Does anybody read these?

Tune in, Music City

If you follow me on Twitter (which you should, by the way), you may (or may not) have been entertained by my live-tweets during the broadcast of ABC’s “Nashville” television show.

There’s sex, lies, drama and music. It’s very entertaining. (Like Dallas, only Nashville.) But mostly I watch it because it’s filmed in Nashville.

I wish I could say I watch it because I’m filled with civic pride and it's high-quality television entertainment, but that would mostly be a fib.

I watch it because, as we here in the South would say, it’s a hot mess. Nashville’s hot mess. I work in health care, so maybe that’s really what it’s like on Music Row, but I drink a lot of whiskey, and I’ve never seen such sights in any honkytonk on Broadway.

"Nashville" is pure soap opera with some mediocre singing thrown in. It’s everything that’s both wrong and right in this town. I can’t help but tune in every week, and I love to talk about it. From Gay Cowboy and Sober Companion to Kellie Pickler Jr. and Tammy from “Friday Night Lights,” these folks entertain me. Plus, I like to see what local landmarks show up, guess where they’ve filmed and see if any of my friends are appear in that week’s episode (usually, the answer is yes to that one).

There is a lot of talk right now about the possibility of “Nashville” not being filmed in Nashville anymore, and that makes me sad. It makes me sad because, if that happens, I will break up with it faster than the ex who sent me vacation photos with another woman’s purse in ALL OF THEM.

The city of Nashville is a character in this show, just like Rayna (oops, Tammy) or Deacon (he needs a nickname – maybe “Baby Daddy Deacon”?). Hell, it’s a bigger character than Crazy Peggy or the black guy who ran for mayor and is also Baby Daddy Deacon’s AA sponsor. And unlike “Grey’s Anatomy,” which I still tolerate even though they killed my precious McSteamy, Nashville is not a character that I can stand losing.

The show’s not great. The only real thing it’s got going for it is that it’s filmed in one of the coolest-ass cities in America. I suspect from all of the Nashvillians tweeting on Wednesday nights that I’m not the only one who watches mostly because it’s filmed here. If you take that away, it will seem really artificial like when they tried to film that cop show about Detroit in Atlanta. That was stupid as shit, because try as it may, Atlanta can’t ever be Detroit (it’s probably thankful for that, by the way) and local landmarks can’t be replicated. Yes, we poke fun at seeing that damn pedestrian bridge and The Batman Building in every episode, but if you took them away, we’d be heartbroken. And while they’ve done a damn good job at recreating the Bluebird Café on a soundstage, if they’re going to be preposterous enough to think that all these nobodies and famous people are getting onstage at open-mic night at Tootsies, well, then they better at least have Tootsies be authentic.

I don’t want to break up with “Nashville.” And, I don’t want “Nashville” to break up with us. All joking aside, it really has been a boon to our local economy. And, as aggravated as I get by tourists, they love to spend their money on boots and beer in this town… More boots and beer mean more money for schools and roads.

Seriously, ABC, making everything about money is the reason there’s a lot of bullshit on TV these days. Please don’t make me put “Nashville” in that category.

P.S. I would watch “Dallas” if it weren’t filmed in Dallas, but only because Patrick Duffy is still hot.

posted by Laura at 10:59 AM