'Empire' Recap: All Cookie Breaks Loose!
Network television is a lot like a pack of woodland creatures: Sometimes you just want to see a little teamwork. The best shows — Empire especially — present an array of strong characters, each with a superpower and agenda, and set them against each other for maximum drama. But when that loses effect, how do you keep an audience glued to their papasans? Here’s how: by getting these warring adversaries to TEAM UP against someone worse. Is there anything more entertaining or satisfying than seeing once-combative characters put aside their differences and take care of business? Now compound that with a face-blast of family-feels and you’ve got your best episode of the season so far. Oh, Empire, you are the greatest.
“Unto the Breach” marked a major shift in what we’ve seen so far; Empire is done proving that its central company is powerful, now it wants to show us a powerful company in disarray. How does it survive? In short: A family unites and uses their individual super powers for the common good. And yes, that often entails a sizzurp-chugging contest and an overturned rack of basketballs. Guys, this episode was really wonderful. Let’s talk about it!
In what may be my new favorite subplot of Empire, this little girl was straight-up neglected by everybody around her. Look at her, just sitting in the doorway (?) playing with stuffed animals and looking sad. Where was Raven-Symoné? Didn’t matter, not when there were supernova levels of drama going down!
Remember last week when Anika put on her red fur and paid a visit to Beretti’s haunted hotel? She was there to sell out Empire Records, and guess who’d found out about it? PORSHA. That’s right, Anika thought she’d turned Porsha into a spy against Cookie, but as it turned out, Porsha was NOT the one. Credit where credit’s due: Any other show would’ve seen this particular plot play out longer, or at the very least on-camera. But Empire just sort of skips over things like that and gets to the good stuff. Because Empire is ALL good stuff. And in this case, the good stuff included Cookie screaming, “Bye, Felicia!” and throwing all of Anika’s clothes into the driveway.
But who arrived immediately to pick Anika up? No less than Beretti himself, in what appeared to be one of those black car Ubers. High roller stuff. Needless to say, Lucious declared WAR.
Next thing we knew, Jamal was having a naked D’Angelo moment in some studio somewhere. Turned out he was singing his new track all sexily for his new boyfriend, the documentary maker.
But their sensual makeout time was interrupted by Porsha, who had arrived to inform them that Empire Records was in trouble! See, Anika was attempting to poach all the artists and bring them over to Creedmoor, where she was now heading up the A&R department! Ugh, Anika was the worst.
Andre flushed all his meds down the toilet. Didn’t need ‘em! This did not seem like a great idea, but that’s Andre for you.
Due to the Anika defection s—tstorm, the boardroom was suddenly THE WAR ROOM and everybody was running around looking intense.
But the absolute best part of it all was the leaderboards that kept flashing on-screen:
The reason they were the best was because they were surprisingly informative? Like, this one referred to Tiana as a “female rapper.” OK! That explains all her mad flow, I guess.
I liked this one mostly because now I NEED to learn more about Lowboy and Crossfadezz. And dang, Martina is killing it these days. Great job, everybody. Not you, Hakeem.
Another thing we learned: THIS GUY was helping out around the office. WHO was he? WHAT was his story? A new subplot is needed here ASAP.
Oh, I can’t help it: More artist bios!
Just FYI, Royale-T rose to fame “after he was featured in a fellow rappers [sic] hit single.” But who? Also, this year Royale-T plans to record “a reunion with the rapper that started his rise.” Who was it? Was it MA$E? Please tell me it’s MA$E.
Nobody cares about Travie Wild or his five presumably wack albums that are “all critically acclaimed.” But we DO care about Wallywowwow over there on the left. WHAT IS HER STORY. Need more info about Wallywowwow, please. I feel like I could become a Wallywowwow fan any minute now.
If we’re being honest, Anika felt pretty conflicted about working for Beretti. Yes, she got to pair up bald female R&B singers with fresh new Kanye verses, but she clearly felt a certain amount of remorse for working against her former fiancé. To that end, she declined to tell Beretti about Lucious’s ALS, despite Beretti’s obvious prodding about it. So Lucious’s secret was safe FOR NOW.
The best parts of this episode had to do with each family member using his or her strengths to personally convince artists to stay with Empire. Surprisingly, off-his-meds Andre became way more dynamic and compelling, as in this scene when he came to an agreement with a musician that selling music on the Internet could actually work. (Where had Empire been selling most of its records? Tower Records? The Virgin Megastore? The Music Warehouse? Unclear.)
