‘Empire’ season 2, episode 12 review: Death brings darkness — and frustration

Sooner or later, the luster was going to come off of “Empire” — and we may now know have a precise date for when it managed to happen.

Going into Wednesday’s episode, aspirations were high. We were coming off of a tense confrontation between Lucious Lyon and Hakeem for his betrayal, and eventually Hakeem taking control of the company as CEO. During this episode, the best thing that arguably happened was seeing Hakeem give Empire a ludicrous new logo that was more or less his face.

The hot mess of this episode can really be summed up in a few words: Killing Camilla and Mimi. In one way, we can see there being frustrations regarding this being another entry in the recent series of lesbian character deaths on television. It’s frustrating and sad to see that trend continue (granted, Camilla’s sexuality is fluid and then some), but we think that there is probably a specific reason for it here in making certain that Marisa Tomei and Naomi Campbell are written off the show. This is basically the downside to “Empire” selling its soul to guest stars for the first half of the season; they’re guests. They have an expiration date, and you write yourself into corners that you later have to write yourself out of.

Where these two reasonably decent characters? We think that if nothing else, they deserved something more than a cheap poisoning story that felt completely out of daytime soap operas from twenty years ago. They’re both gone, Empire’s in more flux, and Hakeem’s also gotta deal with some silly Laura – Tiana tour trouble.

Then again, much of this episode was silly, whether it be Cookie getting in close proximity to Lucious or pretty much everything else we’ve said about losing both Mimi and Camilla in the same episode for little or no reason. Other than Andre’s struggles, little made sense, and we’re starting to wonder if the writers really only planned for a season and have no idea what to do now. Grade: C.

If you do want to get another preview for what could be coming up next (provided that you’re still aboard the “Empire” train after tonight), head over to the link here right now. Also, sign up over here to get some additional TV news on all we cover, sent right over to you via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: Fox.)