Is Nashville 'Country Strong: The Series'?

Because we are living in a golden age of television (and technology), more and more networks are making their new pilots available online before they air. And because somewhere, in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good, the latest of these is the series premiere of Nashville, which won't air until October 10 but which is up on Hulu and (free) on iTunes today. What the hell: it's also right here.

I was in the tank for Nashville before I even knew what it was about because it stars the luminously perfect Connie "Tami Taylor" Britton, one of my harem of fake celebrity girlfriends and owner of the most gorgeous head of hair in all of entertainment and possibly the world. But when I heard the series description I got even more excited, because of all the elements it shares with one of my favourite indefensibly silly movies: the 2010 Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle Country Strong. Having seen the pilot, it's kind of shocking how right I was -- except Nashville is actually better, hear me out. I love Gwyneth Paltrow -- she's hard to defend, so I generally don't bother to try -- and Country Strong was such a misguided Oscar-begging débacle that in many ways it anticipated the fumbling excesses of Smash (another treasure; 2013 can't come soon enough for me). But whereas CS took a suite of story tropes and muddled them up like a mojito, hoping good casting (Paltrow, Garrett Hedlund, and Leighton Meester) would put all the melodrama over, Nashville was created by Callie Khouri, an Oscar winner for her Thelma & Louise screenplay as well as the writer-director of the perennial cable offering Something To Talk About, one of those movies I absolutely can't resist whenever I happen to surf past it.

You're like, "How similar could Country Strong and Nashville possibly be? Country Strong just came out, and Khouri must have gotten some notes about being careful not to make Nashville seem like a sneaky ripoff." Well, maybe she did, and she was able to send them back unread with a Polaroid of her Oscar paperclipped to them, because here's the list of all the things Country Strong did first, and that Nashville did again. (Better.)

• The heroine is a stunningly beautiful country singer with a well-established career, whose career is starting to fade after a couple of decades of success.
• The heroine is disdainful of a much younger female ingenue who performs country-tinged pop.
• When the heroine and the ingenue meets, the ingenue gushes over the heroine while undermining her by pointing out how long the heroine's been at it.
• It is suggested that the heroine and the ingenue tour together.
• The ingenue is hiding the existence of a parent who's involved in illegal activities.
• The heroine and the ingenue both try to record the same song.

But wait, THERE'S MORE. Here's what's new in Nashville that makes it even more compelling than Country Strong!

• The heroine (Britton, whose character's name is Rayna James) has a domineering father (Lamar, played by Powers Boothe) whose political machinations -- he convinces Rayna's husband Teddy to run for mayor so that he can be Lamar's puppet -- threaten the couple's stability.
• But! The couple already faces a possible threat from Deacon (Charles Esten), the leader of Rayna's band for twenty years, who's in love with her (which she knows) and can't stop writing songs about her.
• And! Without knowing that, the ingenue (Juliette, played by Hayden Panettiere) aggressively pursues Deacon to defect to her band for songwriting and maybe more.
• Furthermore! Rayna has daughters who like Juliette's music! Will she make nice for the sake of impressing her girls?

Episode 2 needs to hurry up and get into my eyes.