Can Maddie step up her relationship game in ‘Nashville’ Season 5?

We can hardly wait for “Nashville” to return to TV on a brand new channel, and it sounds like Season 5 is going to be full of bigger, and better, drama.

A new face on the cast is Joseph David-Jones, who plays up and coming country singer Clay. According to TV Guide, Clay will have eyes for the newly un-emancipated Maddie (Lennon Stella), but he’ll also have some pretty huge issues to tackle, which could throw a wrench in the relationship.

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Despite being charming and outgoing, he’s also described as incredibly volatile. The character description includes apparent mood-swings, which are caused by deeper emotional issues.

It’s sounding more and more like Clay might suffer from clinical depression or possibly bipolar disorder.

“Nashville” has tackled emotional disorders before with Juliette’s (Hayden Panettiere) postpartum depression and Beverly’s (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) undefined but unstable personality. We’re not sure if adding a character like this to Maddie’s wheelhouse will be a good or bad thing for her.

First of all, this new guy is supposedly in his mid-20s, which makes us a little wary about why he’s got the hots for a 17-year-old girl. The people who say “age is just a number” have clearly not spent much time around whiney and impressionable teenagers. Unless Clay is significantly closer to 20 than 30, we’re going to get pretty skeeved out by this new potential coupling.

An age difference isn’t the only possible pitfall for these two, though.

Maddie’s proven to be a pretty selfish and immature character over the years, which we mostly forgive because she’s only a teenager. Still, she’s outed her parentage on the internet, ran away from home, emancipated herself and had many, many more missteps. To call her irresponsible would be a massive understatement.

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As she is now, we’re not sure Maddie could really handle falling for someone with serious emotional issues. The time, patience and understanding it requires to support someone with the kind of illness Clay may have is a big responsibility, and Maddie would need to seriously step up to the plate.

That means putting the kibosh on actively trying to piss off her parents, no more my-way-or-the-highway ultimatums, and certainly, no more naive notions about the country music industry — basically, the three pillars of Maddie’s personality.

Our fingers are crossed that this new romance will have a maturing affect on Maddie (and a stabilizing affect on Clay, whom we’re more excited than ever to meet), but we’re not optimistic at this stage in the game.

“Nashville” premieres January 5, 2017 on CMT.

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