‘Nashville’ Recap: Girl’s Best Friend and Boys’ Night Out
TV’s Queen of Country, Rayna Jaymes has been taking some cues from actual country queen (and original badass) Loretta Lynn and her 1968 single, “Your Squaw Is on the Warpath”). OK, so Rayna is nobody’s squaw, but she was definitely on the warpath this week, especially when it came to Jeff Fordham (a/k/a Sleazy Face). But she saved a little of her ire for ex-husband Teddy, too. The backdoor dealings (i.e. blackmail) that led to Rayna’s daughter, Maddie, getting signed to Edgehill Records, which, of course, happens to be the chief rival of Rayna’s Highway 65 label, didn’t sit well with Rayna, who opens a gift bag with a $40,000 diamond necklace inside and a note to Maddie from Jeff saying he’ll be “the diamond of the label.” Seriously, Jeff? You can afford a $40,000 necklace, but you can’t hire a writer to come up with a better line than that? And, while we’re at it, any record label that blows 40-Gs on a necklace must be selling a boatload of records. What is this, 1978?
Rayna barges into Jeff’s office and demands to know what’s going on, since she wasn’t in on the deal. Rayna doesn’t take the news – that Teddy gave his consent and only one parent’s permission is required – very well, so Jeff calls to have her escorted from the premises. Bad move, Jeff! Rayna’s next stop is Teddy’s office, where he tells her he’s like the cool parent Maddie can count on or something (we couldn’t quite hear it over the sound of Rayna’s brain about explode all over the room). Even if it’s true that Rayna, with her tour and her aborted wedding plans, has been otherwise occupied lately, she assures Teddy that he really messed up. And that’s before he comes clean with her about Jeff’s blackmail, the underage Layla’s almost-deadly dip in the pool, and Teddy’s dalliance with a “professional.” Teddy tells Jeff he never should’ve helped and he should be in jail instead of standing around with that smirk on his face. We couldn’t agree more, but that’s beside the point.
Rayna storms into the Edgehill conference room the next morning, where Jeff is pitching Maddie to the board and its chairman, played by BADASSSSS director/actor Mario Van Peebles, but she’s the one who’s badass here. For a while, it looked she was going to do the whole Joan Crawford “don’t fuck with me, fellas” scene from Mommie Dearest. Telling them her daughter couldn’t make it to this “little meeting,” Rayna suggests to the board that they look into Jeff’s discretionary spending “because he hasn’t used much discretion.” Jeff counters with something that basically sounds like “my label’s better than your label. Na na na na nah!” Rayna spills the beans about the pool party and says, “I’m not going to sit here and watch while he treats his female artists like that.” Mr. Chairman assures her the contract never existed and the chairman says and has some things to discuss with Jeff. When next we see Jeff, he is at Layla’s door, explaining to her that her meeting with the board that morning was cancelled because was fired. That’s one (and only one) instance where we would like to have seen Donald Trump in MVP’s place, uttering that infamous phrase and trying to outdo Jeff in the smug, self-righteous looks department.