lauren stern is country strong…
Plot: Country music star Rayna James (Connie Britton) is forced to make a decision after her album falls flat: To tour with new successful successful country star and rival Juliette Barnes (Hayden Panettiere) or to leave her label and become an independent country artist.
A few days ago, I was watching post-season baseball (go Yankees!) when a commercial popped up on the screen that said something along the lines of “From the network that brought you successful shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives comes this other new awesome show with potential success called Nashville starring Hayden Panettiere (obviously this is not the exact line, but you get the picture). I can’t deny that this commercial caught my eye mostly because Panettiere flashed on my screen singing country music. I mean lets face it: Panettiere rocks every show or movie she stars in. So this couldn’t be so bad, right?
Well…
What’s likable about Nashville is that it’s different. If you like country music and you really want to see how a major record company works, this is a good show to watch. The cast, which mostly consists of fairly unrecognizable faces, fit really well into their roles. Like most expected, Panettiere shines, but who knew she had it in her to play a bitchy country-pop star? Her performance was totally awesome, as always.
But other than that, there were a lot of problems for me.
First of all, within the first 10 minutes, I had no idea what was going on! Thank god for commercials because If I was flipping channels, I probably would have thought I stumbled upon the CMT awards. There was just no real introduction of the characters or the plot. It was just a weird start, a start that definitely had the potential to turn viewers off.
Second, I felt like some of the plot was rushed through. There were some points where I totally didn’t understand the some of the conversations that were going on. It was only after reading about it online that I truly understood some of the scenes. I feel like they have a lot of room to really extend the story lines and they really just squished it into the pilot. For that reason, the slow just didn’t really flow right to me.
Third, it was kind of boring at times. I’m not going to lie, there were a lot of times throughout the episode where I was like “Wait why am I still watching this again?” It could be that I was never a big country fan to begin with, but I’m willing to bet that doesn’t make a difference.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like Nashville, it’s just that it didn’t totally blow my mind as expected. At the end of it, I definitely thought that I would have a much different opinion about it if it was a movie instead of a TV show. Despite it’s unique plot and it’s great cast, I just don’t think it has the potential to join it’s successful ABC counterparts. But who knows, this is just the first episode. Maybe I will be proven wrong.
I actually really liked Nashville. But then, I and a couple of friends I work with at DISH are big country music fans, which helped. I admit that they tried to put a lot into the pilot episode, but it was entertaining and they had a few good songs in there. Most notable was If I Didn’t Know Better, which was originally done by The Civil Wars. I’m thinking about recording Nashville’s entire season on the chance there will be more songs like that. My Hopper has enough recording space to save all the episodes, and I’d really like to catch more music like that. I’ll probably end up buying the songs I like, but until then I’ll make a list from the recordings. I hope you give the show another chance; you might like it more as the show develops.