ever to take responsibility, maybe too prepared. Avery isn’t going to be able to ignore how angry he was at her forever. Juliette is going to have to forgive herself for surviving two near death experiences (the other, her suicide attempt last season) and still needing help.
She’s not the only one. While Rayna and Deacon are at their most happy and healthy at the beginning of this episode, spouting lines that are the bread and butter of fan-made music videos, lack of marital conflict means the focus gets to stay on Rayna and what she’s going through. Highway 65’s in trouble. As the company has never been able to hold a client for longer than a guest arc, it’s a long time coming but the show has never addressed the problems to this level. On her first plane ride since Juliette, Rayna has a panic attack, and at her destination, a benefit in Silicon Valley hosted by new character, Country music loving app creator, Zach Welles (Cameron Scroggins), questions about where her career is going get exposed. When she needs to drive home by herself, for herself, Deacon doesn’t take Rayna’s desire to be alone personally. He doesn’t wait for her to ask.
But before things seem too supportive and evolved, there’s Maddie, to make her sister feel like the worst human being in the world. In an almost beat by beat rendition of her tirades against Daphne in the past, Maddie recoils at the perfect chorus Daphne writes for the song she’s been working on. Wanting to break from their sister act, and try to go solo, is not unprecedented in music but the vindictiveness she pegs Daphne for, in only wanting to continue to play with her sister, needs to stop going through cycles of apology, without any lasting reform. On the bright side, Deacon isn’t afraid, after her emancipation scare last season, to call her out for it and, in a relationship that’s never really been explored before, it’s Scarlet who makes Maddie see sense.
So what do an angel, and a blind man singing a beautiful cover of Bill Monroe’s “Wayfaring Stranger,” have in common? Songs have always been an event on Nashville. This episode, music is much more constant and scattered throughout, from the squeezed in tune, to the one encountered by surprise, to the broken off piece, from all corners of the show. Hearing the man singing “Wayfaring Stranger” while picking up gas for her car, it’s the song that made Rayna fall in love with Country and hearing it, like Juliette hearing the choir singer, is a calling. The show is back to where it started, Rayna and Juliette’s spiritual path through music towards self-identity, a quieter, less yell-y Nashville that doesn’t end at the surface drama (Rayna is afraid to be on a plane after Juliette. The end.) but is trying for something deeper. That’s not a dig at the soapier Nashville. That’s curiosity at what the new Nashville will become.
The full, two hour premiere airs on CMT Thursday, January 5th.
Rachel Bellwoar
