Nashville, Television

Nashville Recap-“You’re Lookin’ At Country”

Nashville-Season-3

 

Here it is folks, the moment we’ve all been waiting for since the first preview 3 weeks ago and 1000 teasers in between …the fake but creepily realistic CMA’s. There were more than a few times that I had to literally tell myself that these are fictional country singers and that I already watched the real CMA’s. Everyone who is anyone is at the CMA’s, which of course means has-beens Scarlett and Deacon are watching from the couch. (To be fair Deacon was invited but he’s all about the music and not about the awards, or so he says, realistically he’s avoiding the Rayna show live.) And make no mistake about it, the CMA’s this year are ALL about Rayna, and we finally get to see the thread of Ruke/Layna’s sham of a relationship begin to unravel more and more…and it is glorious.

The couple doomed from the start, kicks off the CMA’s with Rayna stumbling upon Luke’s pre-nup which will be discussed ad nauseum when Rayna isn’t snatching up all the awards. Don’t worry Rayna, you won’t make it to the altar so there is no need to be concerned about the pre-nup, girl. She forgets about it for a little while when they sit front row at the CMA’s (I mean, obviously) and Rayna starts her winning streak, ya’ll. Award after award she thanks everyone but Luke and we get to see him lose his cool and hit the bottle. Jealousy’s not a good look on you, Luke. Her first thank you is to Deacon…then Liam–essentially she reads a list of all the musicians she’s banged, on live television. GIRL POWER. Luke reacts with some seriously bitchy eye rolls and refills his whiskey. Now this is an awards show where I was waiting on the edge of my seat to see the audience cam on Luke rather than Taylor Swift’s dance moves for a change. His jelly belly reactions were a show all by itself. Finally the CMA’s throw him a bone for his first win-with Rayna of course-for ball and chain. The worst song I’ve ever heard, if we’re being honest. Luke gets his time to act out and it is SO worth it. He grabs the mic, gives a sly backhanded thank you along the lines of, “Rayna should feel blessed and lucky that I chose her to duet with” and then big times her off the stage before she can thank the guy she lost her virginity to. This of course causes Rayna to follow Luke into the men’s room where they duke it out. Luke goes all mean girl and drops a truth bomb right in Ray’s grillpiece that the only reason Rayna got a gold record is because he proposed to her on the day she released it. BOOM. ROASTED. Sassy Luke is here to stay! Just kidding…he grovels immediately after the show and everything is AOK (wink, wink). Also because when Rayna wins Entertainer of the Year she is the mature, bigger person and after thanking her girls (I too, was thankful that they were absent, probably canoodling with their future stepbrothers) and shouting it out to women in country music, Rayna looks right at Luke and with a fake smile says “what’s mine is yours, I share this with you.” Take notes, ladies, because that’s how to deliver a burn. Say it with your eyes, not your words. Although the reporter asking Luke how he likes being Mr. Rayna James worked wonders as well. Here’s to hoping that the writers cut this Ruke/Layna shit soon because another few months of hearing the overuse of babe and I love you to soothe the tension in this relationship will be unbearable.

From one floundering couple to the next, we get to see the tried and true formula for Juliette and Avery’s story line of a problem leading to them almost getting back together again. At this rate they’ll be reuniting in no time. Juliette shows off her 12 months pregnant baby belly in her designer gown and we all get to relish the realism of this show. This is a real dramatic episode for Juliette as she keeps having druggie mama flashbacks and memories resurfacing of her trailer trash childhood. Avery shows us a different side when we meet his parents and soon learn that his dad is a real dick. This episode is about them trying to grasp that they might end up terrible parents because their examples sucked. We get to see Juliette as an 8 year old, red pumps wearing, hussy leaving a child at home and hittin the clubs, which was a real treat. In the end though, once Avery and Juliette share a touching baby moment, it’s a girl…Juliette peeked of course, they both decide that they’re going to be bomb ass parents and then Avery takes her home and unzips her dress and we have about one episode left until he gives in. Also I sincerely wish that they will stop making sexual innuendos between these two until after the birth because she is seriously huge, like Kim Kardashian orca status.

