Centered around Juliette throwing Deacon a surprise birthday party, this episode is about a B- for advancing several of the story lines but lacking any terribly exciting moments. While being only slightly bitchy for herself as she is shopping at the mall and barely looking up from her phone per usual, Juliette her mom’s (who acts about as well as The Rock) idea to throw a party for Deacon but notes recovering substance abuse patient mom probably shouldn’t be involved with a party [obvious foreshadowing]. Throughout the episode, we learn that Deacon hates his birthday and ridiculously spends it alone every year watching the depressing movie Old Yeller [cut to me rolling my eyes the three or four times this is mentioned by various characters]. Juliette enlists the help of Deacon’s niece Scarlett to lure Deacon to the Bluebird (because where else would the party be) by promising to let Scarlett and Gunnar open for her at the party.
Meanwhile, Rayna is trying to manage the pending divorce with Teddy and tells him to keep his skank girlfriend Peggy away from their daughters. But in the middle of this divorce, Rayna decides to go out in public to the grocery where the girls find a tabloid discussing the divorce that claims Rayna is having an affair with Deacon (which starts to alienate the oldest daughter from Rayna). Amongst stares from the crowd, Rayna dashes the girls out while instructing her sister to buy all the magazines (because that’s going to help in 2013 with the internet). Later, Rayna decides to go out in public again with a huge crowd of TMZ-types following her every move to the girls ballet class. At the ballet class, a catty southern woman tells her not to worry about what the papers are writing because everyone in town has thought she’s been having an affair with Deacon for years. Later in a press conference, Teddy defends Rayna saying the Deacon story was taken out of context and that neither has been unfaithful (and then after this blatant lie immediately names Peggy to be an advisor).
In the Gunnar and Scarlett [Gunlett] household, they find a gun in Gunnar’s ex-con brother’s things and Gunnar later goes to confront his brother. His brother tells he he needs the gun because people are out for him [obvious foreshadowing] but Gunnar throws the gun into the river telling the brother he’s done with him. And in the Juliette mansion, she is working on a so-so song (most likely for the party) while refusing to be a part of her mom’s recovery with an addiction counselor other than paying for it and providing housing.
At the Bluebird, Deacon is surprised and mildly feigns displeasure [insert more Old Yeller stories here]. At the packed party, I read there were six or seven real “country stars” making cameos although I had only heard of half of them and the other half I didn’t notice. Outside the party, Avery can’t get in because he’s not on the list [Side note: there was some small side story with him buying and selling a guitar but I didn’t care enough to try and figure it out]. Gunlett goes on and sings a pretty good song to which Juliette notes, “if I had known they were this good, I wouldn’t have put them on the same stage as me.”
Rayna (after spending the day writing a new song) shows up at the party to the surprise of everyone amidst all the affair rumours. In the only decent Rayna/Juliette exchange all episode [and let’s be honest, that’s the best part of the show], Rayna tells Juliette she has a song she wants to sing to which Juliette basically says “we’ll see” and walks off. Cut to shots of Juliette’s mom eyeing a glass of champagne and it becomes obvious she’s going to be in the Lindsey Lohan school of rehab. Then surprisingly after the commercial, mom is falling down drunk and Juliette has to take her home before she can sing her little song to Deacon.
Never one to waste a good opportunity, Rayna jumps on stage and sings her song about her messed up love story slash mixed feelings with Deacon [which I liked the song a lot – better than Juliette’s earlier one I thought]. After the song, Rayna and Deacon have yet another ambiguous conversation (resolving nothing) that ends with Rayna saying she wants to “do right by Deacon.” My biggest complaint about this episode is that Juliette didn’t get to see Rayna singing the song to Deacon and Juliette’s reaction to said song [that and producer Liam was barely in it].
In the beginning of a separate storyline at City Hall, Rayna’s evil dad Lamar visits Mayor Teddy and semi-threatens him to appoint some crony to be Deputy Mayor. Later, Teddy forges an alliance with his campaign opponent Coleman against Lamar and asks Coleman to be Deputy Mayor instead of Lamar’s choice. We’ll see where this goes.
Back at the Juliette mansion, the mom apologizes and Juliette tells the counselor some overly dramatic story about how she almost let her mom die from holding a lit cigarette while asleep because mom spent the money for her 9th birthday party on drugs. Oh, and Juliette gives Deacon a puppy for his birthday.
Earlier at the party, the police came and took Gunnar away. At the time, you thought it was for harboring his fugitive brother but in actuality it’s to identify his brother’s dead body at the morgue. Thank God – I was tired of the fugitive brother storyline as soon as it started and glad it’s over. Gunnar arrives back at the Gunlett house distraught and tells Scarlett what happened with his brother. To which Scarlett jumps on top of him faster than Kristen Stewart on a director. I mean really, is this the best moment to decide to finally have sex with Gunnar? I thought it was a little on the absurd side but am interested to see what happens at the same time. And that’s where it ends.
