What I’m Watching: Nashville

Nashville: Season 1, Episode 20 “A Picture from Life’s Other Side” (B-)

With just one episode to go this season, fans of this show can be secure in the fact that it will be back for a second year. Major changes are already underway as of this hour which are sure to have a lasting impact on the show when it returns. Most devastating is Jolene’s death, which serves to contrast the relief that Juliette might have felt by Dante being removed from the equation. I’m unimpressed with how Dante’s arc progressed, that the betrayed Jolene but then turned out just to be in it for the money, making the crucial mistake of starting with one ultimatum and then presenting another when the first was all set to be met. Offering up an SD card in this day and age hardly carries any weight since it's incredibly easy to copy such a thing. Without her mother in her life, Juliette really will be more along, but the tragedy of it all may help her to focus. Whether that brings Avery into her romantic life is another question, and it’s peculiar to see how that has been fast-tracked to the point of almost being ready to happen. Gunnar continues to make Avery-like mistakes in his relationship with Scarlett, and as if saying that he does what he wants with his love life wasn’t bad enough, he had to go get himself arrested and miss Scarlett’s big debut, likely losing her permanently. Tandy’s hostile takeover attempt is mildly intriguing but ultimately irrelevant since she and Lamar are such minor parts of this show, and it’s much more notable that Rayna went to Lamar for help when Teddy tried to block Deacon from being around his daughters. Promising Teddy that Maddie would never learn the truth was an olive branch, but it seems that one of the parents was too stupid to realize that leaving a paternity test lying around the house in a place Maddie would know where to look might lead to her one day finding it.