Meanwhile, Jamal took it upon himself to professionally seduce a singer named Delphine who was played by real-life singer Estelle. And I don’t mean to shock you, but their impromptu duet was really lovely. It was another one of those “I am a brave firework” type anthems but it was really nice. Nice song. (What is music?)
Best of all was Cookie’s method for winning over a particularly gangsta rapper. She visited that one shot-up studio and then accepted a challenge to drink some homemade purple concoction that was knocking out grown men right and left. Was it that syrup-and-codeine stuff that Justin Bieber got addicted to for a while? Let’s just say it was! Because this was a real sizzurp fiesta.
Of course Cookie proved herself to that rapper. Victory: Cookie! Then she almost fell against the piano as she walked out. (I seriously loved that room full of snoring men looking like a pile of sleepy puppies, very adorable.)
Unfortunately Cookie’s walk home was not the easiest. For one thing, she was high out of her mind on sizzurp.
Then came the mugger.
Fortunately, Empire’s new security expert Derek Luke busted out a series of judo chops against the mugger and saved Cookie (not that she wouldn’t have taken care of business herself, sizzurp haze or not) and escorted her back into the SUV, where she attempted to seduce him with lines such as, “Take these cookies!”
If we’re being real, Taraji P. Henson has never been more hilarious than this episode. It was honestly a tour de force, and I frankly DARE the Emmys not to award her with something for this. Truly great.
Also having trouble with mobility were the Lyon boys, who’d made the mistake of boarding an elevator together knowing FULL WELL that of course sometimes s—t goes down when there’s a billion dollars on an elevator. Especially when at least a third of that billion dollars is off his meds. In fact, they tussled so much they stalled the elevator! Suddenly they were trapped in there with nothing but their sense of brotherly love to comfort them.
In a truly touching scene, Jamal calmed Andre down by reminding him that Andre used to comfort Jamal as a child by singing “Lean on Me” (I’m assuming the Club Nouveau version, which is the definitive version) and got him to sing it again. Soon all three brothers were singing and hugging, and as far as brotherly-love feels go, this scene was basically an atom bomb. No fair, show.
Then Beretti and Lucious and all their people stood in a crosswalk pointing guns at each other. But I was really into the driver of one of those cars behind Lucious. He was like, “Oh snap, was I supposed to get out, too? Why didn’t anybody tell me beforehand? Should I do that now, or would it be awkward? Looks like they’re having a conversation. You know what, I’m just gonna sit here.” Anyway, nobody shot anybody and they all went on their way.
Hakeem’s contribution to the family operation (in addition to casually offering to blow up Creedmor using C-4) was to guilt-trip Anika into quitting her trifling ways. Or, it seemed that way, because what he was really doing was delaying her from meeting with Tiana so that Cookie could beat her to it!
Obviously, Tiana was gonna listen to Cookie, but how weird was it when Tiana made it part of her conditions that she would only return to Empire if she got to date Hakeem again for real? Tiana has A GIRLFRIEND and Hakeem is dating NAOMI CAMPBELL. That is called baggage. But I appreciated that Hakeem was upfront about it, “Nope.” And Tiana still agreed to go with Empire. Smart lady.
And what better way to cap off a long day of scheming and sizzurp-chugging than an impromptu family version of “You Are Beautiful” up in the club?
Yes, the autotune computers were working overtime in this scene, but it was still an unquestionably lovely version of this song. Ugh, it’s almost embarrassing how much I like this song, and seeing all four of these people harmonizing together was pretty special. I am serious! It was special, guys.
Speaking of special.
To be fair, that rack of basketballs has been begging to be overturned since Day 1. But Lucious had finally decided that Andre was not doing great, so he decided to force the situation.
After spending a few hours acting very badly in the boardroom, Andre was finally tackled by paramedics and injected with sedatives.
At this point, Rhonda signed the papers to have him committed. It happens! Friends, please don’t go off your meds. Andre learned this lesson the hard way. I think my favorite part about this plotline was that nobody was particularly shocked or scandalized by Andre’s behavior; in fact, it was treated as merely the most recent occurrence of a longstanding situation. Lucious even tried to get Andre to get some paperwork done during his meltdown. I just felt like this bipolar element was handled pretty respectfully on Empire’s part, that’s all. Also, credit where credit’s due: The actor who plays Andre really went there.
Between its high-stakes team action and jubilant final performance, “Unto the Breach” felt very much like a season finale. Except it WASN’T. Not even close. Empire just operates at this higher level of skipping to the good parts. Noticeably funny and full of genuinely good music, “Unto the Breach” was merely the latest in what’s turning into a weekly declaration: Best episode yet.
What did YOU like best about “Unto the Breach”?
Empire airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on Fox.
