Empire 1.07 “Our Dancing Days” Recap

Although Empire is busy prepping for the upcoming investor showcase, an important part of building toward the IPO, Lucious and company are more concerned about Olivia’s sudden reappearance. Having lived as a hairdresser in St. Louis for the past six years, she never remarried, though she was with an abusive boyfriend not that long ago. The reason she came back at this particular time? She wants Lola to have a father, but Cookie doubts that she and Jamal ever had sex to begin with. Lucious, Vernon, and Cookie then make it to the Empire offices, where Andre pulls Lucious aside to tell him about a dinner set up with Terry Schiller, a well-known fund manager who could provide them with a serious dose of capital. His daughter went to college with Rhonda, which is how Andre was able to swing the dinner, but things aren’t going so well with the other two Lyon boys, as Jamal and Hakeem are still tense around one another.

But that doesn’t matter, not when Lucious collapses in his office while talking to Cookie. He gets rushed to the hospital, picking Anika to ride in the ambulance over Cookie, just as Jamal comes home to find Michael moving out. Michael understandably can’t handle Jamal’s comment about not seeing anyone special and since there’s a baby in the mix now, he just wants to bow out gracefully and let Jamal have the two loves of his life: music and Lola. Before leaving, he does find out that Jamal slept with Olivia once, meaning that the baby could theoretically be his. Over dinner, Andre does his best to cover for Lucious, telling Schiller that his father’s plane had a malfunction that left him stranded in Baltimore; also not having the best dinner conversation is Hakeem, who can’t seem to connect with Camilla on a meaningful level. She rolls her eyes at his slang and calls him out on buying her a necklace with his name on it when he won’t even take her out in public. He assures her that the thing with Tiana was just for promotion and that the next performance he has, he’ll take her to and publicly show that she’s his actual girlfriend.

Except that, y’know, his next performance is the investor showcase at Leviticus – not the most ideal time for a publicity stunt. He does get her to agree to come by putting her on the VIP list, though. In the hospital, Lucious is faced with the damage he did to himself with the experimental drugs from Dr. Mason, who had his license revoked years ago; of course, Lucious isn’t exactly thrilled to hear that he has early stage of liver damage or that he’s facing an unwinnable battle with this ALS. When Cookie arrives at the hospital, security won’t let her into Lucious’s heavily guarded room, though the two share a knowing look through a nearby window. Back at Empire, the final touches are being put in the investor showcase, with the consensus being that the sports division will lead the way and get the crowd energized. Through a conference call, Lucious strikes down that proposal and pushes the music back to the forefront, telling his employees that their music division is what will win these investors over. In fact, he wants to put Elle at the front of the show as a way of appealing to the sentiment of the audience and as a tribute to Empire’s first platinum recording artist. Jamal and Hakeem will follow her in the lineup.

Well, if they can stand each other long enough to perform, that is. Rehearsal for their performance is awkward and confrontational, but Cookie does manage to bust things up, coming down on her kids for not following Andre’s lead in doing whatever they can for their father. Lucious then arrives, citing food poisoning as the real reason he was in the hospital, while Becky flirts with Malcolm before getting him to fix the stuck elevator. On the elevator? Lola, who says that she lost her mother. Cookie, of course, blames Lucious for this whole mess, yet she can’t fully lay into him when she has Elle to worry about. Elle makes it to rehearsal a little later than she needed to, claiming that she’s now on CP time, and runs through her song pretty well, giving Cookie some much needed encouragement. Back at the Empire offices, Jamal confronts Lucious about the sham marriage he was forced into with Olivia. Surprisingly, Lucious tries to make nice, telling Jamal the denial of his sexuality is a good business decision, apologizing for Michael leaving, and empathizing with the tough road artists take in finding love. He then offers to take Lola home that night with Anika, citing that Juanita would be there to help them all out.

The buzz at the investor showcase grows during the red carpet, while Becky and Lucious work the main room full of investors and reporters. Elle is nervous about the performance, her first in years, but Cookie tries to be encouraging; when she leaves, though, Anika shows up to lull Elle into a false sense of security before secretly spiking her tea with narcotics, thereby causing her to fall off the wagon. With Andre getting fairly drunk and Hakeem abstaining once he sees that Camilla made it to the showcase, Lucious sets about talking to Camilla, who he thinks is there for the showcase only. She talks up Hakeem to him while he attempts to flirt with her, only for nothing to amount from his effort. In the venue bathroom, Elle is wasted out of her mind and when Cookie finds her, she comes down hard on her. Her main concern? Having to tell Lucious that the artist he helped champion let him down by not being able to perform at something this important.

