You’re reading because you just watched the latest over-the-top episode and you thought, “What the hell was that?!?” as a billion GIFs exploded in your brain. So every week, instead of a traditional recap, we’ll give you the latest edition of Empire: How Crazy/Awesome Was It?, in which we rate this week’s episode in terms of relative genius/insanity. Add your own ratings in the comments below.
How crazy/awesome was he? Crazy enough to force Thirsty’s head under a board member’s skirt, just to secure a $10 million vote to keep him at Empire. He got ousted anyway. As the board member said, the hook-up was good, but it wasn’t 10 million dollars good.
What the heck happened with him this week? Well, he claimed that Skye “fixed” his gay son, he shot up his family’s house, and he helped push the WTF midseason finale into official WIHTTS territory. (That’s my new Empire acronym for What Is Happening to This Show?) But the most insane thing that happened to him was that he earned a Song of the Year award nomination for “Boom Boom Boom Boom.” What industry insider in her right mind would cast a vote for that song?
This week’s episode was mostly devoted to the American Sound Awards nominations special. Let me repeat that: It was just a nominations special, not an actual awards ceremony. And yet, the execs behind ASA got Jason Derulo and Charlamagne Tha God to make cameos, aired a full performance of Jamal and Alicia… I mean, Skye performing “Powerful” (which, to be fair, is a great song), and somehow spaced out the nominations over a period so long various members of the Lyon family had time to perform in a prison, lose a whole record label, and get pushed down the stairs before the Song of the Year contenders were even announced. Mostly the ASA broadcast was a good excuse for Empire to pass off a real-life Pepsi commercial as an ad from a fictional nominations special. Did I mention that Freda Gatz, who just signed to Empire about ten seconds ago, somehow earned an ASA nod? When exactly did her album come out? Obviously, the eligibility period for these awards is much longer than viewers’ memories.
Anyway, while the nominations were being ever-so-slowly announced, we learned that Lucious was telling everyone about Jamal’s relationship with Skye, hoping it would make for good press. We also learned that Mimi double-crossed Lucious by recording a video of him ignoring the rules of a publicly traded company and airing the footage for board members (including Hakeem!), who voted to replace him with Mimi’s wife — who just happens to be Hakeem’s ex, Camilla. (More on that later.) All of this is too much for Lucious, who ends up opening fire on the Lyon estate and threatening to kill Hakeem until Cookie calms him down. Was it insensitive of Empire to air that scene on the night of the real-life California shooting? We can argue about that in the comments. But chances are good that, like so many characters and plotlines on this show, the whole thing will be forgotten by the time Empire returns next year. ew
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