When was the last time the end of an episode of a television show made you laugh with delight? If youre an Empire viewer, chances are good this is a regular occurrence. And if you watched tonights installment, it probably happened to you about five minutes ago. Cookie Lyons shows up at the house of her hot new security chief Delgado to finally set their slow-burn sexual tension alight; the guy takes off his shirt to reveal the longhorn-cattle brand that marked her son Hakeems kidnappers. And boom! A sex scene turns into a plot twist without missing a beat, or a thrust. Its yet another oh, shit! moment of the sort thats made the Fox soap so damn entertaining, week after week after week.
Directed by New Jack Citys Mario Van Peebles and boasting the impressive title A High Hope for a Low Heaven (weve said it before and well say it again: Empires episode-name game does not fuck around), this seasons sixth outing shows that the wrap-up of the Lucious-vs.-the-Feds storyline a couple weeks back does not mean the end of the intrigue. In fact, Delgado may be the Lyon clans most insidious enemy yet. Past rivals tended to emerge from one of the worlds the record-mogul patriarch is involved with, inevitably falling to our (anti)heros multidisciplinary mastery of music, money, and murder. But this new nemesis is an ex-cop turned security consultant who apparently runs a gang of secuestradores on the side; hes got experience on every conceivable side of the law. What kind of damage can he do now that hes got his foot in the door and his hand in the Cookie jar, so to speak?
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The Lyonness is the lynchpin of his plan and of the series. As always, Taraji P. Henson mines so much gold from this character, and by reacting to each new event Hakeems hostage video, his relationship with her one-time rival Anika, his eventual on-stage comeback its she who helps sell the plot points, no matter how outlandish. In the actresss hands, every OMG problem is an organic outgrowth of plain old family matters. Without that connection, the show wouldnt work.
She brings equal thoughtfulness to her romantic material. Check out the way she quickly looks around the room before she and Delgado share their first kiss, like she needs to visually confirm its safe to enjoy herself. Her dialogue during the sex scene doubles down on this dynamic. So, we gonna do this or what? she asks first. Make me forget about everything that happened this week last. You said you got me, right? For her, sex is just another security service he can provide, which makes his honeypot relationship with her that much more of a bummer. Shes terrific in every mood and moment. (And she looks incredible, too, even when wearing a number of leather belts that would make the Cenobites from Hellraiser say Thats a little much.)
Considering how soaps usually handle sex, exclusively portraying it either as hot stuff or a recipe for disaster, this episodes varied approach to getting it on was refreshing and, yes, sexy. Lets run it down: In addition to the Cookie/Delgado hook-up, youve got Becky (the great Gabourey Sidibe, whos so much fun on screen you wanna text her to hang out after every scene) going hot and heavy with closet-Christian MC J Poppa, whom she assures us is hitting all the walls. Then theres Hakeem and Anika, who reconnect at their most desperate moment, kissing while dripping with blood and tears as Van Peebles chaotically cuts back and forth between them. Jamal is so devastated by his boyfriend Michaels infidelity that he has to rip off David Bowies Space Oddity to accurately convey his heartbreaks cosmic scale in song.
And Lucious has cultivated some kind of strange father/mentor/older-man thing with Freda Gatz, the incorrigible but undeniably talented artist whose dad he murdered, shortly before assuring him he was gonna make his daughter famous. On one level the connection seems sincere; he probably does relate to her more than he does to his sons, as he tells her. On another its hugely manipulative: When Lucious fails to getHakeem back on his side by telling that he wrote a song for him, no problem he simply repeats the story to his new female protege instead, with better results.
It seems contrarian to say, but its smaller moments like that which elevate this show above the competition. The high-speed hairpin-turn plot is all well and good. But its really all about how the cast sells scenes like the one in which Jamal and Andre snap Hakeem out of his post-kidnapping funk, alternating TLC and ball-busting like brothers do. Its in the playful way actor Jussie Smollett delivers Jamals reaction to his dads alleged partying with a gay, Geffenesque music mogul: Ohrrrrreally? Its in killer exchanges like the one between born-again Andre and his dad as they fight over the direction of the Gutter Life label: You put me in charge! No, I put you in place. Dont confuse the two. A show like this contains so many moving parts, all of which have to go like clockwork for the series to be smart as well as merely sensational and successful. And right now, even the tiniest gears are spinning in the right direction.
Previously: Lord Have Mercy