'Empire' Recap: Cookie and the Case of the Stolen Furs
Warning: This recap for the “Time Shall Unfold” episode of Empire contains spoilers.
What is it with New York power struggles this week? Hillary and Bernie, Trump and Cruz, Hakeem and Lucious. While I am grateful that I didn’t have to read endless Facebook rants about that last matchup, all these face-offs have gotten exhausting! Here is a spoiler for you: Someone will eventually be the president and at least half of the country will hate that person for his or her entire term. Similarly, someone will run Empire Entertainment, and that person will be unseated by a scheming family member within weeks. Are we actually supposed to feel passionate about any of it? Thus concludes a very well-thought-out comparison between Empire and the presidential race, did you like it?
“Time Shall Unfold” continued the saga of Hakeem’s reign as CEO. It also ended that saga. He’s out! But yeah, that’s just how Empire is. If you are wondering if the show has begun to see diminishing returns for its cyclical storytelling, I am here to say yeah probably. Lucious will be in charge again, until he’s not! But it’s still a fun, well-produced hour of television where insane things occasionally happen out of nowhere. Let’s talk about this episode now!
We began at some random playground in St. Louis where Thirsty had worn his best Soviet cosplay outfit so that he could yank locks of hair from a child’s head!
This was Lola, Raven-Symoné’s daughter! Clearly Thirsty was about to run a DNA test on the poor girl, probably for the sole reason that biological descendants of the Lyon dynasty were suddenly important on this show and it was like everyone had forgotten there already WAS a Lyon cub out there. (Sired by Lucious himself, last we checked.)
From that creepy moment, we cut to Anika’s living room where she and Rhonda were sitting on the floor eating Chinese food like a couple of ‘80s business besties in the city. But before they could fully get into discussing their love of synth sax or Patrick Nagel paintings, Andre arrived to have a word with Rhonda about their relationship. But even THAT conversation was interrupted by some very suspicious and disgusting noises coming from the bathroom.
Either the Chinese food wasn’t settling very well or Anika was straight-up pregnant! (It was the latter.) But knowing Anika, she was clearly trying to make her pregnancy known in the most casual yet conspicuous way possible. Nothing grabs a household’s attention like a well-timed vom. So the cat was now out of the bag, and that cat was pregnant as hell.
Over at Lucious’s mansion, thousands of excited rich white people were eagerly discussing hip hop over seafood platters. Cookie showed up and stared mean mugs at everybody, mostly because WHAT was Lucious up to? These were the company shareholders and he was clearly wining and dining them for a reason. He couldn’t possibly be trying to undermine Hakeem’s authority, right? (He was trying to undermine Hakeem’s authority.)
The next day at the barbershop, Jamal and Freda recorded a hot new track on his Zune while she buzzed customers’ hair. But lest we forget that Freda is REAL and not to be trifled with, an unruly customer sat in her dead father’s old barber chair and she was forced to PULL A GUN ON HIM. Freda Gatz is forever freeing her gats and that’s just a fact. But at least she was making sweet jams with Jamal. How sweet were these jams, do you ask? Well, just ask Becky:
Becky was FEELING this jam. Look at her go. Go, Becky! Feel it. Do it!
The main thing about this episode was Hakeem’s role as CEO and what kind of job he was doing. First of all, look at this sweater. It says a lot about how well he was doing. Secondly, in at least two separate scenes he excused a room full of employees so that he could have a conversation with a family member, which made me think that it must be VERY annoying to work for Hakeem. Just constantly having to leave rooms. Third, in one of those scenes there was a stack of donuts just sitting on the table untouched, which I found hard to believe. Fourth, someone broke in and stole all the fur coats!
See, being CEO was hard. But particularly when your own father and your father’s lawyer are behind some of this internal sabotage. In fact, Hakeem more or less immediately knew that Lucious had hired thugs to steal the fur coats, just as he had planted drugs on Mirage a Trois’s tour bus in order to get all their equipment confiscated and all their concert dates canceled!
Lucious even owned up to all of this stuff, and then had the audacity to threaten Hakeem for being a snitch if he went to the authorities. That is definitely a very weird crime rule. So you can actively ruin another person’s life via criminal acts but they’re not allowed to have you arrested? Lame!
