Nashville Recap: “Move It On Over”

“Move It on Over” is the Hank Williams recording that episode five of Nashville takes its name from this week, and it’s all about people moving on and trying to forget the past. But as the song goes, “move over old dog, cause a new dog’s moving in.” You may be trying to sweep the past under your designer rug, but this is country music. What would you sing about without demons?

Juliette is trying to avoid her mother Jolene, who is holed up back at the mansion, by blowing off some steam in the studio. It’s been a long session, and the players are weary – the only person who seems happy about anything is Powerful New York PR Lady, who wants to leak it to the press that Juliette’s working on new music. And we thought this girl was good – what publicist thinks gossip magazines are actually interested in a celebrity doing something other than having affairs, breaking laws or getting fat? None, that’s how many.

But Juliette has to go home eventually, when they run out of coffee. Walking in to the house, things are weirdly quiet. No cream cheese and ketchup casseroles laying on the table, no drugs scattered about. What’s going on? Uh oh – mom’s passed out in bed with a scruffy looking dude, empty bottles and other junkie paraphernalia everywhere. Juliette freaks, throwing the guy out and being chased by her screaming mother, who runs outside in little more than maroon underpants and a tank top. Everyone is watching (suddenly, Nashville has tons of random people walking around affluent suburban areas), and Juliette’s embarrassed. ““I’m embarrassing?” Jolene says. “I’m not the one who stole a bottle of nail polish, you little princess.” Well, okay. Point taken. Jolene has a weird, crazy-druggy-stereotypical way of being the voice of reason.

Meanwhile, Rayna is prepping for a commercial by trying on a nice maroon-colored dress (I guess maroon is in-style this season?). Mr. Manager, supervising her in the dressing room (creepy) suggests that the outfit would look great as her wardrobe for a new greatest hits record. Rayna balks. “I want my next record to be new, original and great,” she says, gesticulating wildly and using words not too dissimilar to those a classroom of kindergarteners would come up with.

During the commercial taping, Rayna’s twisting her dress awkwardly and standing on a bunch of white pillars (maybe this is a tampon commercial? No wonder she didn’t want to do this). But there’s a problem. The client changed the lyrics to Rayna and Deacon’s tune, “American Beauty” and Deacon’s lawyer is pushing back. Rayna hates phone calls, so she shows up at Deacon’s place to beg and finds him getting back from a fishing trip. Good timing! Deacon says no. No way. Also, doesn’t seem like he caught any fish. Guy just can’t win. So Rayna really has no choice but to try and write a song all by herself. She brings this up to her manager over lunch from a food truck, and he nearly falls in the river at the ridiculousness. “Do what?” he says. You? Alone? What?

Back in the race for mayor, Teddy has totally blown it in a debate. He was already a little nervous after another covert meeting with Peggy, where she spells out everything for the viewers (“we borrowed over two million dollars!” she says.) Teddy’s getting creamed. “The only thing Teddy has ever done is inherit money and lose it,” the Mayor says. He’s not totally right. Teddy also stole some money, too, and lost that. So Teddy has no choice but to run with his tail between his legs to Mr. Wyatt, who makes him confess everything and all. “I did what I had to do,” Teddy says, talking about how he floated funs that Peggy magically made appear, defrauding a credit union. Mr. Wyatt is skeptical. She stole two million bucks for a man she’s not sleeping with?

On music row, Scarlett and Gunnar are hanging out at the publisher’s office. Apparently, Lady Antebellum producer (in real life and on television), Paul Worley, is coming by the office for a writer’s event that the duo will be playing in. “It’s like, an incredibly exclusive writer’s night that can lead to your song getting cut,” publishing assistant and Gunnar-fling Hailey says. Just one thing – Publishing Exec wants to add another guitar player. When Scarlett’s back in East Nashville, Avery suggest that he could play for them, because he is so generous and well-meaning. His true, selfless kindness really turns Scarlett on. Screw the casserole she just made – to the bedroom!

