What Remains is Bestial Recap: Empire

Empire’s third episode in Season 3 was called “What Remains Is Bestial,” and was mainly about inside Lyons drama, with a few outsider forces, one involving Tariq who is not an insider per se, but he is a relative.

Grace Gealey as Anika Calhoun and Leslie Uggams as Leah Walker

The best line of the episode came from Leah Walker, the crazy momma of Lucious, who apparently inherited her insanity from her own crazy mother. “My momma used to stick pins in a voodoo doll that looked just like you,” she told Anika after demanding to know why the housekeeper was taking care of little Bella and not Anika. Maybe that was one of the voodoo dolls that you slip a picture in and Anika reminds Momma Leah of Tariq’s mom.

Serayah as Tiana and Romeo Miller as Gram

Hakeem got extremely overworked about a rapper named Gram doing a number with Tiana that dissed him. He really seemed to be more upset over Gram pushing up on Tiana during the number. Plans were made to retaliate with a diss track of his very own, featuring an unwilling Nessa.

Xzibit as Shine and Sierra McClain as Nessa

Nessa wanted no part of that leading her brother, Shine, to choke her! Lucious told Hakeem that was none of his business because he was not sleeping with Nessa and he better get that track done. It looks like any relationship between Hakeem and Nessa needs to involve some saving.

Morocco Omari as Tariq baits Andre (Trai Byers)

Andre’s day in court did not go too well when he found out that he was charged with assaulting a police officer, among other things. Andre dissed any help from Lucious and Cookie. They wanted to put Thirsty Rawlings on the job. Later he was confronted on the street by Tariq who mocked him, making Andre think that Tariq put the cops up to all those false charges to get him to inform on his father to the FBI. For what, we still don’t know, but Tariq calling Andre “nephew” made us wonder how he can even be on any FBI investigation involving his half brother Lucious. Isn’t that a conflict of interest?

Jamal had PTSD bad. He tried a support group but, you know, that don’t work out for some people especially when they come on too strong. Jamal even went to visit Freda Gatz in prison but every time she leaned towards him or gestured toward him with her hand, he freaked out Cookie arranged for some help by getting Mariah Carey (as Kitty) to do a duet with him. This was supposed to kill two birds with one stone, but it only killed one. Jamal did not want Lucious to release his Black & White album and Lucious agreed he wouldn’t if Jamal delivered the duet with Kitty. Despite a bad start, Jamal was able to pull the duet off but Lucious reneged on the deal and released Black & White.

Other Notes:

• Anika refused to bow down to Lucious’ demands that she be nothing more than a mother to his grandbaby. Even after Lucious told her that the only man who was going to be touching her was the coroner after his crazy momma killed her, she threatened that if he didn’t start treating her right around the Empire, they would all go down together. We guess you can’t say that she murdered Rhonda since that was a mutual fight, but she did murder Rhonda’s baby and that led to the fight. Is that every going to come out?
• Cookie got closer to Angelo Dubois and even did him a favor by tearing up the contract that Lucious tried to get one of his star pupils, Zeah, to sign. Angelo was very upset that Zeah was going to throw away his college career. Cookie was initially annoyed that he looked down on her Empire, but she came around and sent Zeah back to school with a promise that the Empire’s doors would be open to him after graduation.

From the looks of the preview, Cookie flaunts her wealth and Andre is the one to come to Nessa’s rescue.