Nashville, Season One Finale

This was a totally crazy season, from Juliet (the great Hayden Panettiere) stealing a bottle of nail polish and a person catching the act on their I-Phone, to marrying the Christian football player and almost immediate annulment of that union to bedding her mother's sober companion, Dante (Jay Hernandez) before his ultimate betrayal.
Rayna (Connie Britton) learned the truth about her husband's past, embezzling money to cover his butt. He then left her for his former flame, the married and vulnerable Peggy Kenter (Kimberly Williams-Paisley). I'll get to more of that later. She enjoyed a fling with her new producer, the kind and understanding Liam (Michael Huisman) before attempting a relationship with her former long-term lover and biological father of her eldest daughter, Deacon (Charles Esten, great).
Scarlett (Clare Bowen), Deacon's niece, went from being an unknown waitress, to being signed to Rayna James's label, with a recording contract and everything. She also dumped Avery (an under and improperly used Jonathan Jackson) and began dating Gunnar (Sam Palladio).
Teddy (Eric Close), Rayna's soon-to-be ex-husband, opted to run for mayor despite his father-in-law pulling all the strings. Nevertheless, he won the election, despite blackmailing the competition, Coleman (Robert Wisdom), a friend of Rayna's and Deacon's sponsor when he got sober thirteen years before the series began.
To Lamar, Rayna's father. Lamar (Powers Boothe) managed to get his son-in-law elected mayor, desperate to get a baseball stadium built in the city. Then he suffered a heart attack, but survived. I haven't decided how I feel about that yet.
Avery also got out of his restrictive contract but now is a struggling roadie whom Juliette tried to bed, depressed and drunk after Dante blackmailed her with a sex tape of them.
Now to the finale: Maddie (Lennon Stella) approaches Deacon and informs him that she believes he is her biological father. The reason she found this out? She went into her parents' closet and sorted through their box of secret papers. Certainly they should have kept them in a locked box somewhere else. Deacon cannot believe that Rayna lied to him everyday for the past thirteen years. This revelation drives him to return to drinking. The scene where Coleman, Scarlett and Gunnar try to get him sober is especially sensational and intense. He recovers only to sneak drinks from a bottle in the bathroom. Surely Coleman would have swept the house clean while Deacon was sleeping. He is about to drive home from Juliette's mother's memorial service, but Rayna won't let him. Instead she drives home during the final montage, yelling at him throughout the drive, only to lose her focus and get into a car crash.
Juliette's mother (Sylvia Jeffries) overdosed after killing the blackmailing Dante so her daughter's image wouldn't be ruined. Though Juliette has been waiting for this for years, she is nevertheless devastated and massive props to Hayden, who can cry at the drop of a hat. Maybe an Emmy nomination is in her future after all.
Scarlett and Gunnar are having a rocky patch in their relationship. They were ultimately brought together by his brother's death, but then Gunnar stole his brother's songs and macho image which increased his popularity. Scarlett didn't like this, so Gunnar moved in to their upstairs' neighbor's place. Will (Chris Carmack) is determined to be the next big thing and certainly has the balls to get himself there. However, he struggles with his sexuality, not sure whether he likes boys or girls. He does like being on stage. His part was the best part of the finale, during the final montage, his arm around a pretty girl, shaking his head at an attractive man walking over to him. Okay, back to Gunnar and Scarlett. He proposes to her. Yes, that's right, he pops the question. We don't know her answer, but she can't say yes; their relationship is too new and they have fights, plus he still needs to recover from his brother's death.
Teddy thought his sordid past was behind him. Wrong, he will have to face the consequences next season and Peggy was offered immunity but she told the investigators nothing. She's pregnant, probably with Teddy's child. I was surprised by this. I think making either Juliette or Scarlett pregnant would be much more realistic. But whatever. Also interesting enough, Peggy was the one who alerted the press to his divorce from Rayna, which is not a nice thing to do.
Lamar promoted a guy over his other daughter, Tandy (Judith Hoag, also quite good) and she promptly quits his business, as he can only get along with one daughter at a time, which is sad but painfully true. She is approached by the bad guys at the end about the incident. She will probably turn in her father to them.
I think I covered everything, hopefully, as this show is horribly complicated. I wanted to like this show, I really did and despite the winning performances, I feel that they should cut some plot lines out and use some characters differently, like Teddy. At times, he's great, other times, he's unbearable. Also, I feel that Connie Britton can and should be better, considering she was fantastic in Friday Night Lights, a show which I just started watching but was instantly hooked to. You'll be able to read my blogs about that later. Thank goodness for Hayden, sure her character is awful, but I don't feel sorry for her. Yes, she grew up with a drug-addicted mother, but you need to be nice to people. You really do. Still, she didn't deserve to be blackmailed by that nasty Dante, in a move that I didn't see coming.
Despite my problems, especially the awful montage at the end, this show has promise and includes some great songs, and I will continue watching it next season. Season: B, Finale: B