It was pretty clear from the jump that Rayna was going to die. Because the doctor determined all too quickly that she just had a crushed pelvis -- NBD, JUST MUSHED-UP BONES -- but would be fine, and the rest of the time was spent smiling beatifically at people and dispensing wisdom. There was basically no other plot at all.
Deacon is perfect in this hour. Just perfect. The depth of his sadness, worry, and fear is extreme, even as he tries not to let it show. Chip Esten makes so many choices that are small but exact. Even the lingering spectre of Death stopped to watch him act.
Daphne never leaves the hospital, even though she has a choir concert that night. And Gunnar, Scarlett, Will, and Bucky shuttle through this time-lapse-style shot of the waiting room. YOU GUYS. Bucky is going to have such a hard time with this. Maybe he and Glenn can move to Hawaii and discover a passion for each other.
Maddie, however, freaks out and blames herself -- something about how Rayna would've been home if she hadn't gone to see Clay sing, although Rayna probably had to go to the office anyway? -- and so everyone tells her she doesn't need to stay, now that Rayna's diagnosis is just Reconstructed Pelvis. She spends the night wandering around with Clay and crying, and realizing that she is a horrible teenager who actually likes her mother a fair amount and should have treated her better.
Another clue Rayna is going to die: All she can talk about is wanting to write one more perfect song to finish the collab album, because "it wasn't all pain." She's very single-minded about how they NEED to button the album with "that last little thing you hear that suddenly makes everything make sense." Death polishes his scythe and nods, knowingly. Prepare yourself for lots of scenes of Deacon figuring out how to do this himself, and crying. In glasses.
Juliette turns up to tell Rayna that all she ever wanted was for Rayna to be proud of her and LOVE HER LIKE THE MOTHER SHE NEVER HAD (I might be interpreting there), and Rayna tells her not to do a gospel album because she does not have the pipes. Just kidding. She actually tells Juliette she sees a lovely change (wouldn't it have been nice to tell Juliette that she was ALWAYS a worthy and worthwhile person, RAYNA? I know you're slowly dying but come on now): "It’s like after you fell out of the sky, something shook out of you. Now you’ve got me wondering, after this whole nightmare, what’s going to shake out of me?” Death chortles, "YOUR LIFE," before faking a coughing fit.
I did love that Juliette brought her a purple quilted eye mask, because it might make it easier to sleep in the hospital. Remind me to do that for any lady I know who has a C-section, because those are a TIRED few days of harshly lit bedrest.
We now pause for a perfunctory attempt at a story: Gunnar can't stop moping about Scarlett having more sex with Damian, and what that means for them, and what he can do to make her love him again. He even mentions needing to be forgiven, or something? Can I repeat again that GUNNAR NEVER WRONGED HER TO BEGIN WITH. THEY WERE NOT A COUPLE. If she can explore her sexual awakening with Damian while living with Gunnar, why can't he have slept with whoever he wanted WHEN THEY WERE NOT DATING?
Then Carla Gugino shows up as Rayna's mother, whom Rayna is hallucinating. She smiles lovingly at Rayna and says she's just there to watch over her. "AND CLAIM HER FOR THE OTHER SIDE," howls Death, doing a jig on top of one of Rayna's albums.
Apparently Connie and Carla are best friends in real life, and you can see that radiating off both their faces. It's actually very touching. Deacon comes in and Rayna's all, "Mom came to help me write our song," and because this is Nashville and people are sensible, Deacon assumes it's a brain bleed/the work of the Spirit World, and immediately gets her head examined. Everything is fine, the doc reports, as Death drops an actual red herring into the hospital fish tank.
Now it's Scarlett's turn: Rayna wants all the exposition she can get, so Scarlett tells her that she's enjoying Damian, but that it's so compelling when Gunnar prostrates himself to her with declarations of undying love. Rayna tells her that just because someone loves her, doesn't require her to love them back, because she's not just an object life happens to: "A man says he loves you, so he gets to be with you. But the truth is that we get to choose, too." Well, yeah. But recall this: Scarlett was the one who fell back in love with Gunnar before he realized he loved her too. I have literally no idea what crack the writers were smoking on this one. There's a story here that would work; it's just not the one they're telling.
