‘Empire’ season 2, episode 5 review: Andre’s baptism ends with a Hakeem shocker

In many ways, some of the characters on “Empire” clearly believed Wednesday was a chance for a fresh start. Andre is at the top of the list. After seeing so much airtime last week featuring Andre and Rhonda out digging in the dark, this time around he unleashed some of his skeletons.

After first admitting to Lucious some of his past actions against Empire, including that he almost committed suicide within the mogul’s studio, he was set to be baptized within a church. While Lucious was not exactly keen on accepting religion (he shunned it in dramatic fashion), he did show up only to have some PTSD from his own childhood with his mother trying to drown him. Therefore, he decided to get up and leave right in the middle of his son being dunked, while the rest of the family was sitting there.

Spirituality is not a subject that has been explored liberally on “Empire” over the years, and it was for this reason that we were excited to see this play out … even if it was short-lived, and Hakeem’s capture in the closing seconds overshadowed much of it. This was a guy who certainly did not make life easy on himself earlierin the episode, continuing to think that flirting gets him everywhere and being, at least for the most part, a not-so-great person.

This episode was as a whole as shocking as any this season, and probably one of the most important for understanding why Lucious is the way that he is; with that being said, shouldn’t someone tell him that he is in control of changing the pattern in his family? He merely chooses not to. Episode Grade: B.

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