On Empire Season 2 Episode 4, the Lyons looked to put aside their differences – at least long enough to capitalize on the latest duet by ‘Mal and ‘Keem.
Meanwhile, the FBI stepped up its offensive against Lucious, Cookie outwitted just about everyone and Uncle Vernon made a surprise reappearance.
Oh yes. You read that right.
Picking up where last week left off Empire Season 2 Episode 4 saw the feds storm Empire headquarters, and the Lyon Dynasty offices. And Lucious’ house.
Roxanne Ford is just going ham.
After greeting Roxanne without getting dressed first, Lucious plans his own offensive, announcing that the company will expand, not sit tight.
“Where we come from, if the cops raid your house that makes you a G. If the feds raid your house it makes you an O.G.,” he tells the board.
Even Mimi Whiteman approves.
Part of his strategy is for Jamal and Hakeem to team up for a new music video where they star as post-apocalyptic Black Panthers, fighting oppression.
Subtle, it is not. By a long shot.
The uneasy truce between Empire and Lyon Dynasty comes as Lucious figures out that this raid is actually a tactic giving away two facts:
- The FBI can’t pin Bunkie on him;
- They don’t have Vernon, either.
The music video shoot goes well until a photographer shows up with Jamal’s Rolling Stone cover, a lifesize portrait of ‘Mal and his beautiful soul.
Hakeem takes a weapon from the props and stabs Rolling Stone Jamal in the throat, then gets into an actual fight with his brother, then peaces out.
As for why Cookie let the shoot go haywire, she didn’t … but she did miss it after she was arrested on an outstanding warrant of suspicious origin.
In the interrogation room, she recalls the years she spent in prison as none other than Roxanne Ford shows up and explains the current situation.
Porsha gave her name after being busted hopping an MTA turnstile. Clearly, video shows it’s not actually Cookie … but this is Roxanne Ford here.
She quickly threatens Cookie with a parole violation – and failing that, with what she’ll do to her sons – if she doesn’t sing on what Lucious did to Bunkie.
After telling her adversary ”you need to kill yourself of that whack weave you got on top of your head,” Cookie cools off and thinks of a way through.
She tells Ford that she doesn’t know if Lucious did anything to Bunkie, only that Bunkie tried to stop Lucious from completing the Apex radio deal.
This lie makes a lot of circumstantial sense to Roxanne, as Lucious made the deal right after he got sprung from jail, and it also serves two purposes.
Essentially, Cookie thwarted the Apex deal and tied Lucious up with the FCC, while not actually implicating him in any crime(s). A stroke of genius.
Meanwhile, Andre is increasingly desperate to get his job back, even telling Rhonda that God wants him to. And the only way is to dig up Vernon.
If he can make the FBI go away, Lucious says he can have anything he wants. That’s enough for the couple to head into the woods, shovels in hand.
The headlights they assume are cops coming to bust them are actually those of Lucious and Thirsty, who followed them to the makeshift grave site.
Thanks to Thirsty’s corpse detection system (seriously), they find Vernon’s body and put it in the trunk. A pair of makeshift eulogies are quickly offered:
- “I’ll miss you forever. God help me.” – Dre
- “You will rot in hell, you snitch.” – Lucious
Dre gets his job back after a warm embrace from his father, and the next morning, Roxanne hops into her car … next to Vernon’s rotting carcass.
Who put it there and how will she react now?!
Also, who was the random woman in bed with Lucious at the beginning? Will ‘Mal and ‘Keem make up? Does the latter frequent jazz clubs often?
So many burning questions. Until next week!
