Tami Taylor
Connie Britton plays a fiery-haired country queen named Rayna -- not so far removed from Reba, name-wise, but also a homophone for reina, which means "queen" in Spanish, so that's one hammer to the temple. She is performing at the Opry in jeans that ... might have paisley etched on them? ... and a sequined jacket that I pretty much want, but otherwise, there is not as much sizzle as I would've expected. The show clearly needs her to be Down To Earth and Relatable, so that her rival can be all sparkles and snipe, but: It's not like Reba is so down-home when she performs. That woman has worn the hell out of some tall hair and a sequin. So I'm guessing they want her to be more kin to Faith Hill. Although that won't work until she's CGI'd and wearing heinous clothes and singing things about Al Michaels before an NFL broadcast.
Bunny
Hey there, Bunny from The Wire! He's been in tons of other stuff, too -- Burn Notice, Prison Break -- but he'll always be Bunny to me. Here, he is a Nashville mayoral candidate. Tami Taylor loves him and promises to play at his announcement press conference. WE'LL SEE.
Hayden
Meet Hayden "Juliet Barnes" Panettiere, the ingenue, a.k.a., the Leighton Meester of TV Country Strong Without The Drugs And The Bird. She has her own perfume, and she is not very nice to people, including throwing a phone in the garbage can -- a new phone with a new number nobody was supposed to know -- when a call from her mother comes in. She is also instructed to go be nice to her labelmate Tami Taylor, news which she greets with a grunt. I feel like she is supposed to be... Taylor Swift, musically (Tami later likens her stuff to cats wailing), but Carrie Underwood, physically. And ... sequin-ally.
Deacon
This is Deacon, Tami's hot band leader. It took me a really long time to realize that I remember him from a) an asston of guest spots on every TV show ever, and b) Whose Line Is It Anyway?, dating back to when I watched the UK version on Channel 4. So he and I go back, is what I'm saying. Anyway, Hayden passes him in the hallway and fawns all over his little-heard songs and spiritually, if not actually, rubs up against him and gives him a tongue-bath. Just in case you weren't sure where this was headed.
Tami
This is the face Tami Taylor makes when Hayden, supposed to be nice, shuns shaking her hand at first and then tells her that her mama used to listen to Tami's music when Hayden was still in the womb. We need to discuss that Tami's hair is AWESOME and this just makes what she did to it at the Emmys even sadder.
Hayden
Hayden is pleased with herself, and her cleavage high-fives itself. This is one of those screengrabs where... I think this is what my brain tricks me into thinking my hair looks like, and then when I pass a mirror it's like, holy ratfest, Batman. I like my deludiverse better.
Hayden
Hayden is a Big Freaking Deal, though. She sings a song that's pure Underwood about crying black mascara tears. People love it. She struts and she thrusts and she sounds totally fine -- Taylor Swift should be so lucky -- and this is the part where Gwyneth would be drinking herself into a coma in the closet, if she were here.
Tami Taylor
But Tami isn't a drooling mess, so she just takes off her shoe and throws it and says, "Shut UP," to the monitor in her dressing room. See, Tami has just been told that her tour isn't selling out and her album is tanking, so the new label prez wants her to "co-headline" Hayden's tour. Which is poor code for "open for her." Tami doesn't care for this. Tami does not want to be the bird in that box. The bird in THAT box gets handed off under a bathroom stall and never seen again.
Tami, Powers Boothe, and "Tandy"
Rayna's sister is named "Tandy," apparently, and they get along fine. But Tandy IS a bird in a box, and that box is in her father Powers Boothe's desk drawer, where she will eventually run out of air and die. Powers is the mayor of Nashville, Tandy is his assistant, and by the expression on Tami's face, you can tell she has a bad relationship with daddy. Even the giant lace shirt-coat she wore -- her Churchy finest -- cannot disguise that in her mind, this Powers Boothe Day they're declaring is forever going to be a day where she goes to a giant field and shoots at whiskey bottles.
Randy
This is Randy, whom I recognized from that season of One Tree Hill where he coached Nathan and we kept yelling at our TV for him to hook up with somebody. Possibly even Nathan. ANYONE. He was too cute to be so untapped. Here, he is Tami's producer, but he's also working with Hayden. And right here she is giving him the business, so to speak, so he drools all over the sound board until it shorts out.
