Deacon and Tami
I don't have any story to report here. I just thought you'd like to know that Deacon is still happy.
Hayden and Lucky
"Hey, Hayden, let me mic you up for your show." "That's a euphemism, right?" "No, not yet -- first we have to talk about songwriting and stuff." "Oh. Can't we just jump to the nooky?" "No. It's above my pay grade right now. Let's just smolder with contempt for a while."
Gunnar and Scarlett
This shot aptly depicts the figurative -- and here, literal -- wall between them. Gunnar is busy cultivating an edgy image, and Scarlett debuts as Tami's new discovery at the Opry that night, so she's busy trying to figure out what to wear that night that will make her look at least seven, as opposed to her usual five. Maybe one of Tami's children can help her out.
Hayden
Hayden is not best pleased with her sex tape. This is what happens when you don't go the Kim Kardashian route and make sure you are lovingly lit. Weirdly, she is also watching it with her mother in the room, who can hear everything. Maybe that's payback for all the everythings Hayden didn't want to hear over the years. Anyway, Dante is blackmailing her for two million bucks and she decides to pay because she's paranoid everyone will see it and think she's a problem child.
Clan Tami
Deacon comes over for dinner and has a jam session with the girls. Tami is elated, because the heat of her loins and the fruit of her loins like each other so much and that will come in super handy when Deacon finds out he fathered one of them.
Teddy
Teddy is predictably incensed at this. He decides to file a restraining order against Deacon to keep him 100 yards away from the girls at all times, so that they cannot POSSIBLY play football together unless the play they're rehearsing is "punt return TD from deep in the end zone" or "inhumanly long field goal." That knife will cut the deepest.
Hayden and Lucky
"So let's get your lyrics down on paper." "I HATE LOVE. IT SUCKS." "Love is real." "NO IT ISN'T. LOVE IS A LIE. EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER CLAIMED TO LOVE ME HAS LIED." "Um, Tim Tebow didn't lie. He did love you and you left him at the altar and the made him hate you so that he'd let you go." "STOP THROWING OLD EPISODES IN MY FACE."
CCC, Bucky, Tami
CCC finds out from Scarlett that Tami is desperate to find another act for her label, and she blithely tells him when they're having auditions, so he crashes them. And it seems crazy and Tami is SO polite and doesn't have him thrown out on his ass, and instead he gets up there and nails it and Tami loves him and wants to sign him as soon as possible. Phew. That was easy.
Gunnar
Meanwhile, Gunnar is polishing his douchewad at a local radio station, where he's talking in a low voice and grunting about how in life and music and relationship he just does whatever he wants. He has also abandoned the bouffant for a greasy comb-forward that's more like what his brother was doing. His DEAD brother. Who was on parole and is a fantastic role model.
Scarlett
Scarlett's reaction is both predictable and accurate. She later calls him out on being such an ass and he's all, "I'm playing the role," and she thinks it's stupid and tells him that she'd LIKE him to be there to support her that night if his emotional shitstick would please dislodge itself from whatever crevice it's chosen.
Tandy
Tandy is trying to stage a coup at Powers Boothe's Power Booth. She thinks he's still too out-of-it, and long-term possibly also past it, to make good decisions. Considering Powers Boothe has NO technological device of any kind anywhere in his office, she might not be wrong.
Drug dealer
This affable chap is Mama Hayden's drug dealer. She buys some Oxy from him and then asks him for "something else." Oh, Mama. Drugs are bad. And the wrath of a Hayden scorned is even worse.
Tami and Hayden
These two are co-presenting at the CMAs, and the run-through goes about as well as you could imagine. It's funny. The banter is awful and Hayden cannot deal with how bad it is, but of course Tami is a professional and Hayden is an ass... I love and believe Connie Britton/Tami as a moral core of the show, but the problem with never allowing her to be wrong or act wrong or even make a mistake is that it means the onus is on all the characters AROUND her has to be bad, and that gets exhausting.
