Cookie and Porsha burst into Lucious and Anika’s wedding planning to expose Boo Boo Kitty’s newfound alliance with Beretti. After kicking the wedding planner out, Cookie lays out Anika’s offenses, which include an attempt at wooing Porsha to her side, before bounding upstairs after the Empire executive’s clothes. As she and Porsha dump Anika’s clothes outside, trash talking her all the way, Anika attempts to sneak out without having to tell Lucious what Beretti knows about Empire. However, he catches her and confronts her; she counters by telling him that she’s tired of him stringing her along and that he has a lot of room to talk about betrayal seeing as how he’s constantly cheated on her. He’s the one who made her as treacherous as she is, she claims, by twisting their love into something unrecognizable, but instead of feeling pain at hearing someone he loves say something like that, Lucious threatens Anika. Not only does he imply that she could be in danger if she talks to Beretti, he tells her that if word of his ALS leaks, he would turn her father in for fraud.
Porsha heads to the set of Jamal’s latest video and catches him loving up on Ryan. She doesn’t care, though; she just wants him to come back with her, since Cookie has demanded his presence in front of her. Lucious and Cookie arrive back at Empire to assess the damage Anika’s alliance with Beretti has done, with Malcolm working on checking the building’s technology to see if there’s been a breach. The board executives then meet in the conference room where they run the numbers for how many of Anika’s clients would jump ship to Creedmoor; Cookie manages to get Elle to stay, while Tiana remains one of the more highly valued artists on the label. Hakeem, meanwhile, gets an explosives hook-up and threatens to go blow up Beretti’s label, a call-to-arms that Lucious promptly shuts down. Instead, he pleads for his family to pull together and show their enemies that nothing can stop the IPO, that their familial bond is incapable of being broken. With less than 24 hours left to solidify their company, Lucious wants heads to roll for what Anika did.
But it’s not all easy for Empire. Several of their artists are being evasive, including rapper Royale-T. Lucious fears that Jamal’s coming out might have scared some of his more socially conservative clientele, so Cookie volunteers to head to Ghetto Ass Studios to try and get Royale to avoid jumping ship to Creedmoor. While Becky calls Andre, who already flushed his medicine out of frustration with his father, Anika attends a meeting at Creedmoor where Veronica, one of her clients that followed her from Empire, performs. Beretti is happy with Veronica’s talent level and marketability, a far cry from the muted reaction from Lucious, yet he’s put on ice about Tiana, whose transfer to Creedmoor will be more difficult to pull off. Andre arrives at Empire with a briefcase full of money from the company’s slush fund; he believes that they’ll need to have some extra cash on hand in order to bribe their artists to stay, a reality that causes Jamal to bristle. However, Lucious likes the approach. Back at Creedmoor, Billy reminisces about the end of his relationship with Lucious and how the Empire impresario took the money and ran instead of sticking with him. Lucious was the first artist he signed and losing him kept Beretti from making music for quite a while, so his beef with the Lyon patriarch isn’t purely about business. When he inquires about what Anika knows that could give him a one up on Lucious, she deflects the question and avoids leaking information about Lucious’s ALS, even though Beretti is still looking for a way to take down the man who gets away with everything.
Cookie arrives at Ghetto Ass to find Royale-T and his entourage listening to a completed track. She confronts the rapper about his possible move to Creedmoor, having to shut down one of his friends who kept interrupting her sales pitch. After impressing them with her prison background, she complains about their awful liquor and uses the opportunity to further prove herself to the group of men. She drinks every one of them but Royale-T into the floor, with the rapper agreeing to stay with Empire if she can stand following yet another shot. Despite her slurred speech and obviously out of whack motor skills, Cookie stands and keeps Royale on the Empire roster. Meanwhile, Jamal stops by the studio where Ryan is shooting footage of recording artist Delphine, who previously expressed support for Jamal’s coming out and his interpretation of “You’re So Beautiful”. After she congratulates him on coming out, she insists that he sing with her, which he does after leaving Lucious a voicemail about possibly getting Delphine to Empire. The two perform while Ryan records their studio session and by the end, a small crowd gathered around to watch the two duet. Afterwards, Jamal calls Lucious again and again finds Lucious’s voicemail inbox.
