Earlier this week, ABC announced that Nashville had been picked up for the rest of its first season. Happy news for us, since the show remains one of the best new dramas of the year, winning hearts where Revolution and Last Resort had left us wanting. Now that we’ve had five episodes to settle into its rockabilly arms, let’s look at what makes what’s ostensibly just another story about country music and heartbreak so refreshing.

Despite its mileage on country clichés, Nashville feels like a sparkly newcomer to the television scene. Beyond the cheatin’, schemin’, and burning old flames, the drama is at heart about two women: the older established country star Rayna James and poppy newcomer (as well as potential rival) Juliette Barnes. Rayna’s and Juliette’s characters are inflected and mediated through their interaction with men — sexual, economic, and otherwise — but these alliances take second stage to the female networks that underwrite the world of Nashville. The show is, in a sense, as heterosexual as they come, but its portrayal of female relationships makes me wonder if it’s not one of the most distinct feminist dramas to appear on network television yet. … Read More