The Tami Taylor Family
Also, Tami has daughters, and a really super fake-looking green-screen/"I'm tooooootally not pretending to drive an immobile car on a sound-stage" set-up. Seriously, it was so fake-looking that the whole time her kids were turning up Hayden's song and belting out the lyrics (with perfect pitch, naturally), I kept waiting for Toonces the Driving Cat to pop up and drive them off a bridge.
Teddy
This is Tami's husband, Teddy, played by Eric "Without A Trace" Close. Eric here goes to my post office, and I've seen him in line there being unfailingly chatty and pleasant, as if he knows everyone there, even using their names. They were like, "When are we going to see you in something again?" and he replied, "I'm working on it," and tapped the envelope he was mailing. Maybe it was this. Anyway, thumbs up to Eric Close.
Thumbs sideways to Teddy, who apparently has no job because some stuff "fell through" with whatever he did before. He tries to help Tami through this dilemma about what to do with her tour, but it ends up being an exposition-fest through which he feels like kind of a sad-sack and it's apparently he's not bringing in the cash and they're not very liquid and she needs a hit so they can afford the house and... how come nobody is pointing out that they could SELL their massive, massive house? The economy isn't so bad that millionaires don't still want to collect mansions.
Randy
Tami goes to Randy's house to tell him that she wants to sing some of the poppy songs she'd rejected before, and release them as "bonus tracks." He tells her it's too late (my guess: Hayden got them). She gripes about how she can't listen to Hayden's stuff because it sounds like evil...
Hayden
... and GUESS WHO is lurking upstairs wearing nothing but a bedsheet? This guy was in Remember The Titans with Hayden when she was 11 and he was 25, and now he's having TV sex with her. That must be really, really, really weird. Like, talk-to-your-therapist weird.
Deacon and Hayden
Hayden also apparently likes older men a whole lot, because she goes to one of Deacon's acoustic shows and weeps through one of his songs, then accosts him in the parking lot and breathes heavily in his face and asks him to join her tour as HER lead guitarist. She says something about being a persistent woman, and he says, "You're a girl," and she gets right up into his nostrils and slurps, "THAT TOO." She took her hat off for that part, though. So awkward when your brim pokes a man in the eyes while you're trying to make them pop out of his head.
Gunnar and Deacon
Deacon, by the way, is playing at the Bluebird Cafe, a Nashville legend. One of his dudes, who is in love with Deacon's waitress niece, is named Gunnar -- of COURSE, and also subtle, because he's having trouble getting his guns to blaze correctly.
Scarlett and Avery
Deacon's niece Scarlett, of course, has only MODESTLY wavy hair -- as opposed to Hayden's lion's mane; I believe your curl formation on this show DIRECTLY correlates to your career trajectory (Hayden: lively; Tami: loose; Scarlett: unruly; Tandy: straight). She is also dating Lucky Spencer from GH, who seems kind of pretentious and I believe we're supposed to think he's Bad News because his hair is longer than his chin.
Tandy and Powers
Powers wants to ... I don't know. Something about a stadium. He decides to hand-pick a mayoral candidate he can get elected who will then further his own agendas, and decides on Tami's husband Teddy. They know this will piss off Tami, which for Powers is a fun bonus. Nobody seems to mind that Teddy is currently unemployed and of dubious qualification for anything.
Tami and Deacon
Tami is depressed about her career problems, so she and Deacon go on a walk to talk it out. It's revealed that the two of them were involved in the past, and kind of still want to be, but can't, for mysterious reasons and also the fact that she's married. But there's a lot of twinkling at each other, and I'm already rooting for them to JUST DO IT. When it happens, and it will, Nike should pay for a swoosh on the sheets.
Hayden
Meanwhile, Hayden is blowing off a studio session to cry in a broom closet, because her junkie mother called demanding money, lying that she's TOTALLY clean now. Hayden hangs up on her and weeps, secretly delighted that she happened to be dressed like a very fancy extra in Annie for this scene.
Hayden and Randy
She seeks solace in Randy's mouth. It is there, tucked waaaay back in one of his molars.
