SEASON GUIDE
5.01 "The Wayfaring Stranger" / 5.02 "Back In Baby’s Arms"
5.03 "Let’s Put It Back Together Again"
5.04 "Leap of Faith"
5.05 "Love Hurts" / 5.06 "A Little Bit Stronger"
5.07 "Hurricane"
5.08 "Stand Beside Me"
5.09 "If Tomorrow Never Comes"
— Wow, you guys. Just.. What just happened? I had feeling after the adorable conversation in the kitchen that something awful was gonna go down, I just thought it was going to be Carl who would hurt her and not a freaking car accident. Not a fan of this development. It negates the whole stalker storyline since that sort of amounted to a big pile of nothingness.
The scenes in her office were intense but the payoff and conclusion was rather underwhelming. It just seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through just to make Rayna confess that she carries more emotional baggage and pain in her than she lets on. I hope the stalker arc isn’t completely swept under the rug to make room for the car crash and is brought up later again. I’m not sure what I expected but this was kind of disappointing.
— The show did a pretty job building up Carl’s menacing presence. Him hovering around the gate, knowing that he wouldn’t violate the restraining order was pretty creepy. Also, how great was the scene of Carl emerging from underneath the table out of nowhere? That was some genuinely terrifying stuff. The way he seemingly appeared out of thin air, slowly making his way to an unassuming Rayna was scary as hell.
— Moving on to Scarlett whose behavior continues to be astonishingly baffling. Who is this person? I don’t even recognize her anymore. Let’s back up to the end of last season when she had the epiphany that she was still in love with Gunnar or to the season premiere when she was seething with jealousy because she believed a song lyric by Gunnar was about another woman and yet, somehow, just a handful of episodes later, she breaks up with him because her conflicting feelings for Damien make her incapable of being in a committed relationship.
While I appreciate Scarlett’s honesty and that she is doing the right thing by not stringing Gunnar along, it is just executed so, so poorly. Maybe they were trying to drive home the point that Scarlett has no feelings for him whasoever anymore but the way she tried to remove any sort of emotion and made everything about her, disregarding how Gunnar might be feeling about what she is throwing in his face was horrible. It honestly felt like she was firing him as her boyfriend, merely informing him about it rather than having an acutal conversation about it.
This is most definitely their worst break-up yet and I hope it’ll be their last one because they are beating a dead horse at this point and the damage caused over the course of the years is just too severe for these two to have anything resembling a happy ending together. Let Damien and Scarlett be jerks together, make Gunnar bi and pair him up wtih Will, just don’t put Scarlett and Gunnar back together again. Like ever.
— Juliette is making her first moves to make her new gospel album a reality and the two scenes in which she approaches the church’s choir show how much progress she has made over the course of the show. Her first pitch got a little out of hand and a little heated when she was met with a some resistance. She didn’t get what she wanted and a few seasons ago, Juliette would have lashed out and manipulated the others around to change that.
But now, she is able to take a step back and realize that she could have handled things better. And she does. She addresses the choir a second time and eventually wins them over by speakíng from the heart and embracing her faults and her past.
— There was also a short scene where Juliette calls out Avery’s new music for being immature. I thought it was a really interesting scene because it further showed how much Juliette’s mentality and way of thinking is changing but I think she was projecting some of that onto Avery because he is doing his music for a completely different reason than she is.
— Is anyone else confused by how Rayna feels about Clay? Last time I checked, she was still reluctant about the relationship and now she wants him to sign with her label? Maybe she realized the only thing she had against him was his age and that in less than a year her “It’s illegal!” argument would be rendered void.
— Where the hell is Will? This is the second consecutive episode we haven’t seen him in. Even Daphne is getting more screen time than him at this point.
— Weekly Daphne Watch: She got her first period. As a guy, I don’t really have much to say about this. Although, Deacon’s period party suggestion and Rayna’s subsequent “Bless your heart, you dumb fool.” look was pretty hilarious.
Thanks for reading my review and feel free to share your
own thoughts about the episode in the comments below!
