shallowness

It took me until after we reached the Nashville guitar to realise that the theme of the episode was honesty...Hard to miss once you’d seen it.

A handy three weeks after the last episode and Juliette has had no sleep, so she’s on a short leash, as always (a bit one note, by now). I was spoiled for ‘Cadence’ being the baby’s name so there was zero tension on that.

The Three Xs managed to maintain their buzz without doing much for that time except not sleeping (Avery) and obsessively watching Scarlett and Gunnar duet (the others.) Phew, she was lying to herself, although Gunnar, with his asinine ideas about winning Scarlett back, is in no position to advise Will on romance. (Is Will gaining some self-awareness?) My headcanon is that Avery fell asleep in his car after the interview, which was why he didn’t return home to write with Juliette. I thought they both needed a respite before their exhaustion-fuelled anxieties made them explode, but what happened was the show both playing their fight and Juliette the diva for comedy and having Juliette be haunted by the ghost of her bad mother and feel oppressed by her life and lack of knowledgeable support system for serious (it’s like none of them researched what would happen when a baby was born, not Juliette, not Avery, not Glenn or Emily).

Er, isn’t she breastfeeding?

Enter Not!Christina Aguilera (spoiled for that too). Obviously Aguilera killed the singing performance and she wasn’t terrible otherwise. I’ll be interested to hear her Joan do something more country.

The little aggro between Jeff and Rayna when they bumped into each other and Layla’s flummoxed reaction as she got the full Supportive Rayna Label Boss were nice little moments.

Rayna and Deacon had to deal with Mattie’s bad coping mechanisms regarding his cancer, which included snogging her near miss stepbrother, who was rather sweet with his father. At least we know Mattie gets her bad coping mechanisms from her biological father.

It was a shame that Deacon didn’t tell Juliette first, in a way, but Luke rose to this episode’s challenges.

I had suspected before it was revealed that Natasha was pressing on Teddy so hard because she’d turned informant.

I am amused at Avery’s attempt to do the right thing for Cadence (not saying it is the right thing) causing his idiot bandmates grief, although I still love the band as a trio. If they’re going to make bad timing The Three Xs’ enemy, it has to be said that they brought it on themselves. I liked the idea that coming together as a trio was the way for them to make it though.