Arts: Nashville, Season 1

Now playing: Slate V, a video-only site from the world's leading online magazine. Visit Slate V at www.slatev.com.
Tv Club Nashville, Season 1 A grand unified theory of Nashville? By Katy Waldman Posted Monday, Jan 14, 2013, at 08:34 PM ET In last week's American Horror Story TV Club, Bryan Lowder presented an absolutely brilliant "grand unified theory" of AHS that is basically built around how anxiety-provoking it is to sit through AHS. At some point here in the Nashville TV Club I'm going to have to unveil my Grand Unified Theory of Nashville. I hope to postpone that moment as long as possible. The fact is, I'm not so sure Nashville needs a theory. In fact, it may be the kind of show that doesn't even deserve one. Are the characters richly developed? Sure, in the sense that they're sympathetic and get good lines of dialogue and are very fun to watch. Are they realistic, as if someone has peeled back the curtain on the actual Nashville music scene? Slate's Jody Rosen says they're not far off, although it's hard to imagine anything quite this sudsy or hammy happening on NBC, to say nothing of IRL. But who cares? I find myself coming around to Slate senior editor Dan Kois' epiphany that sometimes you just want to look at pretty people singing. (And if not singing, brawling and pouting and pining like the Mississippi River was going dry.)   In the interests of procrastination, here's a meta-theory about television show theories: They exist to rationalize viewing unpleasantness. I had a thousand theories about Dexter because I found his serial killing disturbing but was unwilling to stop watching the program. Homeland can be ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Clarence Thomas Breaks Nearly Seven-Year Silence To Make Fun of Yale Jodie Foster's Self-Defeating Plea for Privacy New Monopoly Token Will Ruin Game, Possibly America	Advertisement
Manage your newsletters subscription: Unsubscribe | Forward to a Friend | Advertising Information
Ideas on how to make something better? Send an e-mail to slatenewsletter@nl.slate.com. Copyright 2011 The Slate Group | Privacy Policy The Slate Group | c/o E-mail Customer Care | 1350 Connecticut Ave NW Suite 410 | Washington, D.C. 20036