On the day of Cookie’s sentencing, she gets some time to say goodbye to her family before the verdict is read. After assuring Jamal and Andre that she loves them and that God is in control now, she holds baby Hakeem while Lucious sings to her.
Present day: It’s the morning after Cookie slept with Lucious, the only man she’s ever been with. Although he’s had more partners than his ex-wife, Lucious has always sought out what loved in Cookie in other people, never finding the exact combination of traits that made him love her so much. As she helps him get dressed, she makes her plea for him to be with her over Anika – a legacy album. Cookie wants to do an album spanning Lucious’s entire career, complete with a complementary documentary and a song featuring both Jamal and Hakeem. As the entire premise of their IPO is that Empire is a family business, Lucious loves the idea. Meanwhile, Jamal finds Hakeem praying at a Catholic church; he wants Lucious to get better and urges his brother to make nice so they can enjoy the last few years of Lucious’s life peacefully. That includes not being a mess together on stage and Jamal wonders aloud about not coming out until Lucious passes, if only to preserve the peace in the family.
The Lyons gather for the first studio session for “You’re So Beautiful” and recording the chorus goes pretty well, with Lucious and Cookie joining Jamal and Hakeem for a run through. Looking on, though, is Andre, cut off from the bonding that makes his family what it is. Afterwards, Lucious meets with Ryan Morgan, the director he’s interviewing for the documentary that will accompany the legacy album. Ryan’s bravado is enough to get Lucious to hire him and get him to film the upcoming White Party, but the high of a successful hire is tempered by Anika’s presence in his office. She confronts him about the possibility of her father being brought down for fraud over the key man policy, telling Lucious that she’ll burn the entirety of Empire down if something were to go wrong for Steve. Anika then lays into him about the hook-up with Cookie and Lucious decides to be contrite about what happened; he’s able to get her forgiveness if he marries her the following day and proves his love to her. Considering the stress he’s going through, Anika agrees to push it back a week, only if he makes the announcement at the White Party with Cookie in attendance.
Andre meets with Vernon and learns of the next plan to help him become CEO – find the board votes to become interim CEO and show the company that he’s the right man for the job the first time Lucious’s ALS causes him to step back. He has three of the four necessary votes locked in and his target for the fourth is Janet Blakeley, a former model with a penchant for hot blondes. Rhonda agrees to the set up, just as Hakeem records his verse for the legacy song. However, when he gets a constructive note from the song’s producer Cookie, he throws a tantrum and storms out of the recording booth. Forced to play mediator, Lucious gets his son to open up about the real reason for the anger toward his mother – he hates how bossy and controlling she is and he felt forgotten once she got into prison. He believes that she loves Jamal more than him, but Cookie explains that she simply knows Jamal better. The two then agree to get to know one another better and Hakeem gets back in the booth. Meanwhile, Jamal is doing interviews for the documentary with Ryan. Once they complete this round of recording, Ryan asks him out for a drink on Saturday and Jamal agrees, though he cautions the director to keep his sexuality to himself around Lucious.
Once everybody clears out of the studio, Lucious and Cookie listen to a cut of the song and quickly get flirty with one another. Cookie playfully smacks him and the two hook up on the soundboard while the song plays in the background. Andre and Rhonda arrive at the Blakeley’s, only this time the plan has changed; rather than have Rhonda go after Janet, she’ll be seducing the husband Harold, who took a liking to her picture. But Harold turns out to be an older man in a wheelchair, so Rhonda ends up pounding Scotch and saying inappropriate things during dinner. When Harold blatantly hits on her, she vomits into her salad, yet strangely, Andre still manages to get enough votes to become interim CEO. Granted, that fourth 
vote will come from Carl Johnson, but still, the night wasn’t a total loss. Rhonda does, however, tell him that she’s tired of being whored out to anyone Andre needs to do business with and that he needs to be the one to make this happen – not her. Elsewhere, Hakeem plays the legacy song for Camilla, whose only note is that Jamal shouldn’t be last. The best always gets last, she claims, and in her mind, that should be Hakeem. She then produces a white suit she bought him, saying that he should be dressing the part of a powerful artist, and gets invited to the White Party as a result.
