‘Nashville’ Sneak Preview Review: Hee Haw!
Nashville, the frisky hound-dog soap opera that ABC abandoned at the side of the road, has been picked up by CMT (and Hulu). The fifth season doesn’t start until Jan. 5, but CMT is airing a sneak preview of the season premiere on Thursday night. Creator Callie Khouri has been joined by new showrunners Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, the men who brought you thirtysomething, My So-Called Life, and Once and Again — richly emotional dramas (if you’re a fan) or slow, maudlin nighttime soaps (if you’re not a fan).
Me, I’m a fan, and I was eager to see what Herskovitz and Zwick would do, especially because I could not imagine two guys who probably had less familiarity with country music and its industry. What follows are some spoiler-free observations of tonight’s sneak peek.
Related: Nashville: Meet the New Faces of Season 5
First, H&Z have not supplanted Khouri — in fact, she directed the first episode. This is good, because Khouri’s sensibility has always been closer to that of H&Z than the frenetic soap opera Nashville was forced to become at its most vulnerable moments. I always had the feeling Khouri was probably under tremendous pressure to increase Nashville’s ratings by upping the pace and the melodrama, and she was doing the best she could to preserve the integrity of the show while also keeping it alive.
The good thing about the move to CMT and the addition of the H&Z team is that the season premiere is the episode closest in tone to the show’s first, pilot episode — much more textured and layered in its storytelling. The pace has been slowed down — not to a crawl, but to allow for some breathing room, to let characters have full scenes of dialogue, and reactions to those dialogues.
That’s very good news for the characters of Rayna and Deacon — Connie Britton and Chip Esten deserve all the time and close-ups they get in delineating the most interesting relationship in the series. And in general, I appreciated the fact that H&Z have sought to minimize the constant bickering and backbiting that too many of the characters engaged in, in order to spark the kind of drama that fizzles after an episode or two. You notice this change-for-the-good immediately in the scenes with Gunnar (Sam Palladio) and Scarlett (Clare Bowen). I’d gotten so sick of their I-love-you, now-I-hate-you, do-you-like-me schizophrenia. Much of that has vanished, replaced by more rewarding material.
I’m not going to spoil the fate of Hayden Panettiere’s Juliette, whom we last heard was doing a death spiral in a failing airplane. But I will say the music remains sharp, and Rayna has a particularly good solo storyline. Have I tempted you to tune in? I hope so.
The two-hour Season 5 premiere of Nashville will preview Thursday, Dec. 15, at 9 p.m. on CMT, and Friday, Dec. 16, on Hulu. The season will officially kick off Thursday, Jan. 5, at 9 p.m. on CMT.