Gunnar
Gunnar gets sweatier and growlier and less authentic with each passing commercial break. This of course leads to some thugs asking him where he did his time, and challenging his manhood, so CCC -- who is like Gunnar's behatted guardian angel -- interrupts and intervenes and ends up throwing a punch and BOOM: Ladies and gentlemen, we have a barfight.
Hayden and Mama
Dante ups his price to $10 million, so Hayden finally decides he can shove it -- she'll get ahead of it and tell The View she was double-crossed by a boyfriend, and the CMA votes are already in so that won't matter, etc. FINALLY, some sense. It sucks, but just deal with it and move on. People buy products ALL THE TIME that are shilled by celebrities who have had sex with their boyfriends.
Mama Hayden
When Hayden leaves, Mama steals her phone -- which is when we discover that Hayden and GFY Jessica appear to have the same iPhone cover -- and looks up Dante's number. Despite Hayden explaining that Dante has been using different burner phones every time he calls her, Mama dials one of the numbers and he answers. She tells him that Hayden is going to call his bluff, and says she is still madly in love with him and doesn't want to have to watch a tape of him having sex with her kid because it's going to make her insane and drunk, so she'll bring him the $2 million if he'll give her the SD card. Dante is like, "Well, I am a handsome devil, so all this is probably true."
Powers and Tami
Tami asks Powers Boothe to make the restraining order go away, and he basically promises to do it, because they're tentatively at peace. Tami is also wearing what I THINK are a pair of her regular stage pants and a matching jacket. If a Canadian tuxedo is all denim, what's one that's all gilded? A California tuxedo (because of the gold rush)? A Channing tuxedo (as in Carol, not Tatum)? A Velveeta (because it looks like liquiiiiiid gooooooold)?
Powers
Oh, and one of Powers' henchmen tips him off to the coup, so he shows up at the Power Booth and Powers Boothes his way back into the top seat. Tandy is NOT PLEASED but it's nice to see PB get a little swagger back that doesn't involve blackmail.
Tami
So, Tami puts on a really ugly blouse to communicate how Very Very Serious she is about all this, and thanks to Powers arranging an emergency hearing, she gets the restraining order dismissed. This despite Teddy trying to argue that Deacon is a sleazy dirty drunk -- ignoring that he's been sober for over a decade AND HOPEFULLY LONGER PLEASE GOD DON'T TAKE AWAY HIS GOOD SENSE -- because the judge is like, "We obviously need to talk about this in more depth another time and also you two are being ridiculous." So T & T Music Factory decides to try and handle this maturely, and Tami promises Teddy that she would NEVER EVER take away his paternity of those girls, and that if he's trusted her for this many years he should know he can trust her for eternity, and that Deacon's wang is just not THAT powerful.
Maddie
And that is all the more touching because Maddie is at home rooting through Tami's personal hidey holes, spurred by a conversation they had in which Tami confirms she's dating Deacon but says she can't explain right now why that upsets Teddy so much. Tami should have just told her, "Your father is mad at Uncle Deacon because it's hard to get divorced and see the other person start dating." Instead, she was all, "I CAN'T TELL YOU BUT SOMEDAY I MIGHT WHEN YOU ARE A LOT OLDER." Sigh. People on TV need to learn to speak without alarm bells. Also, this scene really pained me because I NEED THAT CLOSET IN MY LIFE because mine, like Jewel's hands, is so small, I know.
Maddie
And GUESS WHO FINDS HER BIRTH CERTIFICATE? THAT is a good twist (although I am unclear what all she knows; she is just telling someone on the phone that she thinks her dad is NOT her dad). I never pegged Maddie for a safecracker, but this works, because it means there is now a wild card in play. Given that this is a show that is protecting Tami so hard, it is a clever way of avoiding HER being the one to screw up and drop the paternity bomb (if slightly frustrating that yet again the only wrong thing she has ever done is something she did 13 years ago, although in a sense she did effectively re-do that one thing every day since, so there's that). So it's not going to happen out of revenge or cruelty or guilt; it's going to be, probably, that this super confused and sad girl found out the scoop. Of course, I could be wrong, and it could turn out that Tami screams it out during sex this week.
