Dee

Trai & Yazz on how Empire has changed their lives

Empire Season 2: Game On

Becky's getting some loving!

In an amusing case of life imitating art; Jussie, Yazz and Gabourey performed at the Teen Choice Awards last night.

Peter Bergman is a tool.

I'll be glad when Da'Vonne is evicted so I won't have to bother with this rancid show anymore.

Avery lost purpose for me after her father died. After her rivalry with Phyllis was dropped she veered from one pointless story to another. It's another case of Y&R wasting a great actress on a lousy role imo.

Topanga works at the bakery right? How hard would it have been to give her a short scene with her best friend? And for that matter, would it have killed the writers to make Corey genuinely happy to see her? He fought very hard to maintain his friendship with her after she & Shawn first broke-up.

Wasn't Kristoff St. John severely punished due to his comments about Y&R's diversity several years ago?

I don't have much of a problem with Bow and Ruby's relationship. After the intervention at the end of Oedipal Triangle, and their Christmas dinner partnership in Black Santa/White Christmas, most of the enmity in their relationship has ended. Ruby makes fun of Bow's cooking, and occasionally her methods of parenting; but she isn't undermining Bow as she had before, i.e., cooking dinner for the family or pressing Diane's hair without permission, which proved she didn't respect Bow as a wife or a mother. Pops treats Rainbow the same as Ruby, including questioning her parenting methods and being hostile to her parents, yet Bow only seems to have an issue with Ruby; when, more often than not, it's Pops, who unrepentantly causes much of the drama in the Johnson household.

I don't mind the term WGWG. If only because it semantically evens the playing field on shows like Idol and The Voice, where "DIVA", has become dismissive shorthand for Black women with big voices.

Dre somersaulting across the bed to get away from Bow, only for her to mimic him and get stuck like an overturned tortoise is where I lost it.

What qualifications does Becky have to be an A&R executive?

Lucious charming the pants off Carol amused me to no end.

In a two-hour season finale, where everything possible was thrown against the wall, Ta'Rhonda Jones and Gabourey Sidibe were certified scene stealers.

‘The Vulture TV Podcast’: Empire Edition

I don't think, and I don't want to speak for everyone, that addressing the issues is the problem people are having with Lee and Danny's writing. It's adding unnecessary lines to the script to imply, or outright state, those problems are endemic to a community when, in fact, they're universal. The black father conversation between Ryan and Jamal immediately comes to mind as an example of this, it wasn't necessary for Ryan to have a homophobic black dad, and then for Jamal co-sign Ryan's comment that black fathers are inherently homophobic. That's crossing the line from acknowleding one's truth through art to engaging in Moynihan Report pathology. Lee also does this when he perpetuates the absurd notion of the downlow when the downlow doesn't exist. Being closeted is not race-specific.

I know the show is against it but I hope they eventually let Trai and Malik perform. I would add Cookie in that group as well, but I assume it's a foregone conclusion she'll sing, solo, sometime before season two ends.

Andre believed Rhonda had him institutionalized, which was compounded by her signing off for a mandatory 48 hour psychiatric hold of him, which he viewed as a betrayal.

I floved Michelle and Andre's scenes. I felt they radiated chemistry, and regretted that more of the episode wasn't focused on them. Dre was relaxed and soft with Michelle in a way that he hasn't been with anyone else in his family, including Rhonda. Also, I found it refreshing that sex wasn't used as a cure-all, and that the other forms of treatment available to Dre, meds and music therapy, weren't arbitrarily ditched for Jesus, which would've been a wee bit too Tyler Perry-ish for me. I quite liked that prayer was simply presented as another option when alternative modes of healing aren't fulfilling.

I think, outside of Lucious, the other Lyons don't have much a problem with Rhonda. Hakeem and Jamal don't seem to mind her, and, although Cookie's viewed Rhonda with measured suspicion, when Rhonda chewed Lucious out about the IPO shares, Cookie seemed mildly impressed at her daughter-in-law's spunk.

The scene of Lola quietly saying goodbye to the individual members of the Lyon family was beautiful.

Jamal hits a relationship roadblock

In the pilot her given name is said to be Loretha Holloway.

The rumor I've been hearing is that Lucious excludes Cookie & Vernon from the IPO.