Following a one-week World Series hiatus, Fox's smash hit returned last night and Empire Season 2 Episode 6 certainly didn't disappoint.
There was no World Series of cage-fighting between Lucious and Cookie this week, though, as they were forced to put their feud on hold.
If you watch Empire online, you know how that goes: Lyons stick together, but only to a point, as alliances are quickly formed and broken.
In the wake of Hakeem's kidnapping, however, there was no time for their usual gripes or threats of violence. Against each other, anyway.
"High Hope for a Low Heaven" surprised us by answering and handling the question of 'Keem's disappearance in a most unexpected way.
Lucious and Cookie secured his release awfully fast, leaving the fallout - and Bryshere Y. Gray's unreal performance - as the focal point.
Never before have we seen the brash young rapper so raw, so vulnerable and so lost as when he was helping his girl group with their track.
When it came time to do his verse with Mirage a Trois, something was deeply wrong in his head. We didn't know what exactly. Nor did he.
Anxiety? Fear? PTSD? An unknown medical condition triggered by the trauma he'd been through? Unclear, but the impact was profound.
It came as little surprise, then, that when Cookie's "promoter" Laz talked her into hiring 'Keem's assailants as her bodyguards, he lost it.
Seeing it as an opportunity to exact revenge, he pulls a gun on the crew, leading Cookie to desperately plead with and console her son.
"If you pull the trigger you're going to force me to step in front of the bullet," she begs her youngest. "I'd rather die than lose you again."
Vintage Cookie. As much as Hakeem wants to be the tough guy - and as much of a hard-ass as his mom is - cooler heads can still prevail.
Cookie and Laz, meanwhile, maul each other passionately by the end of the night, which we might have been psyched about, until the twist:
Laz sports the same tattoo of a cow skull on his back that the thugs who abducted Hakeem had, meaning he has some nefarious motives.
Meanwhile on Empire Season 2 Episode 6, born again Andre is working the gospel into the A&R of Gutter Life Records, and with aplomb.
It seemed at first like 'Dre was out of his mind with this, but he may have just found a kindred, Christian rap spirit in Gutter Life's J Poppa.
Who, we might add, makes a hot couple with Becky. We did not see that side plot coming whatsoever, but hope to see more of it for sure!
Jussie Smollett was once again the unsung backbone of the episode, as his latest song "Never Love Again" may be one of his best to date.
Jamal is a powerful character who can command every scene even from the periphery, and Smollett's voice plays a major role in that power.
Lyons have pride, as we saw with his insistence on not being marketed as a gay artist, but they also have talent, loyalty and empathy.
Andre and Jamal both stepped up in a big way to help Hakeem make his way on stage at the end, proving that family is still everything.
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