Tammy Wynette’s long-suffering brand of femininity undoubtedly caused her a lot of pain, both emotional and physical. The event I alluded to in last week’s recap — Tammy’s doctor performing a hysterectomy without her consent during the birth of her fourth child, Georgette Jones, leading to complications that left her in agony, which then led to a crippling painkiller addiction — passes by with little comment early on in the episode. And Tammy tries to keep her torment hidden from her husband George Jones as long as she possibly can. She kept her ex’s threats of blackmail a secret from George because she was afraid of him reacting violently, but who would there be to blame in this situation? Would he go to the hospital and beat the surgeon bloody for botching an operation that shouldn’t have been performed in the first place? Actually, he might — and Tammy does her signature move of distracting him when he brings it up in the maternity ward.
But although their world is set up specifically to enable and excuse his bad behavior, George suffers too. His brand was one of macho misery, either drunkenly wallowing in his loneliness or drinkin’ and pickin’ to keep the sorrow at bay. As his right-hand man Peanutt (Walton Goggins) says: “Happy at home doesn’t make hits.†Like his wife, Jones lived this glamorized version of toxic gender dynamics. And in “We’re Gonna Hold On,†we see how George is only comfortable sharing his vulnerable side in private, and even then he represses his deeper insecurities until they explode in drunken rages. George doesn’t seem to mind his wife’s success so much as long as it means he can keep buying fancy suits and riding his lawnmower around the front yard of their fancy new house, which does make him a marginal improvement on her last husband — as long as he stays sober, at least.
George & Tammy puts rose-colored glasses on at least one moment in the Jones/Wynette marriage: On this week’s episode, Tammy tells George she’s pregnant by playfully refusing a post-coital cigarette during a happy (and lusty) period in their relationship. But Wynette herself told a version of the story where she discovered her pregnancy while George was away on a weeklong bender, and kept it to herself until he took her to a Georgia courthouse to be properly legally married. There’s some debate as to the truth of Tammy’s account, but that’s never stopped a musical biopic from going for the more dramatic version of events. So why make George and Tammy seem happier than they were, by keeping George sober longer than he may have actually been?
To make George’s eventual fall from grace more dramatic, probably. George & Tammy’s primary weakness is in its broad strokes, and having a neat dividing line between sober George and drunk George, with a clean catalyst for the switch, is narratively convenient to a fault. (It was awfully inconsiderate of Peanutt to leave a friend who’s struggling to stay sober alone in a room with an open bottle of whiskey, but again, different times.) Last week, George got defensive when he felt that his lawyer was talking down to him; this week, he assumes that Las Vegas audiences will dismiss him and Tammy as “a couple of hillbillies,†because that’s what he thinks of himself. His peacocking about clothes, and particularly berating the tailor for mixing silk and polyester, can also be seen as a way of covering up his insecurities about his lack of sophistication. I don’t mean to imply that we shouldn’t have at least a little sympathy for George Jones; he was clearly a tortured soul. But oversimplifying the narrative doesn’t help either the story, or the real people who lived it.
For country-music fans, this week’s episode contained a wink and a nudge powerful enough to knock you backwards: George’s John Deere riding lawn mower, an essential component of the most famous, and saddest, legend about him. The Houston Chronicle reprinted the tale in his own words upon Jones’s death in 2013, but here’s the short version: In his later years, Jones became an even more sodden drunk than he had been previously, leading his second wife Shirley to hide his car keys whenever she had to leave the house. She didn’t take away Jones’s riding lawn mower, however, leading the Possum to chug down to the liquor store at five miles an hour to buy booze.
The crowd’s negative reaction to Tammy walking onto the stage in Las Vegas, and her turning them around through sheer charisma and a little bit of “men ain’t shit,†was also about as subtle as Tanny washing down pills with champagne later in the episode. (It’s called a visual metaphor, okay?) So what is there to hold on to at the midway point in the series? I’m still invested in the chemistry between Jessica Chastain and Michael Shannon, particularly when they sing together. (The acoustic duet in their Vegas hotel room at the end of the episode was quite lovely.) There are also the costumes and sets, which continue to deliver ’70s country kitsch in the best way possible. There’s an audience of people who will watch six hours of television just to bask in the glory of a leopard-print conversation pit, and this series is catering to them. I should know — I’m one myself.
Another Lonely Song
• The fact that a famous, wealthy white woman like Tammy Wynette had her uterus removed without her consent demonstrates how pervasive medical misogyny was in 1970. But it should be noted that unwanted sterilization was also used as a tool of eugenics, and disproportionately affected women of color.
• Informed consent for gynecological procedures was also an organizing point for second-wave feminists — a group that Wynette despised, saying at one point that “there’s no mistakin’ that Tammy Wynette is not one for Women’s Liberation.†(The feeling was mutual.)
• KFC and Budweiser in the waiting room during an impromptu birth party sounds great, though!
• I was happy to see more of Walton Goggins in this episode, as well as Katy Mixon as Jan Smith, half of Tammy’s sister glam duo.
• And speaking of country kitsch, this week’s episode brought viewers to the holiest temple of that particular aesthetic: Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors. Owned by Ukrainian immigrant Nudie Cohn (a.k.a. the original rhinestone cowboy) Nudie’s was the destination for flashy men’s country-western stage wear throughout the ’60s and ’70s. Among Cohn’s most famous creations were Elvis Presley’s gold lame suit and Graham Parsons’s white leather jacket embroidered with weed leaves.
• The real Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors was located in North Hollywood, California, and the show is once again fudging the details by positing Manuel Cuevas — another designer famous for country-western bling — as an employee of Nudie’s. In fact, Cuevas has his own shop, this one based in Nashville. Cohn died a while ago, but Cuevas is still out there doing his thing, and recently made a gold lame suit for the Killers frontman Brandon Flowers.