‘Empire’ season 3, episode 3 sneak peek: All about Jamal (and Mariah Carey as Kitty)

Tonight, “Empire” is coming your way on Fox, but this is hardly the same “Empire” you’re used to. Any episode with Mariah Carey’s going to have that extra-special oomph and be something worthy of some excitement. That goes ten-fold if you’ve got an opportunity to have her sing.

Based on the sneak peeks below for this episode, our prognosis is that there’s a darn good chance of that happening — but there’s also a pretty-clear problem: Trying to figure out a way to convince Jamal to go through with performing with her character, pop uber-star Kitty. The sneak peeks below highlight the various highlights and lowlights.

First, Jussie Smollett’s character meets up with Kitty, a move that was orchestrated by his mother Cookie in the midst of her desperation to cure him of his PTSD. Getting an offer to tour all of South America with a music icon is the sort of thing that would make many artists faint; for Jamal, this moment only leads to him confessing to Kitty that he’s not quite sure if he’s ready for it, given that he’s struggled in the performing space ever since the shooting.

Meanwhile, the second sneak peek we’ve got showcases further problems for Jamal in the studio with her. He can’t get comfortable, arguably because he can’t get comfortable within his own skin and handle being a public figure after his family’s stardom and past actions in part led to the violence in the first place. Kitty remains incredibly supportive through all of this, while Lucious is pretty much Lucious: Grumbling over what he perceives to be yet another disappointment on the way. Jamal’s gotta get through this without any help from him.

Tonight, we’ve got an opportunity to see if he can turn it around. Fingers crossed, since we certainly wanna hear Jussie and Mariah performing together.

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