However, Lucious takes it pretty well in stride. He just boots Jamal and Hakeem’s act up to the premiere slot and tells the boys that the investors are here for the future of the company – them. After Lucious goes out to greet the crowd, he introduces the performance from Jamal and Hakeem, which goes fairly well. Lucious can’t enjoy it, though, for getting sweaty and obviously uncomfortable from the wins of the stage. He ends up becoming hoarse and won’t be able to give the speech meant to convince the investors that they should pour their money into his company. Anika volunteers to go out and give the speech, seeing as how she wrote it and all, but Lucious instead turns to Cookie, telling her that he needs someone to get the crowd excited and show people the familial bonds that’ve gotten Empire to this point. At the podium, Cookie feels her way out and decides to make her own speech up rather than read what Anika wrote. She talks about Lucious being a musical god who created his own sound, Lucious’s business mind helping everything he touch turn to platinum, and the brilliance of her sons, who are living proof that Empire is a dream that needs to be passed down.

Lucious is beside himself with pride at his ex-wife’s performance, which was good enough to convince Schiller (who doesn’t invest in entertainment companies) to throw his money down for Empire. With Anika heading off to Chicago for a business meeting with Lana Del Rey, Lucious gathers the rest of the family at his place and tells them that he has ALS and that his symptoms are getting worse. Hakeem gets emotional, while Andre panics at what this means for the IPO, snapping at Rhonda and threatening Hakeem before leaving for home. Lucious advises Jamal and Hakeem to be strong at a time like this; Cookie needs them to hold it down for her, so he sends the boys off so he can have a word with their mother. Once alone, he compliments Cookie on her performance at the showcase and assures her that she’ll never lose him, which she fears will happen due to the ALS. The two end up kissing before heading to the bedroom and having sex for the first time in decades. While they’re in bed, Anika comes home and sees them in action, though she doesn’t bust them up just yet.

Additional thoughts and observations:
-“Bae? What is a bae?”
-It feels like something was off about the investor showcase. I understand the glitz and glamour on stage, as the company wanted to do whatever they could to make themselves look worthy of investment dollars, but would there really be a red carpet for an event like this? Between this, the wonky Teen Choice Award concert, and the rapid fire rise of Jamal’s music career, it’s as if a show focused on the entertainment industry doesn’t quite understand, y’know, the entertainment industry.
-I didn’t like the choice to basically ignore the Olivia storyline after it was last episode’s cliffhanger. Some interesting stuff came from the reveal (the exposition about the marriage itself, the impact it + Michael’s departure had/will have on Jamal), but that lack of follow through and narrative coherency isn’t encouraging.
-Anika has now descended into full-on mustache twirling villain territory thanks to her actions with Elle. While I completely understand her motivation (her insecurity at not having as strong a relationship with Lucious as Cookie, not wanting to be shown up by Cookie on “her turf”) and think it was totally in character, it felt like A) too much too soon (aka the action was not in proportion to anything Cookie’s done to Anika) and B) something that will make Anika irredeemable, which is a shame after seven episodes. To me, the best soaps have villains that you root for despite yourself, so turning Anika into this much of a heel is either poor planning or gearing us up for a monster twist later in the season.
-I’m glad that the show went ahead and put Lucious and Cookie together. As strange as its pace might be, this type of shortcut is much appreciated; the more interesting material from a Cookie/Lucious hook up lies in what happens afterwards, not in their coy flirtations, so good for the show for cutting against the urge to tease this out for too long.
-That also goes for Lucious’s reveal about his ALS. That could have been a series-long “mystery,” but everything’s out in the open at episode 7. No need for the show to twist itself into knots trying to keep characters from finding out about the diagnosis and there’s quite a lot of material to mine from the family knowing about their patriarch’s ticking mortality.
-Cookie’s monologue about Lucious was beautiful. Touching without being corny – a shrine to her relationship with Lucious. On a show built around louder moments, it was a nice, subtle bit of writing and acting that immediately stood out.
-I liked seeing Lucious not be horrible to Jamal for once. He’s still far from a good father, but the empathy he showed Jamal was almost moving and I liked that the show tied together the Lyons through their art. As many differences as there are between Hakeem, Jamal, and Lucious, they can relate to one another through their passion for music and their time as professional recording artists, which is one of the main reasons Andre feels so excluded from the main storyline. He’s the corporate while the rest of his family is the creative.
-I continue to live for Naomi Campbell on this show. Her introduction at Leviticus earlier this season was the stuff of dreams and her questioning what a bae in this episode was just the best. I would adore if this show gave her as good a line as this gem:

-No Tiana again, but we got some Elle, so I’m okay. I would like to see what Tiana’s doing, though.
-That Hakeem/Jamal performance was a bit ridiculous. The song was fine (the Dire Straits sample was unexpected), but the scantily clad ladies with gigantic TV heads were an…interesting touch. I also liked the instantaneous, perfectly distributed smoke that came up after Lucious introduced them.
-Is it weird that I want to see how more of these songs are made? When did Hakeem and Jamal have time to create/record/perfect the song they performed at the showcase?
-Next week on Empire: The Lyons record a legacy album together, while Cookie comes face to face with Camilla and Andre struggles with his inner demons.