With her meeting done, Cookie stumbles down the street and soon finds herself mugged by one of the rougher residents of the neighborhood. However, Malcolm and his team were near enough that the mugger didn’t get far before getting beat down. The violence proves to be an aphrodisiac for Cookie, who uses her lower inhibitions to hit on Malcolm multiple times to no avail. He won’t pursue anything because of Lucious, so he loads Cookie up in the SUV and takes her back to the office. Elsewhere, Lucious meets with Travie Wild, one of the 
artists on his label and someone with whom Hakeem is quite familiar. Wild is leaning toward leaving the label because of how little money he’s making on his music and how the internet has made traditional record labels increasingly obsolete. Andre steps in and explains that the IPO will allow Empire to get its own streaming service off the ground and that the artists will be able to have much more control once they go independent. Once Travie learns that he’ll be making more money, have more control, and won’t have a sizeable percentage of his royalties cut after the IPO, he decides to stay. Later, though, Becky learns that Beretti got to him and shoved him onto a private jet, meaning that Empire ended up losing him after all.
Andre shows up at Empire with paperwork from a new car he bought to impress clients with. Even though Jamal and Hakeem warn him about using the company’s money for something like this, he gets very affectionate, to the point where Hakeem has to push his brother off him. Not content to be pushed around, Andre gets Hakeem up against the elevator wall, only for a blackout to leave them stuck together. The darkness seems to bring about Andre’s depressive side, as he begins rehearsing how he’ll rationalize the purchase and what he could do to take the heat off himself. Lucious meets with Beretti about Travie and the two trade insults (Lucious wants to be the star; Billy is jealous of Lucious’s celebrity) before guns ge drawn. However, the situation defuses when Lucious tells Beretti that he’s beyond pity and that he and Travie deserve one another. On the way back to Empire, Malcolm learns of the blackout, which turns out to eb the result of a hack from the 18th floor. In the elevator, Andre has a panic attack related to Lucious never truly seeing him and having to work so much harder than his brothers for so little reward. Jamal gets the situation under control, though, by bringing up the song that Andre used to sing to him when things got bad when they were kids. Along with Hakeem, Jamal begins singing “Lean on Me” and soon enough, Andre joins in, with the entire song leading to a heartfelt hug between the brothers.
Over in the conference room, Creedmoor is still projected to be about 100 million ahead in potential earnings. Andre offers to give Travie the car in order to lure him back, while the team learns that Anika will be meeting with Tiana in Chelsea. Jamal, though, finally gets heard about Delphine, who happens to be bigger than both Travis and Tiana; Lucious unenthusiastically gives Cookie clearance to go to Chelsea and get her client back, with Jamal checking him over letting his homophobia and fear of his son doing well cloud his control of the company. With Cookie and Hakeem headed to Chelsea, Lucious refuses to let Andre leave the office and has him subdued on the table rather than letting him out. Hakeem ends up running interference on Anika in Chelsea, buttering her up long enough for Cookie to slide into the scheduled meeting and begin working her magic on Tiana. With Boo Boo Kitty at the mercy of Hakeem’s friends, Cookie hears that Tiana felt like an outsider at Empire due to the relationship with Hakeem ending. Cookie promises that Lucious cares more about business than he does Hakeem’s feelings and Hakeem comes inside to tell his ex that Cookie will work hard for her. Tiana floats the idea of the two getting back together, but Hakeem quickly shuts that possibility down due to his love of Camilla.
