‘Empire’ season 2, episode 4 review: Dead body deliveries and Andre’s agony
The second season of “Empire” has at times suffer from a pretty terrible problem: Sameness. While the performances by the actors have been consistently great, some of our concerns really have to do with the subject of whether or not the show has been doing enough to make things creative week to week.
The best part of the entire episode may have been with Andre and Rhonda, mostly because the two were desperate to make amends over what happened to Vernon to the point where it started to feel like an episode of “How to Get Away with Murder” complete with them doing some digging wearing dark outfits. Lucious eventually caught the two in the act, but to their surprise, he didn’t kill or punish them in any way. Instead, Lucious brought him back into the family!
As for some other interesting threads, Cookie continues her lack-of-trust mantra with Anika, Hakeem stormed off his music video set, causing further conflict with Hakeem, and Cookie found herself coming up with some more interesting angles to keep herself from getting locked up. Also, how about a deliver on a dead body? Crazy closing twist.
If there is one critique we’ll offer of this episode, it’s this: There is probably too much singing at this point. The issue that shows like this and “Glee” run into is that when you start to get used to some of the performances, you then don’t find them nearly as compelling. It’s like being shown a flash car a few dozen times; eventually, it starts to look a little less flashy than it would otherwise. At least this episode was stronger than the past few in setting up how Lucious could be taken down once more, and making it clear that he is not just set to inherit the earth once more. Grade: B+.
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