Just when Jamal was getting excited about his new song with Freda Gatz, Cookie lined up a duet with the most famous singer in the world! Meet the stunning and incredible Stacey Run-Run, Empire’s long-overdue answer to Nicki Minaj. This was really going to propel Jamal up the charts, right? But guess what… Stacey Run-Run doesn’t do sloppy seconds. He was gonna have to call off his duet with Freda Gatz if he wanted to work with her! Extremely inconvenient, in my opinion. (And also, what?)
Over at the graveyard, Andre and Lucious bonded over Lucious’d dead mother’s grave. Even though Lucious was actively embarrassed and ashamed of his mother’s mental problems, Andre appeared to be soothed by the opportunity to reconcile his own mental problems. Or something. Maybe he was just trying to ask Kelly Rowland’s ghost when the new Beyoncé album was going to drop. I would have.
At this point Anika showed up to a family gathering to inform everyone that she was carrying Hakeem’s unborn child.
The news did not go over well! Not with Cookie, at least. She immediately slapped Hakeem upside the head and seemed livid at the idea that Anika was keeping the child. But, again, Lucious was suddenly super into the idea of having a biological heir to the Lyon dynasty, and more or less welcomed Anika’s fetus into the fold. (It was also at this point that he revealed that Lola hadn’t been his or Jamal’s offspring after all, which, convenient!)
One of the episode’s biggest shocks was when Tiana performed with flat-ironed hair! Plus it was parted in such a way, and she was wearing kinda high-waisted genie pants, that she looked a lot like Aaliyah. Which, fine. Why not? Babygirl won’t mind.
Then Anika came home to find Lucious patiently sitting on her couch. But my question was, how on earth was this unemployed temptress affording rent on THIS place? It’s in Manhattan, right? Honestly, Empire needs to explain this baffling discrepancy.
Anyway, this all came down to Lucious threatening Anika and then Anika threatening Lucious, and it became a game of chicken to see who could ruin the other more efficiently. Anika claimed to “know things” about Lucious — they HAD dated for five years — but he didn’t seem too ruffled. In fact, he openly informed her that sometimes women don’t survive childbirth! In other words, Lucious is an actual monster and always has been.
In the next scene he finally sprang his trap… At the big shareholders meeting, he appeared in the audience for the Q&A holding a ridiculous microphone into which he accused Hakeem of tons of CEO negligence, including getting all the furs stolen. The room seemed immediately hostile toward Hakeem, so Cookie had to stand up and fix things.
She got the two fellas to band together in front of the crowd, but it was Cookie herself who was the clear Queen in this situation. It’s frankly incredible that SHE isn’t the CEO at this point. She’s clearly the savviest and most popular Lyon of them all. But anyway, in the next scene Hakeem was summarily given the boot from the CEO role, and Lucious and his villainous black turtleneck seemed to think that the job was as good as his. We’ll see!
So after Jamal had cut Freda Gatz loose, he realized that Stacey Run-Run could only collaborate with him via email. She just sorta sent him her raps and expected him to harmonize over them or whatever it is he does. But Jamal doesn’t work like this! Sure, it’s how 85% of all mainstream pop collaborations happen, but not on Jamal’s watch. He threw a temper tantrum in the booth and then decided he’d made a bad decision. Where was Freda when he needed her?
She was back at the barbershop and she was NOT having Jamal. Nor should she; the Lyon family has done nothing but get her hopes up and then ruin her life at every turn. Just ask the ghost of Chris Rock.
In the episode’s final twist, guess who’s still alive! That’s right, Kelly Rowland is still alive, and she looks much older now. Apparently she survived her self-inflicted gunshot wound back in the day, and had been kept in some kind of group home ever since. We only found this out because Thirsty showed up in person to deliver a wad of cash to the attending nurse for keeping their secret (I think?). But yeah. Elderly Kelly Rowland was now in the picture, and it’s anyone’s guess as to what kinds of complications this will cause.
“Time Shall Unfold” was a solid, if slightly unfun episode. It’s saying something when Cookie is the voice of reason in her family, but it too often meant that Empire’s most dazzling character was simply a voice of reason. Who wants that? And the entertainment value in seeing Lucious behave like actual trash might be more limited than the show believes. Still, there was just enough ridiculousness. Stacey Run-Run is obviously incredible, and Freda pulling a gun out in a barber shop was a nice moment. But we’re not too far away from the season finale, and all the show seems to be building toward is just more power struggles between the family. It’s time to BRING IT, Empire. What else you got?
What did YOU think of “Time Shall Unfold”?
Empire airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on Fox.
