Sin that Amends Recap: Empire

The second episode of Empire Season 3 was “Sin that Amends” (9-29-16). We find Anika trying to deal with motherhood, Andre trying to call Rhonda back from the dead and Lucious trying to wear down Cookie with sentimental value.

The flashbacks to the beginning of Team Cookie and Lucious are great, we suppose, if you want Cookie and Lucious to get back together. The problem there is we don’t. Tariq had a flashback of his own, remembering how he went to watch Lucious rap. His mother came and dragged him away and insisted that he never ever tell anyone that Lucious is his half-brother. She said that Lucious and his crazy mama were the worst thing that ever happened to them. Meantime, Tariq continued to spy on Lucious and Anika through the Eye of the Teddy Bear. It reminded us of Rockwell’s 1984 hit song.

Anika found out that Mr. Bear was bugged quite by accident. Lucious pulled out his wires. Take that, Tariq!

Lucious and Cookie were kinda paranoid about the Feds. Cookie got very angry with Lucious for setting up an interview on Power 105 between Jamal and city councilman Angelo DuBois. The politician wanted Jamal to get involved with WOKE, an organization that benefits inner-city kids. Cookie signaled like crazy for Jamal to say no, but he said yes. She was extremely rude to Angelo, and later went completely off on him at the WOKE summit. Cookie learned from Lucious that Angelo got off on a drunk driving charge because of his connections and threw that up in his face, railing about how he knew nothing about what the inner city kids were going through.

What she said where the closed caption has “inaudible” is “high siddity.” We’ve heard that expression before in another empire– Chalky White used it in Boardwalk Empire when he confronted Dr. Narcisse in his club. We even have the quote and the definition here.

Jamal could not perform at the summit, in any event, because he does indeed have PSTD. Meantime, Hakeem was getting closer with Nessa and they came up with a terrific song that was born after Hakeem jokingly said this to Nessa: “first you hate me, then you love me.”

Shyne punched out a guy in the sound room for admiring Nessa’s booty. That’s when Hakeem found out that Nessa is Shyne’s sister. Either he was intimidated or upset that no one had said anything about it before then.

Becky”s man, J Poppa is leaving Empire and he wanted Becky to go with him. He arranged for her to be head of A&R at his new place, something she is never gonna be at Empire. J Poppa knows stuff that we don’t, like Becky is being stepped over for a new A&R person and the Feds are gonna take Empire down, too.

After all their bad stuff, the Lyons brothers commiserated at Jamal’s. Cookie had already given Andre a lot of motherly encouragement and he decided that the Lyons boys need to take control of their lives. Jamal needs to beat this PTSD. Hakeem needs to step up and be Bella’s father and he needs to stop brooding about Rhonda. As his first positive step, Andre returned to the apartment he shared with Rhonda to get his belongings. When he was leaving, he was accosted by two white cops who profiled him as a burglar. Without giving Andre a chance to get his ID (which still had to have that address on it), they threw him brutally to the ground, falsely accused him of resisting arrest and aimed a gun at his head. It really looked like they were going to shoot him right then and there but the preview showed Andre in court, charged with assaulting an officer.