One Before Another Recap: Empire

“Empire” returned on November 9, 2016 after being knocked off the schedule for a few weeks. Situations changed fast in “One Before Another” like one minute Shyne was about to shoot Andre, while he was making eggs for himself and Nessa, but didn’t. One minute, Hakeem and Jamal were planning to work a live stream together, but they got into a brawl.

The brawl was instigated, of course, by Lucious. Hakeem had plans to make Nessa his girl. Lucious told him that Andre got there first. Meantime, Hakeem was going to bury the hatchet with Gram over the previous beef over Tiana, making Hakeem’s reactions even more ridiculous. He stomped all over the place like a child playing “Giant Step,” inspired by his father to be a destroyer of souls. It’s really creepy how Lucious is using baby Bella to manipulate Hakeem, showing him how to hold her and swaddle her, while planting discord in Hakeem’s brain.

Cookie got the cold shoulder from her formerly friendly parole officer, Charlene. but the usually street smart Cookie blamed it on her current suitor, city councilman Angelo Dubois, when Lucious’ half-brother, FBI Agent Tariq, was really behind it. As soon as Charlene said “this is the U.S. Government,” Cookie should have thought Tariq. Whatever… Angelo is currently running for mayor and somehow, he has more pull than the FBI. He arranges to get the parole office off Cookie’s case and even gets her to show up in person and apologize! Okay…

Becky went behind Cookie’s back to allow Tiana to record her preferred song, “Starlight”

Her Big Mistake: trying to get her white-mansplaining rival, Xavier, to back her up on it. Instead he snitched to Cookie, who told Tiana that there was a “miscommunication,” and she was going to have to record what Cookie wanted. Tiana demanded that Becky be taken off her team. Looks like there’s no reason for Becky not to follow J-Poppa to a different label, eh? Yeah, but that, like everything else on this show, could change… fast. Becky needs to do some backstabbing of her own!

Shyne’s storyline in this episode began, as we said, with him trying to bust a cap in Andre, but his gun wouldn’t fire the first time. LOL. No worries, he pulls out another one and out pops Nessa from somewhere. The way this was previewed and the way Shyne showed up with a whole gang of thugs, it certainly was a letdown. This is Andre’s apartment, mind you, and Shyne can’t believe that Nessa is “smashing” Andre. Nessa learned about the beatdown that Andre and Lucious gave Shyne and she was angry but still helped to arrange a meeting with Lucious & Company. There, Anika played a part in bringing Shyne back into the fold and giving him his own imprint. He is even gonna get Freda Gatz. From mortal enemies to business partners in the blink of an eye. Well, almost. A few minutes were devoted to heavy security against a second attack that never came.

The reveal that Shyne was working with Tariq is one of the OMG! moments. Look how it was set up: Lucious stated his belief that Shyne would rather die than snitch. Well that’s what he thinks. Shyne tipped off Tariq to Lucious’ involvement in Frank Gather’s death in prison. We all know that s true but what proof can Freda possibly have? She heard about it from Cookie’s drunk sister Carol, causing her to try to take Lucious out but shooting Jamal instead. Gabourey Sidibe says it’s possible Lucious could go down for in the video. Seems like Tariq would already have looked into why Freda wanted to shoot any member of the Lyon family. A waste of time anyway- they’ll never convict Lucious for that and probably not for whoever is buried in Camden, either.

Come to think about it, there are a lot of unanswered-for dead bodies in the Empire. No one even cares about Anika’s culpability in the death of Rhonda’s baby or Rhonda anymore.

ONLY 3 EPISODES LEFT, the preview screamed at us. Do you have any doubt that we will be left with a huge cliffhanger? The best we can probably hope for at this point is to discover what Nessa’s real relationship is to Shyne.