“I will not live my life like this anymore,” a highly upset and seemingly over-it Avery said during the hour. And when new bandmate Alannah started ever-so-slightly cozying up to him? Let’s just say, he didn’t immediately turn her away.
Meanwhile, Deacon couldn’t stop himself from getting physically involved when Brad was rough with Jake. Though the interaction was over before it really began, Brad seemed to relish the idea of pressing charges against Jessie’s new man. “Did you just assault me?” the irksome record-label exec said, smiling, as he sauntered past an instantly regretful Deacon.
And in New York, while taping a performance at The Chew, Will’s steroid use caught up to him. He collapsed in the middle of a song, and seemed unresponsive as emergency medical personnel strapped him to a gurney.
We wanted to know what all of this means for the series’ final eight episodes, which will debut on Thursday, June 7 (9/8c). So we went straight to co-showrunner Marshall Herskovitz for the answers… well, the ones he was willing to give up, at least. Read on for the scoop:
TVLINE |First of all, I’m very worried about Juliette and Avery. This seems like a bad place for them as a couple, where we’re leaving them before the break. Is he as done with her as he sounds like he is?
I wish I could answer a question like that, but I can’t. [Laughs] Well let me say this. What can I say? I have to figure out what is safe to say… All right, we know Juliette’s going to be back. I’ll just give that away right now. So she’ll be back. I can say that Avery feels as done as he is. What he feels is what he feels, you know what I mean? I can’t speak to the future one way or the other, but I think you could certainly defend the way he feels. God almighty, he’s put up with so much from Juliette over the years.
I think what we want to look forward to, though, is the possibility of transformation. The possibility of someone changing their lives, and what does that mean and what does that mean for the people around them? So yes, we’re leaving Juliette and Avery in a bad place — and I hear about it on Twitter literally hundreds of times a day and I understand that — but this is the nature of drama. A story would not be a good story if there were not moments in the story when things look dark. That doesn’t say where it’s going to come out at the end, but that’s just a part of all good drama.
TVLINE|We’ve also been hearing from readers who’ve noticed that Hayden Panettiere has not been on screen that much in the past few episodes. I know you’ve spoken before about how it can be challenging to give all of the characters in the show airtime, but even given that, her on-screen presence feels a little sparse as of late. Can you address how much we’ll see her in the second half of the season?
Well, I can easily say that she’s Number One on the call sheet, in the parlance of our business, and she’s such a central part of this show and we are not in any way going to slight her story. I think I can say that.