Then Daphne snuggles with Rayna, while Rayna encourages her to sing at the concert because she has a musical gift and it's her obligation to share that with the world. Sheesh. No pressure, Rayna. Sometimes good singers would still rather be brain surgeons. And vice versa. But, you know, Death is picking his teeth with Rayna's hospital-issue plastic fork, so she has to tell Daphne SOMETHING about singing. Watching them cuddle is excruciating, though. My ovaries are crying again just looking at this.
But lo, Pubescent Adam Driver convinced the choir -- which he is not even in -- to come to Rayna's hotel room so that she can hear the performance. This is so sweet that let's not even wonder what happened to the people at school who were waiting for this performance. Maybe it hadn't happened yet and they were going to give Daphne's solo to someone else. However, it's not going to happen at ALL now, because you know what's coming. You SO know. Get your tissues please.
At the start of the hour, Daphne is rehearsing when she sees Scarlett come in to pick her up, and it dawns on her that something is really wrong. Now, as she's singing her heart out to Rayna, it happens to her AGAIN. Death fires up his iPod and the choir starts to perform "Make You Feel My Love." The Adele version, not the Bob Dylan one, although I would have LOVED IT if Daphne opened her mouth and a bunch of baritone grunting came out. (Chill, Bob fans, I'm teasing. He's more of an alto.) And as if that song didn't already make me want to claw out my tear ducts, it's right during Daphne's solo that all of Rayna's internal organs go on strike. This poor girl will never be able to see a choir again, and let's be real, this ENTIRE group of children is never going to forget the day they -- like Joey Potter before them - sang someone to death.
Bascially, Rayna's kidneys are failing, and tissue from her bone marrow is leaking into her blood stream, or something, causing all her OTHER organs to go kerflooey? They said something about how this usually fixes itself but it isn't with her? Fug Nation's MDs will be able to set me straight. I'm not sure how likely it is that they wouldn't have noticed this during multiple checks, but whatever. The point is: Death has pureed Rayna's innards.
Deacon sneaks one last moment with her where she is conscious, and tells him she KNOWS he can stay together and strong for the girls. Their last kiss comes before he promises over and over that he will, but he can't NOT sputter, "Don't leave me," as she crashes again. God, this is sad, but Chip Esten is gold in these moments.
Scarlett, who has been a rock this hour for Maddie and especially Daphne, totally loses it. It's going to take her WEEKS to knit herself back up to speed.
Maddie makes it back JUST in time -- she had been out with Clay, and then stuck in traffic so she had to sprint (this episode played it confusingly with time of day and how dark it was/wasn't outside at any given moment; it comes off like Maddie was MIA for 36 hours). So get ready for weeks of self-shaming by Maddie for not having stayed at the hospital for one last memory with her mother.
Through a contrivance that has Juliette getting an MRI for phantom leg pain that turns out to be nothing, she not only uses Rayna's same ER doctor (right), but is there when Rayna crashes. So she chucks her crutches and gets right next to Rayna's body, while Scarlett is hovering in the doorway. Oh, Juliette. You ARE still yourself. I'm sort of surprised she didn't start singing the same song Hallie sang to her? But that's probably because...
... everyone clears out so that Deacon and Daphne and Maddie can take your heart and pat it and then pulverize it with a spiked mallet. Daphne even calls Deacon "Dad" in here, all casual-like, and I could SWEAR Chip Esten gives a very subtle little twitch, like he heard it but he didn't want to break her flow or make the moment about him. The Stellas are really wonderful in this scene. They start to sing their song we've heard several times, about wanting to live a life that's good, and the girls are genuinely trying to power through it amid sobbing -- not in an Acting way, but in just the most raw sense imaginable. It really does feel like someone's actual mother is dying.
This won't really track in a still shot, but they cut to Connie Britton during the song, and I swear to God she was having a hard time keeping her face still. I think she too was about to lose it under there.
And for a split second, Rayna's eyes open, and through her ravaged and blurry POV we see her family come into focus for one last time before she flatlines. And they all collapse onto her and into each other and then my entire face falls off of my body and into mush on the floor as Death puts on a Dillon Panthers hat.
And Dawson cannot even deal.
And Donna Martin totally loses her mind.
Goodbye, Rayna. Connie Britton's warm energy, and her thoroughly believable, lived-in rapport with Deacon and her kids, will be terribly missed on this show. But her death OUGHT to give the stories new life, or at least, give us all an excuse to cry ourselves stupid every week now that This Is Us is close to finishing for the year. Oh my God, can Nashville use Ron Cephas Jones next year? Think it over.