Lucious and Jamal meet with Delphine at Leviticus and hear about how she initially had trouble getting signed with Empire. Lucious promises to work personally with her and when he hears that her favorite song of his is “You’re So Beautiful,” he hops on the piano and begins playing. She and Jamal soon join in, with Cookie, Tiana, and Hakeem coming in to join the fun. Back in the conference room, Andre grows more irate at being caged up and lashes out at Lucious when he comes back. He confronts his father over not choosing someone to run Empire and when Lucious hedges his bets, Andre reminds him that eh should pick the son who knows he’s a murderer. He then becomes more aggressive with Malcolm and the rest of the security team, only to find himself swarmed by the team and subdued on the floor. He then gets injected with a sedative and wheeled out to a 48-hour psychiatric hold, with Lucious and Rhonda signing the proper paperwork.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-“You ’bout to break yourself. Believe that.”
-“We at war. Quit touching all on each other.”
-“Oh, I should’ve asked before I volunteered. That place is nasty.”
-“Tyree, you still workin’ on that same bowl of cereal?”
-“Aw, you worried about me? I’m fine. So are you.”
-“Aw, come on, take these cookies. Take ’em. I won’t tell.”
-“Your tragedy talks in her sleep. She mumbles your name.”
-Aren’t psychiatric holds 72 hours? I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of a 48-hour hold.
-So, are we just going to pretend that the hacker disappeared into the ether? I know that Lucious and company had a lot to deal with here, but that feels like something they should have addressed somewhere else in the episode, given that the entire premise here was that Empire was under attack from Creedmoor. Even if they didn’t name who did it, to mention that the entire building was hacked and then brush that off was weird.
-Trai Byers in those gray pajamas? Hey now.
-Estelle! If you don’t know who Estelle is, get familiar. And buy her new album, which features a solo version of the track she sung with Jamal.
-Although in a vacuum I liked this episode’s cold open, I felt a little robbed of a fun double agent plot. We never really got to see Anika sweat, nor did we get any of the positives that come with a storyline like this, which is a shame because the entire reason to do a double agent storyline is the tension. This was all climax, no build-up and while that might work with other storylines, it felt a little flat here.
-I will say, though, that Grace Gealey was excellent in that first fight with Terrence Howard. I love seeing someone struggling against a machine like the music industry and you felt how deeply she had been swallowed up by the treachery of the Lyon family.
-Jamal’s ridiculous music video – was that self-aware? My hope is that it was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek parody of r&b lover man videos, with the chest grab and the hilariously out of place Empire sign, but its intent didn’t seem ironic. It felt like weird self-parody, kind of a flea market version of “Untitled”.
-Was the conference room hooked up to the ESPN trade machine or something? The tech they were using to compare Creedmoor’s roster to their own was unlike anything I’ve ever seen on a dramatic television episode. I kept waiting for Chris Broussard to show up.
-The fact that there’s an artist on the Empire roster named Coagulation. Amazing.
-I like that they gave some background to Lucious’s conflict with Billy. It feels less arbitrary now and I appreciated that the dialogue during their confrontation made me think of the Source Awards.
-I totally buy that Cookie could drink me, you, and everybody we know under the table. I also thought that it was a cute detail to make her a friendly/horny drunk when the easy choice would have been to make her an angry drunk.
-Interesting that Jamal got the first verse with Delphine. Also interesting that they nailed it that well during their first run through.
-The detail to have a blue filter right as Andre slips into the depressive side of his disorder might’ve been on the nose, but I really liked it. Empire is always best at bringing the pizzazz.
-While the song in the elevator was a sweet reminder of the bond that exists between the brothers, and the fact that the show continues to subvert expectations as far as them competing against one another, it was strange to go from them hugging in the elevator to them in the conference room without any explanation. Obviously, we know what happened, but still, it felt a bit too abrupt.
-I’m guessing Tiana dumped India? Or was her offer to get back together with Hakeem more of a political move, for lack of a better word?
-Andre telling Lucious that he should pick the son who knows he’s a murderer makes every complaint I had about this episode obsolete. The delivery from Trai Byers, the timing in the conversation, the fact that the show hasn’t forgot about the murder – wonderful. That’s the Empire I love – just campy enough while still being grounded in a darker reality.
-Next time on Empire: Andre enters into a musical relationship with Michelle, while Hakeem attempts to show his business and artistic acumen at a family gathering.