In the session, Paul Worley looks around and nods a lot, which seems to mean things are going well. But all of the sudden, Avery starts going rogue with the guitar, outplaying the singers and throwing everyone off their game. People in the room look around and nod again, this time in the bad way, like they’ve never seen anyone play anything less than tasteful guitar in Nashville.

Unfortunately, Juliette’s mom is still an issue. Since she can’t get through to Jolene, she enlists Deacon, former junky himself, to convince her to go to rehab. They talk about Murfreesboro for a minute and then he gets to it. “[Juliette] needs you clean, understand that,” Deacon says to Jolene, who is tearing up. She eventually agrees, and they both go to drop her off at the facility. Jolene drops pills getting out of the car (for her back!), and then starts throwing a fit, smacking her daughter. Shamed by her own actions and general craziness, she turns around and eventually walks through those scary sliding doors. Back on Deacon’s stoop, he asks Juliette if her mom was always abusive like that. “Once and a while,” she says, and then she tells him that he sounds like her shrink (sexy!) and says thank you.

Meanwhile, in a spooky dark alley, Peggy and Mr. Wyatt are meeting. He’s promised Teddy in their earlier get-together that he’d take care of this situation, and he’s keeping his word. Mr. Wyatt asks Peggy to do nothing and say nothing, and he’ll keep her safe. Later, in yet another meeting in a dark-paneled room with scotch, Mr. Wyatt reports back and tells Teddy they gotta go negative. He’s hesitant, but Mr. Wyatt puts it this way: do you want to win, or not? Teddy wants to win. He agrees. Smear campaign is on! Thank god we have Nashville, I’m in such campaign-withdrawal already.

Over the river at Scarlett’s house, she’s just gotten the bad news that Paul Worley didn’t like that song – he said, in fact, that the backup guitarist hijacked it. For the record, Paul Worley, renowned, Grammy-winning producer and session guitarist, can probably see through a little extraneous playing and not be distracted by someone like Avery. Whatever. Scarlett tells Avery to stop acting out because he’s jealous of Gunnar – she chooses him, she cries. Here’s where she’s wrong: he’s not jealous of Gunnar, he’s jealous of her potentially making it in the music industry. So he claims he just wants things to go back to normal. “You mean me writing poems and keeping them to myself?” she asks. Well, uh…yeah.

At the Bluebird, Deacon is playing a song (music happening! Look at that!) about not wanting to be someone’s sideshow, which is sad and pathetic enough. But to add insult to injury, some drunk patron shouts out “Where’s Rayna? I like it better when she sings!” The Bluebird, celebrated listening room, doesn’t exactly get hecklers, but whatever. Later, Deacon runs into the jerk outside. He tries to apologize, but Deacon’s not having it. He swings and punches. Finally, our first country fistfight is breaking out! I can’t believe we had to wait until episode five for this. Now, that bad news is that apparently someone called the cops, and Deacon gets thrown in the slammer. For his phone call, he rings Rayna. She doesn’t accept it, and goes back to sleep. She’s, shall we say, moving on. Luckily, Juliette shows up to fetch Deacon’s sad-looking face the next morning. Nashville paparazzi are terrible. Here’s your country pop-tart criminal picking up a friend at the police station, and they are totally missing this!

Afterwards in Belle Meade, Juliette is throwing stuff into boxes. She wants to leave this house and all the bad memories of the last few days with her mother that it carries. “But we have a lease,” says the assistant, freaking out. This is a non-negotiable, though. “I want to leave it all in my rearview mirror,” she says, later walking into her new super-modern pad overlooking the Hollywood, er, Nashville hills.

In another secret spot somewhere, Teddy and Peggy are meeting and looking happy that the are going to get away with all their financial misdealings, putting their arms around each other. But wait. Is that a photographer secretly snapping pictures of them together? So that’s where all the paparazzi went! Now here’s the question: is this just a tabloid guy, trying to score some gossip, or is this photog hired by Mr. Wyatt, trying to uncover the real story between Peggy and Teddy?

Either way, it’s not looking to good for Teddy. So move over little dog, cause a big dog’s movin’ in.