Empire – Full Circle

By: Gladys Luna

Claudia (Demi Moore) is preparing a bath for Lucious (Terrence Howard) when the man asks her to let him do it himself. When he is on the bathtub, suddenly Leah (Leslie Uggams) appears and attempts to drown him. Claudia hears the screams and walks immediately in the room and sees Lucious struggling for his life. She takes the woman away while she screams that he has the evil in him. After this episode, Claudia is reading when she suddenly sees people walking in, carrying carts full of clothes. She sees Cookie (Taraji P. Henson) who confesses her that she has decided to move back since Lucious is everything to her and all she wants to get him back as soon as possible. Even though the attempts from Claudia to explain to her why she believes this is not the right thing to do yet, Cookie settles back in.

In the meantime, Jamal (Jussie Smollett), Becky (Gabourey Sidibe), Warren (Terrell Carter) and Tory (Rumer Willis) are listening to Jamal´s new song that he wrote for a movie and they are so amazed by the results. Becky teases Jamal about the reasons that inspired those songs while she looks at Warren standing in the other side of the room. Becky is worried that Cookie is going to fire her since she is only an intern, but Jamal tells her that she shouldn’t worry about it, he believes the girl will get the job and help him with his new album.

Andre (Trai Byers) is at a place, closing a deal to sell Empire XStream, after he finishes his meeting. He walks to the bar where an unknown lady approaches him and flirts. Seconds later they end up on another side of the bar making out, but unfortunately Andre´s night is ruined when the lady walks away since he didn’t seem to be ready to have sex due to some medications he´s been taking.

Claudia and Lucious are having a memory exorcise session when they are interrupted by Cookie who gives the man an old photograph. When he sees it, the first thing he notices is a gun in there and that seems to unsettle him.

At court, Anika´s (Grace Byers) lawyer Myra (Kate Fry) has asked for an audience in order to review the woman’s case. She has been in jail for five months already but when the Judge Robins (Torrey Hanson) finds that she has nothing that may change the woman’s status he dismisses her and asks her to schedule another trial in six months where they will review the case again. Before the guard takes her away, she manages to reach for Hakeem (Bryshere Y. Gray) who has been in the audience the whole time. She begs him to find Cookie and tell her to visit her and also gives her a message that “she remembers January 7, 2015”.

Jamal and Becky have come to see Jake (Brian King) who is a producer and they show him the song the young man made. He seems to be very pleased with it, but then Jake asks to make some changes in order for the song to fit better with the movie it will be included in. Jamal states that if he does then the whole purpose of the song will be changed, but Becky interrupts him and promises the other man that it will be done as he requested it. Once he leaves, Jamal tells her that she should get his back and not the opposite, but she convinces him that this is the right thing to do.

Cookie and Thirsty (Andre Royo) pay a visit to Anika in jail; the man assures her they will help her but in order to do so she needs to do everything as they say. In the meantime, as a way to help Lucious to get his memories back, Claudia takes him to one of his favorite places called “Clem´s Joint.” She shows him a picture of one of his visits, but it doesn’t ring a bell on the man. A man named Clem (C. Anthony Jackson) approaches them to take their orders when he recognizes Lucious and shows his joy to see him back and standing up again. He starts to tell a story of one of the times he was there with another of his friends called Eddie Barker (Forest Whitaker), but Claudia stops him when the story seemed to be about to take a different turn that she considered inappropriate  for Lucious to hear at the time. Clem leaves, but Lucious is left with some questions so he decides to go to the bathroom and asks Clem about Eddie and where to find him so the man tells him that he owns a country club named “The Vandeveer” and Lucious manages his way out of the restaurant without Claudia. When the woman realizes that it has been a while and her patient has not yet returned she goes to find him but Clem confirms that he just left.

Becky is listening to one of Hakeem´s songs, but the young man doesn’t seem to be so happy with the results so the girl encourages him to do better. She trusts in him and makes it clear. When she leaves, Hakeem is left in the recording studio and starts to play a new song while we see a sequence of Lucious walking through the city and then getting a cab that would take him to Eddie. The cab driver turns out to be one of Lucious’ biggest fan so he tells him how he has followed his advises to what Lucious only laughs at.

Back at the mansion, Cookie is mad to find out that Claudia missed Lucious. She starts to questions her about what he saw or heard that may have triggered said escape and that is when Claudia tells her about Eddie Barker. So, Cookie asks Porsha (Ta’Rhonda Jones) to call Eddie since that is for sure the place where Lucious will be.

