Everyone is looking to the future in this week’s episode of Empire. Cookie and Lucious both have their own lives to figure out, while their children must decide whether to do things differently or the same.
Cookie is enjoying her time with Laz, but not everybody trusts him. While their time together hasn’t softened Cookie’s creativity, Hakeem gets a bad vibe. Cookie comes up with an idea for a festival to launch Lyon Dynasty. She also wants Hakeem to replace Laura as lead singer for Mirage a Tois because of her lack of stage presence. Hakeem doesn’t want to do that so he asks Tiana for help. Tiana is actually a good teacher for this sort of thing, but Cookie isn’t budging on her decision. Hakeem’s solution is to get Laura completely exposed for the world to pay attention to her. It works like a charm. That solves one problem, but Hakeem being left out of a security meeting for “Cookie’s Cookout” idea creates another. Hakeem warns his mother against Laz after this. For good reason since Laz is working to extort as much money from Cookie as he can, whatever way he can.
Over at Empire, Lucious is having a difficult time getting Freda to get her music where it needs to be. Lucious knows how to get Freda to harness where she needs to be, but he can’t dig deep himself. He doesn’t want to revisit the place in his head that opens up the floodgate of emotions. Lucious’s only true partner this week is Mimi. Together, they try to make a deal for a new partnership with a streaming service. The deal goes south when a comment about the shallow quality of Lucious’s reminds him of his past and current mental block. They get the deal back on track, but for different reasons, both Mimi and Lucious have trouble celebrating. The song Lucious has been working on with Freda has been missing something, and it’s not so much that Lucious doesn’t know what it is but that he isn’t willing to unlock it. He finally figures it out and brings his mother’s gun to the studio. The track that emerges is raw, and real, and a bit scary.
Lucious also can’t accept that Andre has changed and is not handling business the way he used to. Specifically, Andre cannot handle the Deputy Mayor to influence her to solve a problem with Freda. All of this pressure has Andre seeking counsel from his pastor, who tells him that there are other ways of keeping his vow to God and please his father. Instead of sleeping with the Deputy Mayor like he used to, Andre simply blackmails her. Now he has all the more time to spend with Rhonda.
Lucious’s focus on Freda keeps him from being there for Jamal, so Jamal asks Cookie to help him with his song. Mother and son are reunited in full form, including for an all-night studio session. This ends up being one of the funniest “walk of shames” ever to hide the truth from Hakeem. The mother and son bonding will continue, so long as Lucious doesn’t put a stop to it.
Cookie’s Quotables will be postponed until next episode due to wittier dialogue by those such as Jamal and Portia.
[Photo credit: Chuck Hodes/FOX]
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