'Empire' Recap: Cookie and the Not-So-Happy Birthday

Warning: This recap for “The Tameness of a Wolf” episode of Empire contains spoilers.

Literally everybody wants and craves a surprise birthday party thrown in their honor and that is the truth. I don’t care how much of a surprise-averse, attention-eschewing, no fun bummer you might claim to be; deep down the idea of your friends and family going the extra mile to show how much they love you is an irresistible idea. A surprise birthday party is the closest any of us will come to attending our own funerals, except the music is better and the cake doesn’t have black frosting or whatever — I don’t know how funeral cakes usually look. But the only way a surprise party can work is if the honoree didn’t expect that his or her friends to want to celebrate him or her at all. Which brings us to the least plausible plot point in Empire history: Cookie believing that nobody would want to celebrate her birthday. Uh, SURE.

Cookie is not only one of TV’s best characters of all time, she is also the most fun and magnetic personality in the Empire world. A Cookie-themed birthday party would very much be the highlight of everyone’s year, so for a series of her family members to bow out of her festivities for dumb reasons felt nothing less than baffling and appalling. Fortunately it was all a ruse! By the end of “The Tameness of a Wolf” (the most LOL episode title of the season) the Lyon family eventually surprised her with a cute sing-a-long and a somewhat less cute screaming match. Still, Cookie’s brief moment of surprise-related ecstasy was one of the sweetest moments of the season. The rest of the episode was pretty good also. Let’s talk about it!

We began with an inter-office memorial service for Camilla, who, for the record, had definitely died!

Hakeem attempted to pay tribute to his fallen “mama” but the most poignant aspect of Camilla’s memorial service was that many of the attendees were mannequins wearing fur coats. It just felt right.

Meanwhile Lucious was already sitting in his old throne throwing smirks in everyone’s direction. The interesting tidbit was that he accused Hakeem of having offed Camilla, which might constitute the first time in history Lucious gave someone else credit for something. Surprisingly, Hakeem didn’t appreciate the idea that he had murdered his former lover, but Cookie didn’t let the argument carry on further. Everyone in the family had WORK to do, and that included getting excited about her first birthday since getting out of the slammer.

The boys went to a slightly rougher neighborhood in order to track down Freda Gatz, and there they enjoyed some freestyle raps performed by some local kids. It was all very touching. Then Freda showed up and told them to get lost, so they did. Oh well, at least they got out of the house.

Meanwhile Lucious was set to film the music video for that song he’d recorded with Freda Gatz. You know the one: “Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom.” But if we’re being honest, Lucious was feeling very contemplative lately, so he started remembering a lot about his mother Kelly Rowland trying to drown him in a bathtub before blowing her brains out right in front of him. This meant that the music video should be about exactly that, so Lucious took Cookie to visit his old apartment building (the one with the GIANT LION STATUE in front of it) and set about recreating his childhood bathroom on a soundstage. Typical therapeutic stuff.

I loved these scenes of Hakeem and Jamal bonding over not being super into Lucious lately. I also appreciated the fact that Hakeem was trying to do important CEO stuff while Jamal was 12 feet away scream-singing about whatever it is Jamal sings about anymore. Angst mostly. But it’s always nice to see these brothers on good terms, you know?

Porsha only had two short scenes but they were perfect. In the first one she balked at Cookie’s wish for a birthday cake and instead suggested she just make a peach cobbler. NO, PORSHA. Also in the second bit, she misunderstood peonies as ‘pennies’ and then started to tell a story about how her grandmother used to wrap a bunch of nickels in handkerchiefs, but then Cookie cut her off before she could explain more. I NEED TO KNOW what was the deal with that handkerchief full of nickels! I am praying and hoping this will be in a future episode.

So, Tiana and Mirage a Trois were touring together, and I loved that the other two girls in Mirage a Trois are basically just ghosts or holograms because nobody cares about them. It’s all about Laura, clearly the future Beyoncé of the group, and Tiana was NOT having it. So yeah they were bickering a lot about set times and whatnot. The bloggers were having a field day with this clash, and Hakeem had to fly out to Washington, D.C. and figure things out.

And he DID figure things out… WITH HIS MOUTH.

Which meant that Tiana definitely walked by at that exact moment and frowned so hard. This was unprofessional behavior and an unsafe work environment!

So even though Freda Gatz THOUGHT she was Team Lucious, he very dumbly CUT her verse from his song, “Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom” and this ticked her off. So she went and found Jamal and agreed that they SHOULD team up after all. Can you guess what their first song was about? No, not the plight of captive orcas. It was about fathers. Believe it.