Scarlett
In the green room, with Gunnar a no-show, Scarlett is delivered a box from "a guy in the audience." It's a whisk -- which the previously-on helpfully reminded us is what Lucky Spencer used as a mic to get her over her never-actually-a-real-problem stage fright -- and so we know Lucky is there to support her while Gunnar is busy being the worst.
Tami
Seriously, she looks good in them, but does Tami actively REFUSE to do anything on-stage in things other than pants?
Scarlett
And Scarlett goes up there in a perfectly acceptable dress and a truly dumb pair of boots -- seriously, Tami would have whisked her back to the dressing room and introduced her to a pair of Loubs; I know this whole thing is A Look, but there is A Look, and then there is being professional, AHEM, JOHNNY DEPP. You are at the Opry, Scarlett. Put on a pair of shoes that you wouldn't wear to do the gardening.
CCC and Gunnar
These two are in the drunk tank, where they FINALLY have a conversation. Gunnar sadly says he overreacted and he's really sorry about it; CCC says that his father caught him with a guy and kicked him out, and CCC has never been home nor seen him since, because he's still... figuring it all out. They basically make peace over the whole thing. So even though they may not be making sweet love anytime soon, their storylines about the search for a true identity/the denial thereof are doing some sexy twining.
Scarlett
Scarlett bails them out, and her hair calms down to its most sensible state EVER in time for her to tell Gunnar that she's not in love with his brother, she's in love with HIM. And that trying to emulate his brother is stupid because his brother is a dead jailbird, and, in fact, look where they are now: in jail. She further notes that grief sucks but it's no excuse for being a total idiot. She is completely right. She may dress a fool, but girlfriend knows right from wrong. I can't tell if she fully dumps him, but she definitely tells him that this isn't working because Gunnar's Ne'er-Do-Well Brother is not the person she invited to the fiesta in her bloomers.
Mama
Mama H chops up her oxy and snorts it, then chugs a bunch of booze, and is a jittery mess...
Mama
... and then she meets Dante at her apartment and pulls a gun on him and tells him to give up the SD card or else she will shoot her sorry ass. And I guess she got drunk and high first to give her the guts to do this, which suggests she was completely prepared to take it to its inevitable bloody conclusion...
Dante
AND BOOM. She does. So now Dante is dead, and Mama freaks out and then does some more drugs and chugs some more booze. And the next morning, with Dante still lying dead on the floor and about five minutes to spare before Hayden goes live, she woozily calls Hayden and tells her not to do The View. Hayden immediately hears that she's high and weird, but Mama hangs up on her and so Hayden freaks out and runs to her...
OMG
... but by the time she gets there, MAMA IS DEAD. Overdose. Hard to say if it's intentional or not, but she is bigtime dead either way. Hayden is actually legitimately heartbreaking when she finds her, tapping her cheek and begging her "mommy" not to be dead. It's always a sign of tragedy when "mommy" comes out to play. I want to go hug my kids.
Hayden
And as the overdose story goes public, Hayden watches with silent tears, and I have to give it to her for not letting vanity get in the way here. Obviously, she is pretty no matter what, but in this scene she actually LOOKS like she's been crying so hard she is running dry of tears. Nicely done. I still can't believe they did this NOW -- I figured it would happen later, after a real reconciliation, but in a way this is more heartbreaking because Hayden was still pushing her away. Sniff. Well done, Episode 20. I didn't expect this here. Although I just now found out there are only 21 episodes, this season... unless tonight's is two hours, which would sort of count as 21 and 22. Regardless: One more airing. SO much juice.