‘Empire’ season 3, episode 4 review: One freaky ghost
“Empire” is a show that does pride itself on being smart, daring, and stuffed at times full of twists. We admire them for that much of the time.
As for Andre having some sort of odd three-way with Nessa and the ghost of Rhonda? That may be a little weird even for this show. Maybe you can view this as Rhonda encouraging Andre to move on with his life without or … or maybe this is Andre just trying to convince himself that he can have it all. Either way, this moment is going to have complications in so many ways. For one, it throws Andre more into the music world than he is probably accustomed to given that he’s the only one of the three sons who doesn’t really have much of an interest in performing. Also, Hakeem’s got his own thing for her, and you gotta imagine that this is going to be something that comes out in due time.
On the contrast to that, the other non-ghost highlight of the night (and we’re not even sure that was a highlight) was Cookie being Cookie, and therefore extremely candid, which is probably exciting for Angelo in one ways but challenging in others given that he works within a world where everyone is, to a certain extent, rather predictable. What makes Angelo so interesting, moreover, is that he is someone has almost no problem at all challenging Lucious or standing up for himself. While the patriarch of the Lyon clan may not love the fact that this guy is around, he’s going to have to get used to the notion that he cannot be so easily intimidated.
There were some other assorted highlights of the week, with Jamal’s recovery from PTSD being the most interesting just because we still see him going down a dark road, just a slightly different one than we imagined given that he is now staring addiction squarely in the face.It’s a frightening prospect, and with him still feeling pressure musically, we’re not quite sure he is ready to get roped into what he did with Lucious, especially after everything that he did regarding Freda Gatz in the episode.
As a whole, we’ve got a hard time getting past the whole threesome-with-a-ghost thing, even if we understand the thematic point of it. Still, we don’t think it was shark-jumping by any means. The episode was fun as a whole, and we’re still left intrigued with what could be next. Grade: B.
Next week – If you do find yourself curious in seeing what lies ahead on “Empire,” follow our advice and visit this link right now!