A Plea to the Nashville Writers to Let Their Characters Have Fun Again

Dang, well—Nashville’s third season is over, and everything sucks for everyone! And not even in the good ways that things can suck for TV characters, ways that involve deviance or secrets or schadenfreude; nah, things just suck.

I’m sure I would be less bothered about this if I 1) owned a TV or 2) watched shows other than Nashville and Shark Tank (yes, I have the television taste of a hospital patient; I imagine that Deacon, pictured above, would lean the same way)—but I still wish, regardless, that the Nashville writers would let their damn characters have some fun once in awhile. Remember smiling, literally anyone on Nashville? No, I bet you don’t.

As the oracle of Drake once said, “I’m here for a good time, not a long time, you know I/ haven’t had a good time in a long time.” Spoilers ahead, not that anyone cares, I bet. Let’s run down the characters just to verify just how much non-fun everyone’s having, shall we?

Rayna: Just had to bribe her lover’s devil-ex-machina sister Beverly with a million dollars to get Beverly to give up a portion of her liver in order to keep aforementioned lover alive. That sucks, particularly because Beverly didn’t even take Rayna’s million dollars, but instead took something worse—i,e. the unknowingly adoring attention of her daughters—and in return, gave Rayna the absolute worst, i.e. a promise to maybe move to Nashville.

If Beverly moves back to Nashville, Scarlett’s crippling mouth-of-marbles speech impediment, rarely addressed on the show but a powerful subtext in every episode, will surely only get worse.

Rayna is also having to do things like pretend-marry her lover in a hospital waiting room and tell everyone that he’s not going to die, when we all knew the damn episode would end with some alarming beeps on Deacon’s surgery monitor and the 17-year-old-lookin-ass doctor coming out of the doors being like, “Rayna………………. can we speak for a moment…………….”

Deacon: At the very moment that this season ends, he’s fucking flatlining*, so his life is—if he has it—bad, to say the least.

But, we can rest assured that he’s not actually going to die, because the show wouldn’t do that to its viewers (unless they were to do a sneak sex-type attack and bring back Liam to whisk Rayna away on a sex-type vacation after the death of her lifetime love, which definitely won’t happen, but wouldn’t it have been nice of Liam and Rayna ever got to really make good on all that chemistry?).

Regardless of what happens next season, Deacon’s life has just been a tsunami of suck lately! He’s got liver cancer! Everyone looks at him like he’s a ghost! He caught his young teen daughter potentially boning her boyfriend, who is not only her almost-stepbrother but a young boy who calls himself “DJ Coltbeatz” and provided Nashville with its best-ever worst-ever line: “Skrillex… EDM, rap, anything with sick beats.”

Oh yeah and he might be dead! (He’s not dead.)

Maddie: Well, her dad, who she only found out was her dad like a season ago, is maybe flatlining! She got caught messing around with a fucking preteen named DJ Coltbeats who was almost her stepbrother but is now her boyfriend! No one wants her to be the music superstar she is meant to be!

Life really sucks for Maddie.

Daphne: Independent of her family, Daphne is sort of cruising right now. She is finally getting taller, which must be cool for her, and she got to sing “Have A Little Faith In Me” with Luke awhile back, and she sounded awesome:

But Daphne is literally the last on the family totem pole right now; she’s waiting patiently in the background for everything to fall apart around her, and in the meantime, her real dad…

Teddy: Arrested and headed to jail! For something so boring that I don’t even remember it because during his scenes I do more interesting things, like at-home bang trims! But he’s just been carted off at the end of the episode—that was a nice shot, with Daphne and Maddie watching Doctor 17-Year-Old deliver some ~unknown~ news while, behind their turned backs, the local news showed Teddy getting carted off in handcuffs. Teddy has been double-crossed by his high-class escort fuck buddy, and he failed to succeed in his one shot at getting out of corruption charges (by entrapping another person, i.e. being even more corrupt).

Teddy sucks. I don’t mean to be cavalier, but I hope he gets murdered.

Juliette: YO, Juliette’s storyline is insane right now: she is absolutely crackling with postpartum manic depression, completely detached from her tiny Juliette baby whose name is Cadence; she’s in the middle of an episode so intense that she chunked, like, a fishbowl at Avery while he was holding their newborn? Glass broke all over the walls, mama! She broke her record contract with Rayna, signed with Rayna’s ex Luke, is just generally becoming a cross between her mother and Beverly. It’s not good.

Avery: He not only stopped the momentum of his career as both an artist and producer to take care of the baby when it became clear Juliette didn’t want to, but also is now losing his wife. Avery’s life sucks. Remember when he burned his demos? And then remember last season when he was all into Koyaanisqatsi or some shit? Such growth, rewarded with nothing.

Gunnar: Easily my least favorite character on this show. Goodbye, Gunnar, you are a drip, your sad-sack high school girlfriend who the producers decided to swerve Latina at the last minute is a drip, you’re fucking with Scarlett, who deserves to be fucked with because she’s also dating a drip, but—essentially, Gunnar hasn’t been the source of narrative heat or joy since OC Luke made out with him, and that was years ago.

Scarlett: Scarlett! You’re about to move in with Doctor 17-Year-Old and he’s the most boring man alive, and his primary appeal—which you have admitted—is that he is safe, i.e. comes from a higher income class than you did. That relationship is going to end, but even more than that, your life will keep sucking because Deacon is your father figure and he’s flatlining!

EVERYONE’S LIFE SUCKS!

Luke: Rejected Christina Aguilera, so he’ll be accumulating suck points for a decade, and he has no chemistry with anyone now that Sadie Musgraves is gone. Come back, Sadie Musgraves!

Layla: Willingly Svengali’d herself to a man she knew was horrible, who subsequently Amanda Bynes’d her into Twitter fame; still living down the shame of her Newlyweds-esque show; still living down her near-overdose; still living down her marriage to a man who just came out of the closet at a press conference. Layla’s life sucks.

Jeff: Because he’s such a horrible person, Jeff’s life sucks no matter what his material circumstances—which did just improve very slightly now that he poached Juliette, but that doesn’t matter. Jeff has the aura of someone who does cocaine every 20 minutes and still can’t get excited about anything. Jeff’s life sucks.

Basically, the only character having a good time is Will Lexington, a.k.a. OC Luke, who has FINALLY COME OUT OF THE CLOSET long after his dad did on the OC that one time, remember that? Actually, remember this?

This is horrible. This has been a real bummer to write. Next season, everyone better scheme and fuck and get money and double-cross each other and at least be in love and smile once in a while, you know what I mean? Y’all feel me on this?