Jamal and his team are at the studio recording his song with the new arrangements he had just made. Becky walks in and stops the recording scolding Jamal since the new song doesn’t sound at all as the song they have already signed for. He gets mad at her as well and tells her that she doesn’t have the right to talk to him like that since she is just an intern and he doesn’t owe any explanations to her.

Lucious arrives at “The Vandeveer” and sees Eddie giving a speech at a couple who´s wedding has been celebrated there. He meets Lucious later along with another men and he starts to tell them a story of a younger Lucious and how he attacked a man back in the day. As it happened before, Lucious grow uncomfortable as the story is told and attempts to leave but loses his balance and almost falls down.

Thirsty and Anika talk to another lawyer about the woman´s case. They show him a recording where Tariq (Morocco Omari) made a move on Anika without her consent and they convince him that what Anika did, should be considered as self-defense.

Lucious is listening to Eddie as he plays the piano and sings; he seems to be too lost in his thoughts when Cookie walks in and joins Eddie. When he finishes, Claudia enters the room and takes Lucious with her.

Cookie tries to lie to Eddie when the man states that Lucious does not recognize him and she ends up telling him the truth. She tells them the current situation of the company and Eddie encourages to keep moving on and fighting as they are not quitters.

Later that day, Cookie enters her bedroom and sees Leah sneaking in one of her drawers. When Cookie confronts her about it, the older woman tells her that she is looking for her gun as she plans to kill Lucious since she believes he is no good at all. Then she confesses having killed Tariq and putting the blame on Anika, leaving Cookie astonished by the revelation. After a while, Leah is taken to Lucious’ office and she finds some people in there along with her son, Claudia and Cookie. The nurse explains to her that she will be taken to a place where she´ll be taken care of. The woman snaps at Lucious when she sees that he doesn’t say anything and signs the agreement papers. When Claudia gives the papers to another nurse, Leah practically jumps on her and tries to strangle her but is stopped by the other men in the room. She yells a bunch of insults at her son, mostly regarding to the evilness that she believes it lives on him while Lucious watches her with sadness and teary eyes.

Jamal and Warren walk into an office where Becky, Tory and Jamal are listening to Jamal´s song, but with a whole different arrangement that is also performed by Tory. Jake is so pleased with the results, which is totally opposite to Jamal´s feelings as he feels betrayed by Becky and tells her that she certainly won’t have a job at his label.

Thirsty and Andre receive the visit of the Detective Mitchel, Detective Lumley (Kurt Naebig) and Detective Pamela Rose (Teyonah Parris), that Andre met at the bar earlier in the week, to question them about Giuliana´s whereabouts. They tell them they don’t know anything about her but if they can help them with anything, they will be glad to do it. Andre walks in the woman´s way and asks her if she tried to ambush him and she denies it. He tries to offend her by asking if she is used to go having sex with every random man she meets, but she reminds him that they couldn’t do it since he couldn’t get it up.

Becky and Porsha are walking with Cookie to the press conference she has scheduled; Becky updates her on the company situation and confesses what she did to Jamal. When she informs her about the Jake investments on the company for what she did, Cookie asks Porsha to change Becky´s status form interim to an actual employee of the company and to raise her salary making Becky to jump out of excitement.

At the press conference, Cookie announces that they will produce and release a new album for every year they have been in operation much to Andre´s disappointment that believes that Cookie will announce that he will be taking over the company which she didn’t. In addition to that, she just declined to sell the company. Andre snaps at Cookie for embarrassing him in front of the press and messing up with the sale and Cookie tells him that even if Lucious doesn’t remember who he is, selling the company and giving up is probably something he wouldn’t wanted.  At Jamal´s department, he confesses to Warren that it´s hard to trust people and Warren confesses that he believes in him and also on something else. So, he takes Jamal´s notebook and starts to sing the man´s song along with him while Jamal plays the piano.  Lucious wakes up in the middle of the night and sees Claudia packing, she tells him that she can’t keep working with him if he doesn’t trust in her, but he says that she makes him feel safe and since he woke up from his coma she is the only one he actually trusts. He doesn’t want to be left in that word of demons that will turn him into a monster so he begs her not to leave to what she agrees and stays. There goes another intriguing episode of Empire. Everything is taking a different turn. Please keep up with Starry Constellation Magazine weekly recaps and make sure to watch Empire every Wednesday at 8/7c on Fox.