The following day, Hakeem shows up in a blazer, greatly pleasing Cookie, and gets put last on the legacy song after appealing to his mother. Over drinks, Jamal and Ryan compare war stories about growing up gay with black fathers; Jamal is intrigued by how open and self-assured Ryan is about his sexuality, especially with his assertion that one should come out for themselves and not anyone else. Jamal then goes home and plays with Lola, who is still missing her mother. Initially, she’s very guarded, but Lola responds to Jamal singing to her and the two bond for the first time. Meanwhile, Andre pleads his case about why he would make a good interim CEO to the Empire board before the group of seven are to cast their deciding votes. Things are deadlocked at 3-3 until it gets to Lucious, who votes “nay” and crushes Andre’s dreams of getting closer to the top of the company.
That night at the White Party, Jamal lashes out when Cookie tells him that Hakeem is going to be last on the legacy song, negative emotion that isn’t helped when he sniffs out that Cookie and Lucious are hooking up. As he claims to want off the song, Cookie spots Lucious and Anika on the red carpet and overhears the latter talking up a grand announcement that will be shared with partygoers later. Lucious then pulls her aside and confirms that he’s going through with the wedding to Anika and that said ceremony had been moved up to the next week. Rather than making a scene and ruining the opportunity for her sons to have another strong performance, Cookie decides to play dirty with Anika. She finds the future Mrs. Lyon and congratulates her on the engagement, drawing her out into an altercation. Anika tries to shut things down by telling Cookie she knows about the hook up at the house, but Cookie coolly throws the soundboard encounter in Anika’s face before heading off to enjoy the party.
While Andre knowingly downs alcohol that will mix badly with his meds, Hakeem introduces Camilla to Cookie. Cookie, of course, isn’t feeling this relationship and correctly deduces that Hakeem is only with Camilla because of the mommy issues stemming from her own prison time. She warns Camilla to stay away from her son and after the two have a verbal tussle, Cookie dismissively walks away and Camilla proclaims Hakeem as being off the legacy song. Her project falling apart, Cookie tries to appeal to Jamal in hopes of getting him back on the record; she gets some help from Lucious, who explains to his son that music goes beyond the problems their family has with one another. Music is forever, a way for an artist to live their truth, and Jamal decides to perform his own arrangement of “You’re So Beautiful” after being encouraged by his father. However, much to the surprise of everyone in the building, Jamal changes a key lyric and comes out of the closet through song. Cookie and Ryan are thrilled; Vernon is pleasantly surprised and a little emotional; and Lucious is stunned at the secret he tried to keep buried surfacing at a highly publicized event.
The news, of course, makes headlines, but while Lucious isn’t thrilled at Jamal’s actions, he’s more concerned with Vernon and Andre going behind his back. Not only does he doubt Vernon’s loyalty, he tells Andre that he doesn’t trust him because of Rhonda. Once he brought around a white woman, Lucious realized that his son was trying to be accepted by mainstream society and he doesn’t like that type of behavior. No one will ever accept Andre, he argues, and Andre internalizes this anger without giving much of a reaction to his father. Later, he heads to the recording studio by himself, puts a gun to his head while in the booth, and pulls the trigger. There was no bullet in the chamber, causing Andre to cry out in agony. Meanwhile, Hakeem stops by Jamal’s and congratulates him on the bravery it took to come out, while Anika heads to Billy Beretti’s without telling Lucious.
Lucious meets with Cookie and learns that she’s going to be focusing on Jamal now rather than hanging on to the possibility of them getting back together. She tries to tell Lucious that absolutely nothing changed by their son coming out and that nobody cares about him being gay; however, Lucious still cares and he kills the legacy album, citing the dysfunction threatening to eat their family alive.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-“You still got it, old head.”
-“You want Cookie’s nookie, ditch the bitch.”
-“Know any hot blondes who like to use sex for power?”
-“Uh, did you get rid of fake-ass Lena Horne?”
-“Girl, men. Congratulations. You look pretty.”
-“Oh, I don’t think so, Auntie Camilla.”
-“You look like you got a long tongue.”