This female journalist character has only appeared in two episodes so far and I am already TIRED of her. She exists mostly to just ask questions that lead to exposition, but unless she ends up being some kind of FBI agent or super spy I am just gonna have to take a quick snooze every time she’s onscreen. Luckily Cookie feels the same way and openly threatened to beat her ass up every few minutes.

There was a cute moment when Hakeem met Laura’s father, and her father talked about how even though he had been a singer himself, he was so happy that his daughter would be more successful than he ever was. And then Hakeem gave him the saddest look like, “Take me with you.”

Anyway, back to the music video, Lucious had recreated the moment when Kelly Rowland tried to drown him in a bathtub, but the child actor was looking too nervous to get in the water (but really it was Lucious who was looking too nervous to direct the damn scene). And Cookie had to banish everyone from the set so that she could have a sit-down convo with the boy to try and get him through it. But the clever part was, she was actually talking to Lucious indirectly. It helped, and they all got through it. See, Cookie just knows Lucious better than anybody, and particularly after he confessed to her all that had happened with Kelly Rowland, and how he’d become a child runaway forced to sell drugs for Chris Rock, Cookie began warming up to him again. Call it romance, call it just a longtime deep understanding, but she was pretty much back to being his #1 again. (Which worried everybody, especially Jamal. Be careful, Cookie!)

So, after all of her kids had separately told her that they couldn’t make her birthday dinner, it was just going to be Lucious and Cookie. But on the bright side, he’d bought her a Build-A-Bear! But hey what was that tinkling coming from the living room…

Oh, it was her family! They’d all shown up anyway! Surprise! But the best surprise was the cake they’d made for her:

SO BEAUTIFUL! SO GLAMOROUS! SO LOPSIDED!

After Cookie’s all-too-brief surprise party, the gang retired to the TV area of the living room where they watched a rough cut of the music video Lucious had filmed EARLIER THAT DAY. But while everyone in the room suddenly discovered the true extent of the abuse Lucious had suffered at the hands of Kelly Rowland, Andre was the only one who reacted in anger. In his opinion, Kelly Rowland had definitely been bipolar, and if this was something he’d been informed of, he might’ve gone on medication much earlier. I think? It was honestly hard to know what exactly Andre was mad about. Personally I would’ve been relieved to know that my condition was an inherited family condition, but he was not relieved. He was TICKED.

And like most arguments with Lucious, things devolved to Lucious telling Andre that he was an embarrassment to the family, and he told him to get out of there. Something tells me that Andre will not be in a great place after this. Happy birthday, Cookie!

Something about meeting Laura’s super chill and supportive family made Hakeem want to marry her, so suddenly he was giving her enormous diamond rings in the back alley behind one of her venues. And guess what? She accepted! They’re getting married!

I liked the cute moment when Tiana watched this from across the crowd and rather than appearing mad or jealous, she actually looked kinda happy for them. Her wig looked kinda happy for them as well. Just a nice moment all around.

Then for some reason Rhonda was out walking on the side of the road and Anika picked her up. They were going to spend some quality time together, but I’m guessing it will eventually lead to the discovery that Anika had possibly maybe pushed Rhonda down the stairs. What do you think? Or maybe they’ll just dance around the living room listening to Meghan Trainor. Either way.

The final sting, which was not very sting-y if we’re being honest, was that Freda Gatz mentioned that her father was Chris Rock, and Cookie was so shocked by this that she had to leave the recording booth and cower in a corner dramatically. I guess nobody knew this? I figured it was common knowledge. Also, he was dead, so I’m not sure what the fuss was about. I guess Cookie merely disapproved of the fact that Lucious had employed the daughter of a man he’d murdered? Also it had something to do with the fact that Lucious had once sold drugs for Chris Rock as a child. I honestly don’t know what was supposed to be so intriguing about this. Probably just to set up the idea that Freda Gatz was going to discover the truth about Chris Rock’s murder any day now, so she was like a ticking time bomb in that regard. We’ll see!

While not as insane or plot-heavy as last week’s amazing episode, “The Tameness of a Wolf” (LOL) had its moments. There was a lot of music, and some fun throw-away jokes. Plus anything centered around Cookie’s birthday HAS to be worthwhile. But mostly this was another place-setter of an episode, in a season that has felt mostly like place-setting. Man, let’s hope the eventual meal is an all-out BANQUET, you know? At this rate, that’ll definitely be a worthwhile surprise party.

Empire airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on Fox