Powers and Teddy
Teddy, meanwhile, is powerLESS -- har, har -- in the face of Powers' insistence that he run for mayor. He does point out that he's completely unqualified and that he screwed up all the financials on his last business venture, but Powers doesn't care, and basically, you do not say no to that man or else he will CUT YOU. When he came up to us in the Emmy line, we -- and the people around us -- all said we were mostly interviewing the gown-clad ladies, but I think we were all just terrified of asking Powers Boothe a stupid question. Anyway, he heard this excuse, and said something funny like, "But my outfit is fantastic!" And kind of curtsied. It was great. It made me wish I was better at thinking on my feet. All I could think to ask was, "What the hell were you guys saying on Deadwood that whole time? I was confused."
Tami
Tami is upset, but at least she has her tantrum in my dream kitchen, so I get to ogle it. Teddy basically whimpers that he knows he wasn't her first choice, but that he's stepped aside for her career forever and now it's his turn and maybe she won't have to work now, and she's like, "Well, but I didn't ASK for that," and then her range hood winks at me and the stove is all, "Come to me -- we could make such good soup together," and I pass out.
Scarlett and Gunnar
Scarlett is a poet. She writes poems, see. Not songs. Poems. Oh, but sometimes she imagines them set to music. But they're poems. So guess what? Gunnar sets one to music for her, and it just so happens she writes poetry in a very musical meter, with bridges and a chorus and everything. But can she SING? Probably not, right? There's no way.
Album covers
I love the titles of Tami and Hayden's albums. Also, Hayden's album cover is so deliciously heinous. It looks like a poster for National Lampoon's Touched By An Angel.
Tami
So Tami goes to see her record exec, and tells him -- pointedly, but with casual charm -- how she stuck by the company from when it was tiny, because she's LOYAL, and all she wants after 21 years is for them to stick by her tour and her album. Her exec promptly tells her where she can stick THAT idea, and tells her to decide whether to join Hayden's tour. Tami blinks and says, awesomely, "You can kiss my decision as it's walking out the door." I love you, Tami. Even if your suit is boring.
Tami, Powers, and Tandy
Then, Tami throws a MAJOR hissyfit at her father, insisting that she's going to go ahead and play at Bunny's mayoral campaign kick-off party and she hates him. Powers unleashes a VERY soapy tirade about how her cherished success isn't actually self-made -- apparently he secretly bankrolled her first album -- and hints that her oldest child is actually Deacon's. Tami loses her shit underneath a giant portrait of Melanie Wilkes, or something.
Heh
Then suddenly Tami ends up inside one of those "inspirational" posters people put on their walls with "PERSEVERANCE" written underneath them.
Randy
Okay. So Randy shows up unannounced at Hayden's house, and outside her gate, he rolls up and just tells security her name, and they wave him through. So apparently the only criteria for getting into her house is... knowing her name? She should fire her security. Especially because the unwanted interruption forced her to slam the door in his hot, confused face...
Hayden and Deacon
...because she was busy trying to get a leg over Deacon, fulfilling the earlier promise of rubbing up against him and giving him a tongue-bath. Tami had told him she didn't want her career bumps to hold him back, and they agreed they both wished they could do over both nothing and everything, so... apparently he's trying to turn back time and, like Ron Swanson, find himself a Tami II and see if it works out better.
Scarlett and Gunnar
Meanwhile, Gunnar tricks Scarlett up on-stage to sing her poem and WHAT DO YOU KNOW, the girl can croon. This is so terribly surprising. NOBODY saw it coming. The meek one dressed like Bridget Fonda in 1997 SURELY never turns out to have hidden talents!!!! WTF???
Old Man
This grizzled old dude is Tami's mentor, or something. And he calls her and plays her a piece of the song -- which is, admittedly, good ol' you-doin'-me-wrong slow country sass -- and tells her he has a plan.
Tami
Tami is all, "A PLAN. Anagram THAT and you've almost got NAPALM. IT'S ON BITCHES."
Tami and Teddy
Except that she's already fastened the metaphorical pearl necklace of her subservience to Teddy's mayoral campaign. Right down to the world's most unflattering red Power Dress. Tami Taylor would NEVER have allowed that garment on her body, but then again, Coach Taylor would never have done ANY of this and would've told Powers to stuff it up his Boothe. Sniff. Guest spot?