Although the CMA’s are the main focus of the night, the writers can’t help but stir up even more drama at the awards show by making Gunnar’s son go missing in an enclosed arena with a shit ton of security. The fresh parents get caught up in the glitz and glamour of Nashville’s biggest night and allow Micah to go to the bathroom by himself…which I think we all assumed he could handle considering he’s basically in middle school. Well the kid proved to be a moron and got lost looking for the bathroom and instead of just asking someone to lead him back to his dad’s seat..the guy was nominated for an award I think people would be able to figure out where he is…a big scene is created instead. In true Gunnar fashion, he immediately blames Zoey for losing the little runt and then promptly misses winning his first CMA while looking for him. Gunnar has completely lost his chill and basically files a missing persons report with the event policeman…he’s been gone for 10 minutes Gunnar, have you ever seen a cop show? Kid’s gotta be gone for 48 hours before you can report him missing, duhs. Finally when they find the little booger he demands to just go home. Kids literally ruin everything. Zoey realizes that as well and we get our most rewarding moment of the episode when she FINALLY breaks up with Gunnar because he treats her like the toilet paper that was probably stuck to Micah’s shoe. One dead end relationship down, one more to go.

My honorable mentions for side stories this week go out to Layla doing everything she can to shed the dumbass Jessica Simpson label. Reading a diss about herself straight from the teleprompter didn’t help her case so she rebounded with a quick fact about how she deferred Harvard. This led to someone remixing it for Youtube and easily being 100x more interesting and entertaining than her reality show or their lame duet performance. Screaming crowds of fan girls throwing their panties at Will was ironic at best during said performance– so it looks like we’re going to continue to keep him locked tightly in the closet for the foreseeable future. The writers attempted to give Sadie a storyline but it was so lame it deserved no more than 5 minutes of our time. She’s got an ex-boyfriend named Pete who wants a cut of her song about him. Yeah, yeah, go cry to Taylor Swift, Sadie, I’m sure she’s been there before. Yawn city. And unfortunately we see the return of Bachelor Teddy this week as he pursues his gutterslut call girl during the awards. Ugh.

Top Cringeworthy Moments:

-Gunnar combing his son’s hair before the awards like a mom.I half expected him to lick his finger and get a smudge off his face too.

-Bachelor Teddy making slimy comments about “pleasing his constituents” and then taking his hooker into the back room for a quickie. It was on the house…her treat.

-Whatever the people in post production did to create a very creepy life-like 8 year old Juliette with her present day face. I don’t know how it was done but it was suuuuper weird.

-Jeff Fordham approaching Zoey with a possible offer to join his women-hating record label and she lapped that shit right up.

We get another two week break from this debauchery, so please use it wisely. The next new episode will be Christmas and what looks like a realllyyyy cheesy Christmas carol duet with Ruke/Layna but if that text from Deacon was any indication, shit’s about to get real, real quick.
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RHOBH, Television

Real Housewives of Beverly Hills “Guess Who’s Coming to the White Party?”

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I’m trying to become more affluent with my TV recaps, so I’m adding a surefire fountain of material, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills to my lineup. I’ve always been a one city housewives fan (I use the term fan SO loosely) so since I’ve been dedicated to Beverly Hills from the start I hope that I can do it justice for all of my fellow Bravo betches. Since witchy Carlton and hoy-say Joyce got the boot after bringing last season’s ratings down, we have two newcomers this season, both soap opera stars so things are bound to get reeealll dicey.

New additions also means new taglines and boy am I glad that there’s fresh material of these rich bitches giving nuggets of wisdom and lying about how love and family mean more to them than getting paid to show that love and family on reality television. Newcomer Lisa Rinna has the best tagline giving a coy shout out to her infamous blowfish lips. Eileen Davidson, the other new addition, who you will not even see this episode, had a tagline saying she plays a bitch on TV but isn’t one in real life. I for one am grateful for the clarification. As a former addict of Days of our Lives (it was a phase, guys) I only know Eileen as Kristin DiMerra the terror of Salem who drugged and raped the friendly priest and put it on tape to distribute. THAT is the person I expected to see in Beverly Hills and I’m glad that our gal Eileen addressed my concerns immediately.

Anyway, this episode, as the title suggests, centers on the annual White Party that Kyle throws for attention. We get to see the party from the beginning stages of Kyle walking around her backyard with the sloppiest looking event planner in all of America brainstorming how she could possibly top the last one. This gives Kyle PLENTY of opportunity to brag about the party and boy does she snatch that right up. She talks about how expensive the party is now and how EVERYONE wants to come. As the episode goes on and we catch up with everyone else’s lives, Kyle wants to make sure that we haven’t forgotten about her party so she brings it up again later. Did you know that everyone’s trying to get on the list and it’s the party of the year?! Because it was SO unexpected for Kyle.

Are you feeling suffocated by all of the humble bragging? Don’t worry let’s mosey on over to Yolanda’s house for a beach day with her and Brandi. As they descend the mountain, through the lemon grove forest, into the real world, Yolanda discovers that poor people have set up tents to sell most likely counterfeit merchandise on her land. Yolanda exclaims to a homeless Brandi (spoiler alert) that she doesn’t know what goes on on her four acres of land. Read the room, Yo, Brandi is basically couch surfing and you lay this shit on her? Yo shows that she’s one of the people though by telling the vagrants that they can continue to push product on her lawn just as long as it’s not every day. She continues to hold her own as my favorite housewife when she makes Brandi become one with the earth while walking the beach. It’s good to see that out of the train wreck that was last season, Brandi and Yolanda are still my favorites (for now) and still friends (relatively speaking).