-The book-ended flashbacks were interesting. They were one of the few times we’ve seen a vulnerable Cookie this season, helping to give her some humanity behind the loud wardrobe and snappy one-liners, while the closing sequence of “You’re So Beautiful” being sung in prison was sad, evocative directing from Sanaa Hamri. I liked the quietness on a show that doesn’t have the space for that and the long, continuous pan out was emotional without being overly sentimental.
-Watching a song being put together was just the change of pace the show’s musical elements needed. With as many songs that’ve popped up without previous mention as there’ve been, the show needed something a little more organic like this to keep this side of itself grounded. Part of why I like the show’s music is that it feels reality-based – that it could be something feasibly on the charts and that it doesn’t feel like a bunch of slickly produced karaoke numbers. That connection to “You’re So Beautiful” made each studio session sizzle, with Jamal’s lyric change at the White Party a triumphant way of barreling through one of the show’s lingering questions.
-Normally, I would be a bit wary about Empire getting through Jamal’s coming out after eight episodes. It’s such a big, thorny issue that it just feels like something that stretches longer than this period of time; plus, the show has made some strange pacing choices that’ve made moves like this feel a little less secure. But I thought it was extremely apropos for Jamal to come out through song and the actual coming out was made more powerful by the crowd’s energy and by seeing how everyone in his life reacted. It was a swift way to break big news, rounding up every major character and putting them in the same room, without feeling like a plot shortcut.
-I will say, though, that Jamal singing to Lola was emotionally manipulative to the umpteenth power. And it’s still so strange that Olivia was on the show for a good 3 minutes before completely disappearing. I’m hoping that there’s a good/juicy reason for her absence and that it wasn’t just an excuse for a quick Raven-Symone cameo. I mean, I love me some Raven-Symone, but if you’re going to get someone like that, let them play around in the world. Don’t use their recognizability as a casting crutch.
-The most intriguing dynamic on this show has to be Andre vs. the rest of his family. I love that he feels ostracized for not being musically gifted and how his academic ambitions class with the family’s creative drive; it’s such an underexplored topic in dramatic television, the idea that black people can only “make it” through sports and entertainment and that academic achievement isn’t a legitimate way to build oneself up, and I like where the show is headed with this.
-Andre trying to kill himself could have been powerful, but it felt like such a shock tactic. I get why he did it (alcohol conflicting with his medication, emotional distress from Lucious, not making it to interim CEO, problems with Rhonda); it just hit too exploitive a note for me.
-The entire series should be 42 minutes of Naomi Campbell and Taraji P. Henson just reading each other. Camilla’s first meeting with Cookie was delicious in every sense of the word and was the type of soapy material that this show can flawlessly execute. I’ve not been in love with every soap trope they’ve trotted out, but I’m a sucker for a Queen Bee brawl, especially if it features figures as intimidating and compelling as Campbell and Henson.
-Another great directing moment: the sequence of Lucious coming into Empire after Jamal came out. Not only was the music cue excellent, it was just gorgeously shot and edited, of similar quality in that regard to the pilot. The music when Anika and Lucious discussed the hook up was similarly great.
-“You’re So Beautiful” sounds very 20/20 Experience, no? Most of Jamal’s material has been in that lane, but this was the most Justin Timberlake it’s been thus far. It makes sense, though, since Timbaland is the Empire music supervisor and executive produced Timberlake’s 2013 albums.
-I’d like an explanation about the coats Jamal and Lucious wore to the White Party. And why Hakeem wasn’t wearing one, as well, since it seemed that style was the Lyon family uniform. Also, Cookie’s high ponytail was fabulous.
-“The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” eh? I wonder how long the writers were waiting to spring that trap. Kudos on the restraint for waiting until episode eight.
-I like that Camilla wants Hakeem to dress like Puff Daddy circa 1997. Heck of an aesthetic. I’d live if he put on a shiny suit from the “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems” video, though.
-Also, Camilla referring to herself as “mother” with him was just the best. And I’m glad that the show brought up the mommy issues he has as a result of Cookie going to jail.
-Next time on Empire: Cookie declares war on Anika, while Lucious faces down a long-time rival and Jamal cozies up to a famous artist.
