![]() “Hustle and Flow,” is doubly delightful.) (That they both laugh on the line “whoop that trick,” a jokey reference to Mr. Verses at each other until Lucious invents a goofy lyric and they both crack up. Potboiler television shows never stint on enmity and passion,īut they don’t always make room for a glint of ordinary affection.Įven the two-hour finale found room for a disarming moment - Lucious and Jamal (Jussie Smollett), his gay son, are still estranged but working on a song together. ![]() One second brothers are at each other’s throats (literally) and in the next, one says something that makes the other laugh. More than most dramas, “Empire” found space for the naturalįluidity of family bonds. Becky (Gabourey Sidibe) replies, “My mom’s white.”Īt points over its 12-episode first season, this series about a Philadelphia drug dealer turned music business magnate was strikingly sweet. “What type of black girl named Becky?” Hakeem asks. Gray) looks up from an intense meeting about the Empire Records succession plan to address his father’s assistant. Even the fervid finale had a few off-the-wall side jokes. What makes it surprising, though, are the glimmers of wit and self-awareness beneath all the rap star swagger and over-the-topĬonfrontations. One ended on top of a pool table instead of in a lily pond) as well as a mirror of similar moments on reality shows like “Bad Girls Club” and “Love & Hip Hop.”įrom the start, “Empire,” created by Lee Daniels and Danny Strong (“The Butler”), was a double-edged variation on a familiar genre, mixing not just hip-hop music and R&B, but also addingĪ contemporary sensibility to Aaron Spelling-era melodrama. Henson) and her prissy nemesis Anika (Grace Gealey) served as homage to the classic “Dynasty” catfights between Alexis Carrington and Krystle (this The drink-tossing, hair-pulling, stomach-punching smackdown between Lucious’s ex-wife Cookie (Taraji P. Yet despite all that, a hostile takeover attempt, and Lucious’s getting sent to jail in the final moments, the soapiest moment was both a throwback and a nod to present-day. Won’t die anytime soon, and neither will the sibling rivalry he has been stoking since the show premiered in January. ![]() An enemy was almost thrown off a balcony and an ally was killed, but the patriarch The music titan Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard) discovered that he didn’t have a terminal illness after all (Dun-dun-DUN). ![]() In the sizzling two-hour denouement, for example, And as such, even the craziest plot twists feel appropriate. It’s not that this series was particularly unpredictable - this is after all a nighttime soap. Of “Empire,” which ended on Fox on Wednesday, was pretty perfect. (She tore up a check instead.) But other than that, the first season It seems like a violation of Chekhov’s gun rule to put Naomi Campbell in the first act and not have her throw a phone at someone in the third. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2022
Categories |