If per the old proverb, chickens are akin to curses, waiting patiently to make us pay for past bad deeds, some serious birds of prey are coming to roost with the airing of the sixteenth episode of “Empire” season two. If it isn’t enough that most everyone on this show seems to gain two new ugly secrets for every piece of dirty laundry that is dragged out into the light, it would seem that for more than one of these characters they just might have gone way past any saving that a belated cleaning day might bring. So with the obligatory SPOILER ALERT warning, let’s get into some of the best holy sh*t moments from yesterday’s episode:
Jamal(Jussie Smollett) gets involved in a hot and heavy sexual tryst with American Sound Awards’ musical director D-Major (Tobias Truvillion) on the down low. Some serious guy on guy action goes down between Jamal and D-Major, sparked up over Jamal’s issues with having to scrap doing one of his newer songs for the ASA awards in favor of performing a Lyon family anthem remix of one of Jamal’s older releases. Seeing as Jamal has worked hard to be transparent with regards to his sexuality, D-Major is deep in the closet, the Lyon family’s ability to perform at the ASA awards is at D-Major’s discretion and lastly, Jamal seems to be a bit sprung on D-Major and this affair could go very very wrong. Seeing as this is “Empire” it should be interesting to see how and when this news blows up and who subsequently gets pulled down under the rubble.
Rhonda Lyon (Kaitlin Doubleday) remembers that was was pushed down the stairs, causing her to miscarry and also recalls that her attacker was wearing Anika Calhoun’s (Grace Gealey) shoes. Well, it was only a matter of time before this rewind on the true crime memory tip was due to arrive at the station. Seeing as that sneaky Anika Calhoun is always keeping Rhonda too close in that way that Anika can’t shake the Lyons for wanting to be one, a near accident at Hakeem’s (Bryshere Y. Gray) home in Anika’s presence jogs Rhonda’s memory with regards to exactly what happened to her on the fateful night that she lost her baby. And then of course, Anika is just bold enough, or perhaps stupid enough, to still own and wear the very shoes that the attacker wore when Rhonda was pushed down the stairs. Do we know definitively that Anika did it? No. But Rhonda sure thinks she did and honestly if the shoe fits… well, let’s just say Anika might get acquitted, but just because it can’t be proved doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Andre Lyon (Trai Byers) brings Lucious Lyon’s (Terrence Howard) mother home, and she might be more dangerously psychotic than Lucious. With Andre learning his grandmother’s whereabouts from journalist Harper Scott (Annie Ilonzeh), it was pretty clear that Leah Walker (Leslie Uggams) was going to have her face to face reunion with her son Dwight, aka Lucious Lyon. Naturally, Lucious sent Thristy Rawlins (Andre Royo) out to exact revenge on Harper via an unceremonious drop on the bad side of town with Harper getting forcibly carried away by two thugs into the deep dark of the ghetto landscape. Nevertheless, when at the close of episode sixteen Lucious’ mama is brandishing a knife on Lucious and telling him she should have killed him when she had the chance, all while she is forcing him to eat cake…well, just maybe Lucious was right to have Dwight’s momma locked up in that nice home away from everything that Lucious has come to hold dear for all of those twenty plus odd years.
“Empire” airs on Fox on Wednesdays at 9:00/ 8:00 central.