After an opening season so resoundingly successful that it basically rewrote the rules on what resoundingly successful TV show look like, "Empire" returns on Season 2, and like Cookie, it’s coming to take everything. The premiere of the second season had everything -- gorilla suits, cannibalism, Marisa Tomei, *Stefon voice* a severed head in a box -- and reaffirmed that the Lyon’s den is still the center of the television universe. Below, a few Pitchfork staffers sift through it all.
Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib: I loved the first ten minutes of this episode, mostly because it felt like watching the kid who comes back to school from summer break with a week’s worth of fly shit on in order to distract you from the fact that he’s largely the same kid from the past spring who you didn’t always love, but couldn’t turn away from.
Jayson Greene: Holy shit the first five minutes of this show. Feels like being fed discussion points through a confetti canon. Swizz Beatz! The prison state! #blacklivesmatter and #icantbreathe and Cookie saying "your father is a tampon." The opening dialogue between Cookie and Hakeem is of the hilarious "every line must be exposition" variety (Cookie: "This is about us taking the Empire takeover! Stay focused!" Hakeem: "Jamal’s not gonna like this hostile takeover.") I really do not know how TV writers do this stuff—by the seventh minute, the show had clowned Don Lemon ("You did good at Ferguson!" Cookie assures him, then mutters, "He did mess up on the n-word though") and 50 Cent, who I guess is enough of a punchline now that he is mocked as a "thirsty ass" trying to make fun of "Empire" on Instagram. For rap nerds, I have to say, the realism of this portrait is bracing.
Eric Torres: God, I missed this show. Cookie was in a gorilla suit in the first like five minutes, Miss Lawrence sang "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)", Jamal’s hot ex boyfriend reappeared, Marisa Tomei is a vulturous power lesbian (whose name is literally Whiteman!).
Hanif: I really loved the grandeur. It’s almost like anyone who ever told Lee Daniels that they liked "Empire" over the the course of the past six months got a cameo. By 9:05, we had Al Sharpton, Don Lemon, Marisa Tomei, and Swizz Beatz. I truly worry that this is going to be the last important thing that we remember Swizz Beatz for, especially since he’s reached that part of his late career slide where he’s kind of always saying the album is on its way, even though we know that it likely isn’t. With that in mind, I hope he becomes a recurring character that at least drives people back to his 2003-2009 run, when he was one of the three best producers in the game.
Jayson: You know, I feel like Timbaland thinks of Lucious Lyon the artist as basically Petey Pablo if he somehow became an untouchable mogul—I think it’s interesting that most of the "classic" Lucious Lyon deep cuts the show’s given us ("What the DJ Spins") are basically circa-'01 Ca$h Money songs cross-wired with some bits from Timbaland’s hits from the same time. The show has always been a little hazy on exactly what kind of artist Lucious is/was—he seems to have as many R&B hits where he sings and plays piano as he has rugged street-rap songs. Bringing Petey Pablo in was a nice touch, and kind of underlined how seriously the show treats pop-cultural memory.
Hanif: I had a very real moment where I thought wait...is Petey Pablo still in prison? I thought it was entirely possible that "Empire" was going for peak realism, and they filmed this episode in an actual prison where Petey Pablo just happened to be an inmate with some time on his hands. The part of this viewing experience that will haunt me the longest is the memory of Marisa Tomei dancing to Bobby Shmurda. Think about Bobby watching this episode from prison and having to process that scene, knowing that there’s nothing he can do to stop it.
Eric: The weird horror touches seemed out of place until I realized they’re just throwing whatever the fuck they want at the wall this season, at which point I accepted the severed head in the box and moved on.
Jayson: Yes on "vulturous power lesbian," Eric. I mean, you have to respect the show’s total allegiance to its soap opera roots. If you have a gay female character, she will be a leering, all-devouring succubus straight out of '50s prison films, and she will direct her omnivorous hunger in all directions. An otherwise straight woman will sleep with her to get something she wants (Cookie: "I thought I told you to sleep with her." Anika: "I did." Cookie: "You can't even dyke right.") For a show that remains one of the best places—the only real place?—in mainstream pop culture for ongoing dialogue about homophobia in hip-hop, they treated Marisa Tomei with all the writerly realism afforded to Jessica Rabbit. Can’t be mad at Tomei, though—she was just drawn that way.
Hanif: I think "Empire" is at its best when it embraces the fact that it’s a soap opera musical, and really goes all out on its absurdities. I like seeing this most when Jamal does almost anything, but I especially love how dramatic almost all of his musical numbers feel. Even in this episode, towards the end. We always get to watch him pacing, or balling up paper, or beating on trash cans. Everything we watch him do feels like work.
Eric: I also live for this show’s boardroom scenes, and the one here did not disappoint: Hakeem was on a goddamn hoverboard, Marisa Tomei used the swivel chair to great dramatic effect, and Lucious dialed in from jail, because you can do that at will, apparently. My questions: Why was Chris Rock’s character a cannibal? Why was Tom Ford mentioned twice? Why were they doing a protest concert for what appears to be a pretty cushy prison system? Is Lucious going to have a monologue this season trying to convince everyone that 1x1 is 2?
Jayson: Also, I seem to have missed the bit about Chris Rock eating people. That was people he was eating in that scene? I was clearly distracted by my amusement, after a full season spent building up Frank Gathers as the embodiment of mortal fear, by the revelation that Frank Gather is … Chris Rock. Chris Rock, even at his most actorly, is still Chris Rock, and not particularly fearsome. The show almost seems to acknowledge this by having him show up, glower at everyone, and then be murdered offstage while screaming loudly, all within the space of one episode. Bye, Frank Gathers! You clearly weren’t that instrumental to "Empire"’s plot!