I’ve been listening to a lot of country music lately. Not the car commercial kind they play at the worst outlet mall you’ve ever been to, but the real stuff. It’s a true American art form, an idiom that encompasses the joy and pain of a working class that hadn’t yet been outsourced into oblivion, songs of love and liquor with a distinctly homegrown ribbon of violence running through it. Compare one of the manicured pop stars of today to Sanford Clark or Ferlin Husky or Dick Curless and you begin to understand what Waylon Jennings was (probably never) talking about.

But the people who made this music weren’t some caricature of rural life - they were show business people, riding buses all night, putting down enough amphetamines to make it through another set, desperately working the radio stations and the record labels to try and break through. Sold American, indeed.

Carla and Marty have ended up in an uneasy truce - they are trudging along in a mutually unsatisfactory relationship, keeping the money coming in, drinking enough to keep the bigger questions at bay. Carla loves to play and sing and obviously relishes the connection with her fans, but is seemingly desperate to get home to their daughter. Marty’s past indiscretions are only hinted at, but his bitterness at being underappreciated as the architect of “The Carla Comstock Show” is right on the surface. Their conflict is mostly about control - Who’s actually running things? - and when the alert comes in, they each have to ask themselves: What happens if judgment day comes and you’re in a Tennessee basement with a bunch of strangers?

Annie is a version of Carla that hasn’t surrendered yet. She’s still naive enough to believe in an idea of marriage that is an escape from anonymity, a ladder to build a life she’d never be able to assemble on her own. Many women were faced with this impossible choice - Do I commit to this person I barely know? How much worse could it be than where I am now? But there’s still a bit of rebelliousness left in Annie, as evidenced by the fact that she lied to Albert to come to the show. When Carla recognizes this, she sees an opportunity to spare Annie from making the same compromises she has. Is she talking to her younger self? Or her daughter? How difficult would it be to become a fully independent woman when so few existed to model yourself after?

--

When she’s not our Producer or Casting Director or Swiss Army Knife, Marika Mashburn is simply one of the best actors I’m lucky enough to know. She plays Carla with joy and wisdom, summoning a woman who’s wrestling with every compromise she’s ever made. Marty could have absolutely turned into a caricature, but Steve Pickering’s performance managed to make him somehow sympathetic. “I can’t fake it like you can” kills me every time. Sarah Cartwright makes Annie so real, trapped between being a girl and a young woman, managing to find some optimism even when telling a very sad story. Jamie Vann might be a time traveler - Big Ol’ Daddy sounds exactly like he did in my brain! And Lawrence Grimm, who I’ve admired since our high school production of The Crucible, is a terrifying Albert, maybe the only person in this story who’s not telling themselves a bunch of lies to get through the day. Ben Lobpries and Samuel B. Jackson gave this episode real depth with their thoughtful portrayals. Hot damn, what a cast!

**A note: Why would anyone send a missile to Knoxville, Tennessee? Well, it’s only 27 miles from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It could come for any of us. Act accordingly.