When we last left Empire, the Lyon family saga was rebounding emphatically from a series of blah, bad (instead of deliciously bad) episodes. In the midseason finale, the writers delivered a spectacle that came very close to reaching the bizarre, kitschy heights of Season’s 1’s devastating two-parter: Twists on twists on twists, a wonkily incorporated Pepsi ad, a broken down and embittered Lucious, and a catastrophic, slow-motion tumble down a gaudy staircase. It was just enough to leave this loyal Empire viewer, at least, eagerly anticipating more.
And nearly four months months later, more is here. Empire is fully back on course, fundamentally the same as it was for the majority of Season 1—Cookie’s rattling off bombastic Cookie-isms left and right, her recurring theme in last night’s episode being gender and sexuality. (She calls Camilla a “half-lesbian bitch” and urges Jamal to “get [his] gay back” after his brief, heartfelt dalliance with Skye Summers.) A callback to the show’s very first episode finds a pissed-off Cookie grabbing her broom, again, to mercilessly beat Hakeem for betraying the family by casting the deciding vote to oust Lucious as the head of Empire. And with Jamal and Andre, she nefariously plots to take Camilla out from the “inside.” Basically, “Death Will Have His Day” gave us more Cookie, and it was all the better for it.
But there was plenty more going on, as there always is—namely, the writers’ determination to draw as many unambiguous parallels to The Godfather series and other Hollywood mobster films as possible. A Fredo namedrop (in reference to Hakeem, of course) aside, the most ridiculous reference point—the one that tips the show into serious LOL WTF territory—is the montage of intimidation that plays out in the middle of the episode. An emotionless Lucious weaves a moody musical interlude with a grand piano as the threats made toward the board members who voted Lucious out are carried out by his buddies from his stint in jail, one by one: Someone emerges fresh from a relaxing day on the driving range, and clicks the remote to his fancy car, only to have that fancy car explode into flames. Another comes home to her lavish digs to find her poor cat, stiff and dangling from the ceiling; yet another is beaten badly in an industrial courtyard. It’s an Empire twist on Scorsese’s iconic “Layla” sequence in Goodfellas, which is to say that it doesn’t quite pack the dramatic punch that it ostensibly intends to—but it’s great for a hearty chuckle.
This is Empire working its strengths as pure entertainment; over-the-top in its execution, but so self-assured in its storytelling capabilities that it almost works. Cribbing from the gangster playbook is what it’s been doing the whole time—who is Lucious but a wicked patchwork of Tommy DeVito, Michael Corleone, and Nino Brown?—and such an homage was bound to happen on the show sooner or later. Ditto for the final scene, in which Lucious summons Hakeem to the river by the underpass—a spot that is significant not just because it’s where the (now former) Lyon king murdered his best friend in Season 1, but also because it echoes the demise of Fredo on the lake.
Basically, the actions of Lucious and Hakeem (who refuses to give his father the satisfaction, and Shakespearean kismet, of being killed at the hands of his own flesh and blood) all align with what we’ve come to expect from them both. This isn’t a disorienting foray into PTSD or a dangerous incorporation of religion as cure-all for illness—Empire and its cast of characters is, once again, making sense within the boundaries set by their exaggerated, nonsensical world.