Speaking of last season, remember when everyone turned on Lisa because she was being a catty bitch and playing everyone like CHESS–direct quote? Well no one has forgotten and God bless those producers (Andy, I’m assuming) for Lisa’s opening scenes in this episode. She is immediately painted as the villain driving around in her white Porsche to sinister music, on her way to a “secret” meeting with Kyle. The witch is back and nobody’s going to knock her down…insert evil laugh…but seriously they did everything short of having her smoking a Cruella Deville cigarette and wearing a coat made of Giggy’s fur. (NOT GIGGY!!!!) In Lisa’s aside to the camera she basically says that she was attacked, did nothing wrong and has been waiting for the girls to come crawling back to her one by one. DANCE FOR ME, PUPPETS. Of course Kyle is the first to grovel. First they must exchange truly genuine compliments “You look good.” “I do?” “You look skinny.” “I do?” Well done girls, lunch can now begin. Kyle tries to bring up why her feelings were hurt and Lisa immediately shuts it down with a firm, let’s not relive the past and forget that I was ever a dick. Kyle awkwardly agrees and they toast to loyalty, so like, things are GREAT now. Later in the episode we see a similar lunch with Lisa and Yolanda where Yolanda’s all “remember when I was on my death bed and you didn’t visit me?” And Lisa’s all “let’s not go backwards, dahling.” I’m sensing a theme here from our ice queen, anyone else?

Then we move onto our first foray into a new character, Lisa Rinna. Also how was she hired for this show…we already have a Lisa! This is going to get real messy. Lisa Rinna will now be referred to just as Rinna forever more. Ok so we get our introduction to Rinna from Kyle, apparently they bonded over a red yarn bracelet, sorry, Kabbalah and that’s how they’re besties. Kyle wants to make sure her more famous friend is attending her INFAMOUS white party. Rinna makes sure to talk this party down as much as possible by referencing that her husband is in Mad Men roughly 4 times over the course of a 2 minute phone call. (Future drinking game?) Rinna can’t wait to attend the White party as an appetizer to her much more famous A-list Mad Men party for the entrée. We then get the treat of meeting Rinna’s teenage daughters who have typical Hollywood names and talk about Coachella a lot, and finally the man, the myth, the legend, Harry Hamlin, or as Rinna refers to him, God/King. Looks like we’ve got another Yolanda and David Foster on our hands. I can’t wait to see these four interact at a dinner party and compete for who loves their husband more.

And FINALLY, the white party has arrived. I honestly thought the day would never come since Kyle began shoving it down our throats a mere 25 minutes earlier. We get to see everyone get ready, the ice queen in her lair with Ken wearing basketball shorts (a vision that I wish with all my heart I could unsee), Kyle with her entire family including little Portia who is apparently a real asshole now, and Brandi with her gays. Everyone is worrying about who they will have an awkward run-in with at the party, in true RHOBH fashion.

The party kicks off with some weird mermaids, a half naked girl in a hamster ball writhing around the pool and a very sensible white carpet leading from the street to Kyle’s house. I’m sure that looked pristine after EVERYONE who’s ANYONE tromped on it. We quickly learn that this is the ghost of Housewives past episode because all the girls are back in town now, or in laymen’s terms, they all could use a paycheck. Camille, Taylor and Adrienne are all present and even our beloved Kim shows up…late of course (cackle, cackle). The girls relive the old days of pretending they’re in high school forming cliques and grabbing at each other’s boobs. They ask Adrienne how old her new woofie boyfriend is. Here’s a clue Adrienne, if they have to ask it means he’s too young. All of their interactions were creepy at best but then Brandi interrupts the cougar and her young conquest to squash the beef from 2 years ago that they had and everyone has long forgotten about. The flashbacks were really key this episode and certainly not short of the dramatic flair. Adrienne and Brandi decided to hash it out at a later date, showing that maybe these bitches have actually matured and learned from their mistakes and everyone returns to the party to dance away their problems. There is a lot of cringe worthy 8th grade dance shimmying, I’m looking at you, Kyle…Brandi doesn’t join the dance party, cause she’s sober. And we end the bash of the CENTURY with Cruella leaving after giving Brandi the cold shoulder hard. “I’m a fucking good friend,” Lisa declares to no one in particular as her limo slips into the darkness of the night.

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