Connie Britton as Rayna James. "Nashville", ABC Wednesdays at 10 (Image courtesy of ABC)

Welcome to “Nashville.”

Connie Britton returns to television as Rayna James, a seasoned country singer, who, despite her former glory, isn’t bringing in as much business to her record label as she used to. Who’s her competition? It’s Hayden Panettiere’s Juliette Barnes, an up-and-coming songstress who threatens to steal the limelight away from Rayna.

After some exterior shots of Nashville and a light family moment with Rayna’s husband and kids, the episode got straight to the heart of the show – Rayna singing. After she gets off stage, we get to see the kind person that she is through her interactions.

On the other hand, our first sighting of Juliette reveals the diva in her. She’s sitting in a chair getting made up, when she gets her a phone call. It’s her mother. “Hello, hello, hello, I can’t hear you,” then the phone is in the trash. Juliette makes it clear to her assistant that she does NOT want her mom to have her phone number.

Soon after, Rayna and Juliette meet for the first time. Rayna is cordial [enough] but Juliette is not, but they both make it clear that they don’t want anything to do with each other.

But as fate would have it, this is not to be. The record label tells Rayna that she will have to cut production costs on her upcoming tour because it’s too expensive. But the record label has a solution. Rayna will co-headline open for Juliette on the tour. Rayna has until Monday to decide whether or not she will do this. This brings us to the opening quote from this article - as you can tell, Rayna is not too pleased with her options.

In other news, we have Rayna’s father, Lamar Wyatt (Powers Boothe) who is a very powerful man in Nashville. He even has a day named after him. He is a man with an agenda that Rayna doesn’t get along with. But he seems to always get what he wants – he wants Rayna’s husband Teddy Conrad (Eric Close) – who is currently unemployed, living off of Rayna’s success - to run for mayor and Teddy decides to do it.

There’s also Deacon Clayborne (Charles Esten), Rayna’s lead guitarist and songwriter. He’s also likely her ex-lover. There’s more to that story than meets the eye. His niece is Scarlett O’Connor (Clare Bowen), who writes poetry and is dating bad boy Avery Barkley (Jonathan Jackson). Luckily for her, her poetry is actually songs that aspiring musician Gunnar Scott (Sam Palladio) wants to help her with.

We also come to see that there is more to Juliette than meets the eye – she ‘s strong willed and determined and not so nice. However, it doesn’t seem like she’s had it easy – her mother is actually a drug addict who wants Juliette’s money.

The gauntlet has been thrown down. The questions have been posed. What will happen next? We’ll see how things progress on next week’s episode of “Nashville”, Wednesday at 10pm on ABC. 

Check out what's coming this season on “Nashville” below.

Reach Staff Reporter Keanna Harper here.