EMPIRE Review [3×02]: “Sin That Amends”

Lucious is cold, heartless and selfish, but we love his gifts!

What we don’t understand is, how far is Lucious willing to go to get Cookie back on his good side again? He’s showering her with all of these flashy, hot, expensive gifts and trinkets. Obviously he doesn’t know Cookie well enough that she’s going to fall for all of that; she can buy her own Lion sculpture!

“You handle the business, I handle the music.” - Cookie

What else is astonishing is that while we see Lucious beggin’ and pleadin’ his heart for Cookie, he can’t even allow Anika to do nanny interviews for Hakeem and her child, Bella. The minute he sees the first nanny, he throws them out of his house. He is so selfish and prideful to make Anika do all of the parenting while he sits there on his throne.

Lucious even goes far and beyond to have the Biz Markie sing their favorite childhood song, “Just a Friend”, serenading Cookie. Lucious and Cookie have a heart-to-heart, and suddenly those flashbacks from last week make more sense to us. When they were children, Young Cookie (Ajiona Alexus) had already had a boyfriend, Barry (Denzel Love). But Young Lucious (Jeremy Carver) had already had his sights on her from the get-go.

“You saw me in those streets and you knew that that wasnt my destiny. You knew my destiny was music, and my destiny was you.” - Lucious

It was a good thing for us to see that even as a young child, Cookie was aspired for greatness in music, even if that meant leaving Barry behind. But we can’t help but wonder what it would have been like if Cookie had stayed with him. Would she have been a fabulous, fashion-frenzy, diva in the music business? Or would she be a simple, studious, young woman ready to take on the world with her smarts? Heaven knows what could have happened all those years ago.

Brotherly love between Andre, Jamal and Hakeem

While Lucious and Cookie deal with their tension, sons Andre and Jamal have some of the most touching and heartfelt bonding moments on the show. We see Jamal on The Breakfast Club’s Angela Yee radio show explaining his meltdown from the showcase with Nessa. As much as Jamal is smiling through the pain, we can see how much stress that meltdown had caused him. And him not acknowledging it is going to be a big problem.

Taye Diggs guest stars!! That is all.

Luckily, our councilman Angelo DuBois (Taye Diggs) invites Jamal to one of his summits for PTSD victims. Jamal thinks that the situation should put the spotlight on Freda Gatz, who suffered the most and shot him. And that makes sense; where has she been with all of this? We know she’s in jail, but with so much talk about her affecting Jamal, why don’t we have an insider’s look on what’s going on with Freda? Is she planning for revenge? When is she getting released? Will she ever forgive Lucious and Jamal?

“I’m now making music ordered to save the world.” - Jamal

Lucious offers to have to summit at Empire Studios instead of the sponsor’s. Interesting. Why? What’s the angle? There’s always an angle. There’s always something he’s pulling up his sleeve to prove he’s the biggest and baddest music mogul around. And the worst father in the history of fathers.

But Cookie doesn’t trust Angelo one bit, obviously. She even goes into a hysterical, full-blown rant about his looks while the victims are having a tour at Empire Records:

“Clean-shaven, slick talking ass, acting all holier than thou, coulda killed somebody but didn’t, got a slap on-the-wrist-for-drunk-driving ass. Get outta here!! You’re a joke!!” - Cookie

The star of the show was another newcomer from the summit, Zeah (Ezri Walker). We liked his freestyle rap he’d done for Lucious, but his big moment was at the summit. He completely dominated the stage with his rap flow, he might have given Hakeem a run for his money!

Jamal’s PTSD is getting worse, but he gained a new perspective

Remember when we’d said Lucious was the worst father in the history of fathers? Him practically forcing Jamal to perform when he’s not well just proved that to us. We knew Lucious was a self-righteous SOB before. But when Jamal has an even worse panic-attack than before, and his father does nothing, it infuriated us to the core. It was so sickening to watch our baby be tormented by his inner monsters, and his father just stand and do nothing but demand him to perform. And Lucious knows better; it’s not like he hadn’t seen what happened in last week’s episode. What is Lucious’ deal?! His son needs help possibly from PTSD and Cookie is all you can think about?!?!

Meanwhile, Andre isn’t feeling any better about Rhonda’s death. His bipolar disorder has gotten even worse, affecting his spirit. It agonizes us to watch him be in such pain; he never got a chance to grieve his wife’s death. When he cries, we shed more tears. Jamal eventually finds him hiding in his room, in pain. It’s so sweet how Jamal offers to make a chart for his older bro to keep track of his bipolar disorder pills. Brothers taking care of each other. Can we say #brotherlylove?!

Even Cookie and Andre have a beautiful heart to heart together. Andre doesn’t believe he has a soul, doesn’t believe in God, his spirit is so broken, and only a few people care to notice: Jamal and Cookie, and Hakeem. Towards the end of the episode, the three brothers have a bonding moment. Andre remembers his moment before Freda shot him, and the way the flashback was shot made us flinch when Freda made that last gun go off.

But the brothers make a pact to stand up to the beasts within them; even Andre makes a surprising statement to grab the rest of his things from his and Rhonda’s apartment to move on from her. Andre goes back to the apartment to collect the rest of his things when cops stop him. Why weren’t they notified before that this was his and Rhonda’s house? And before Andre can negotiate with them, they immediately fight him off, nailing him to the ground, and pulling out a gun to his head!! And WHY do these trigger-happy cops think they can keep pulling up a gun to a black man? He did nothing wrong!! If he gets shot, we swear to Lucious’ sculpted Lion there will be hell to pay.

Questions, Comments, Concerns

• Nessa and Hakeem working together makes us see sparks between them, even though Nessa already shut him down previously. Their “First you hate me then you love me” rap
  Was sick!! #Hessa or #Nakeem for their ship name?
• Leslie “Shyne” Johnson (Xzibit), Hakeem and Nessa have a studio session cleaning up the new track, when one of Lucious’ cronies takes a staring at Nessa’s ass (ofcourse. Dirty dogg) and Shyne GOES OFF LOL!!
• “You must be out your rabbit-ass mind looking at my sister like that.” - Shyne. Do not mess with him, Hakeem and Nessa, whatever it is you two got going on.
• Awwww J Poppa (Mo McRae) and Becky (Gabourey Sidibe) still together <3 J Poppa wants to leave Empire and take Becky with him, where she can find herself being more appreciated than here. But Becky doesn’t wanna go bc Lucious “gave her a job when no one else would even talk to her”.
• “The fans is gonna come and gonna start knocking down the doors, all down and around this place. I love you, but I’m not letting my career go down with this building. And you shouldn’t either.” - J Poppa is really sweet. We hope Becky doesn’t let him go to stay at Empire.
• Anika and Lucious found Tariq’s teddy bear camera in the baby’s room. Now that the camera’s broken, how will they confront him about it? And how will Tariq continue to spy on the Lyons?
• We catch another flashback to when Tariq, Cookie and Lucious were kids. His mama pulled him away and told him to stay away from Lucious. If Tariq’s mother told him to stay away from Lucious, then why is he stalking him?

How did you like Empire’s second episode? Leave your questions, comments, concerns and predictions in the comments below.

Get ready for more family power drama on Empire’s third episode on FOX, next Wednesday, October 5 at 9/8c.