Empire Recap: Cookie at the Bat

Empire returned on Wednesday March 22nd with the 10th episode of Season 3, called “Sound and Fury.” It opened with Lucious Lyon surrounded by fire with the debut of his new album, Inferno, featuring Remy Ma. After Shine Johnson was done admiring the fireworks, Cookie showed up for some of her own. She demanded that Lucious step down so she can be the sole CEO of Empire and accused Lucious of playing with her. “I don’t play, Cookie. I war,” was his response, “You want war, fire a shot.” So she did. She brought Leah Walker up on the stage and introduced her to the audience who all thought Lucious’ mama had committed suicide. Cookie don’t play either.

In fact, even when she goes to see Jamal she gets into it with Jamal’s new friend, Tory Ash. She is a brilliant singer whose heroin habit “knocked her a$$ right out of the sky” (in Cookie’s words) and they found her in a coma in some dingy motel after she stripped naked on the Fenway Park stage. Jamal went through a week of withdrawal hell, he’s at the halfway stage now and wants out so he can get in a studio and lay down some music in his head. That visit devolved into a “you did this” and “you did that” fight between Cookie and Lucious. Jamal and Tory later took off to record “A Simple Song.” In panic mode, Cookie and Lucious located them after roughing up an innocent D-Major. Tory just rubbed Cookie the wrong way again and got threatened with a beat down. Oh, the interactions between Cookie and Tory promise to be high comedy because Tory isn’t the least bit afraid of contentious Cookie.

Jamal convinced Cookie that he was through with pills but he seemed very impressed with the lengths that Lucious went to in the effort to break up Cookie and Angelo. Cookie said Lucious was planning his next move. He was indeed. He made Anika the head of A&R. For her next move, Cookie showed up in his office with a baseball bat and smashed the first gold record he ever got. Thinking she got her anger out of her system, Lucious said she “ain’t nothing but a hood rat,” and was about to go back to what he was doing, when he heard more glass shattering outside. Cookie tore the place up and whacked Lucious with the bat! Lucious had murder on his mind but instead they ended up in each others arms. As Jamal said, that’s some twisted kind of love. Cookie stopped their embrace from going any further, insisting she was done with Lucious.

Other storylines:

Angelo was off to clear his name in a Ted Kennedy-Mary Jo Kopechne like scandal that Lucious found out about somehow and used to derail his political career.

Nessa was given a showcase that Cookie and Hakeem thought Tiana should have got. So Hakeem and Tiana hijacked Nessa’s showcase and that devolved into a physical fight between the two ladies. Tiana called Nessa an “old dusty skank” and it was on like Donkey Kong! Shine must have had money on Nessa because he would not let anyone break up the fight.

After Tariq managed to find a snitch who testify that Lucious engineered the murder of Frank Gathers, Thirsty was instrumental in putting that potential fire out by scooping up the elderly mom of said snitch (Bobby “Bam Bam” King). Tariq ended up getting pulled off the case for failing to disclose that he is Lucious’ half-brother.

Thirsty was also instrumental in getting Xavier fired. Thirsty framed Xavier for taking kickbacks and the fool had the nerve to ask Becky for help after threatening to fire her. “It’s just business,” Becky told him. Ah, sweet revenge.