On Wednesday, Rayna and Deacon finally got married—but not before the groom and the rest of the family almost ruined it all, because that’s the way of the heart-wrenching nighttime soap called Nashville. So how many ways was the #Nashvillewedding nearly cancelled? Let’s look back and commiserate, shall we?
1) Deacon, Rayna and the girls are besieged by paparazzi after the wedding rehearsal dinner at the Bluebird, despite setting up a secret backdoor exit. A TMZ-style photographer rudely asks Maddie which father is better: Teddy the jailbird or Deacon the drunk. Deacon accosts the photographer, pushing him and his camera down while yelling and shoving Rayna and the girls into their car. Maddie sees his temper and gets scared that he might hurt her mother—like the time he drunkenly crashed a car with Rayna in the passenger seat, putting her in the hospital. Instead of admitting that he has a dumb temper, Deacon falls down a rabbit hole of self-deprecation and wishes his dead sister Beverly was alive instead of him, while pouting that Maddie is afraid of him and Daphne (Teddy’s biological daughter with Rayna) hates him.
It’s typical fucking Deacon. Thankfully, his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor follows Deacon’s pouty trip to Beverly’s grave and talks some sense into him.
2) Elsewhere, preteen Daphne is having a moment. With her father in jail for a crime she’s finally accepted that he committed, she feels like the fourth wheel in her own house, where Rayna, Deacon and Maddie seem to be the biological family waiting to happen without her. Sullenly, she pushes Deacon away and opines to her Aunt Thandie, a known Deacon hater, and acts out toward a confused Rayna.
It’s typical fucking Daphne, the youngest who has felt left out most of this series.
3) Maddie, Maddie, Maddie. Like her father Deacon, Maddie is mercurial and over-the-top emotionally, so when her dad pushes the photographer, she immediately remembers his grief-stricken meltdown after her Aunt Beverly died, during which he ripped her room apart. Somehow, that manifests into Maddie wondering whether the romantic reunion of her parents is still the best plan. Not to mention, her almost-step-brother-turned-boyfriend Colt is nowhere to be found (more on that below) so she can’t vent and compound the hormonal roller coaster that is two frantic teens.
It’s typical fucking Maddie, the eldest child who is always ready to tell off her mother and stomp out of a room (which she does during this episode, of course).
4) Rayna, busy trying to keep all of the disparate emotions of her family together, hears her sister Thandie has been bad-mouthing Deacon. To be fair, Thandie sees him as a recovering drunk who left her sister with a baby to raise alone, a lake full of disappointments and broken promises, plus the man who sent her on a trip to the hospital, just to name a few of his offenses. If you were Thandie, you’d probably be anti-Deacon too but alas, Rayna sees his good qualities and wants to marry him anyway. Just before the ceremony Rayna tells Thandie that she can kick rocks if she doesn’t like Deacon because this wedding is happening with or without her, to which Thandie just says “I’m going to go get the hair and makeup people because my sister’s getting married.” Naturally, she threatens to ruin Deacon’s life “with the force of a hurricane” if he hurts Rayna yet again during the reception, which is not an idle threat coming from her, and it’s typical fucking Thandie.
In the end, all of the possible threats to the couple’s nuptials distract the viewer from the realest bombshell of the episode—spoiler alert—when Colt tells a fragile Layla that Juliette basically killed her fiancé Jeff Fordham during her suicide attempt. Now we’ll have to wait a few episodes for the slow heat to set Juliette’s drug and alcohol recovery ablaze. But hey, we know what’s coming!