‘Empire’ Winter Finale Recap: Cookie and the Cookie Effect
Warning: This recap of the “A Furnace for Your Foe” episode of Empire contains spoilers.
And lo, the angel of Empire did free a handful of slimy painkillers from a sink pipe and stuff them into her son’s mouth, and we were terrified. Truly, what a show this is! I don’t know about you all, but not since Trainspotting have I encountered such a stomach-churning adventure in opiate recovery. As if the sight of Cookie Lyon crawling underneath her sink with a wrench while dressed in couture wasn’t remarkable enough, it was all in service of getting her junk-addicted son onstage for a comeback performance? Which he then nailed? Television perfection.
“A Furnace for Your Foe” was Empire‘s winter finale, and though its final cliffhanger proved minor at best (Crazy Lyon wants to murder Jerk Lyon!), it continued the welcome Season 3 trend of being VERY crazy at times. In addition to Cookie’s slimy painkiller moment, Lucious schemed with Phylicia Rashad while riding a Ferris wheel, and Ghost Rhonda commanded Andre to kill Anika before walking directly into the ocean. In other words, Are you paying attention, Emmy voters? Friends, let’s talk about this episode.
We began in Rockaway Beach, Queens, where Taye Diggs was attempting to make a mayoral stump speech, but kept getting interrupted by riffraff. That’s when his MUCH more qualified ladyfriend stepped up to the mic.
I got legitimate chills when Cookie started addressing voters. Why was she wasting her time dating a mayoral candidate when she should BE one? It goes without saying that her patented ‘tude immediately won the crowd over, and she even went so far as to invite the general public to Taye Diggs’s stodgy fundraiser party, which would now be an outdoor concert starring Jamal. Despite Phylicia Rashad’s side-eye, the idea went over like gangbusters with the crowd, and here’s a shocker: Taye Diggs’s poll numbers immediately shot up! The Cookie Effect was definitely in … effect.
Jamal was still struggling to get over his PTSD, and apparently his virtual reality therapy wasn’t working as well as we’d all hoped. But it was very charming when Lucious warned him that if he performed any of the songs he’d written about his parents at the fundraiser, he should just commit suicide instead. Lucious is so cute sometimes.
At this point I need to let you know that Cookie does paperwork with A FEATHER PEN. If we’re being quite honest, Cookie’s bill-paying vibes were unparallelled. … That herbal tea, that mood lighting, that wig. Again, the FEATHER PEN. (“Whoa, there is such a thing as TOO ideal.” — Plato)
Tariq has a lot of spare time, so he had been spending a lot of it putting together one of those Homeland-style crazy-person boards, complete with fashion head shots of each character, connected by red yarn. But it paid off in that he was finally able to get a warrant to freeze the accounts of Empire Entertainment in order to find out who’d ordered the hit on Chris Rock. Sometimes an all-night crafting sesh pays off!
Look at these two, just riding that Ferris wheel up to Heaven and back. Even though Phylicia Rashad has a begrudging respect for Cookie, she offered to break up Cookie and Taye Diggs if Lucious could get an impending exposé about Taye Diggs’s DUI scuttled. Now THIS was a deal Lucious could get into; he’d been trying to c***block Cookie for months now. That being said, I couldn’t have been the only one who immediately began ‘shipping Lucious and Phylicia Rashad, right? Watch out, Anika.
No, really, watch out, Anika!!
I loved that right when Anika and Lucious were getting ready to do morning shenanigans, Grandma Lyon busted in with a Dyson and a new wig to interrupt them. They should NOT be doing sex in this mansion while she’s living there! Or maybe she was just bored, who knows.
Now that Jamal was a full-blown pill-popping junkie, Cookie started getting serious about forcing him to quit cold turkey. I loved the scene where she commanded him to get out every bottle and baggie of pills in his penthouse and then proceeded to pour them all down the kitchen sink. Obviously, she was forceful and sassy about it, but Taraji P. Henson also sold it as a really loving mother who simply just wanted her son to get better. At its best, Empire truly knows how to nail that funny/heartfelt tone like no other.
That being said, I did laugh out loud when Andre wept while admitting to his bipolar disorder to Nessa, especially when the camera panned over and Ghost Rhonda was just scowling at them. Which was weird, because Ghost Rhonda had encouraged Andre to go for Nessa! Man, Andre’s imaginary dead wife needed to make up her mind already.
After Lucious learned that all of Empire’s assets had been frozen, he brazenly walked into the FBI office and demanded that Tariq handcuff him already. Obviously, Tariq didn’t have enough evidence to do that yet, so Lucious took the opportunity to announce to all of Tariq’s co-workers that he was Tariq’s half brother and this whole thing was a shady personal vendetta on Tariq’s part. Obviously that won’t stop Tariq, but it did make everyone feel VERY awkward. Point Lucious!
As it turned out, quitting pills cold turkey did not have a great effect on Jamal, whose withdrawal symptoms forced him to stay on the couch exposing his nipple and puking a ton. Normally this would be fine with Cookie, but Jamal was set to headline the mayoral fundraising concert in an hour! So she did what any dutiful, slightly enabling businesswoman would do…
She got down under that sink, wrenched apart the pipes, and recovered a handful of slimy pills! You or I may have rinsed them off before shoving them down our son’s gullet, but not Cookie. She needed Jamal to get it together PRONTO. God, I love this show.
Even though we knew Shyne had helped provide info to Tariq in order to get Empire’s assets frozen, the twist arrived when Shyne offered to personally loan Lucious upwards of $50 million to keep the company operational. In exchange he merely wanted an ownership stake in the company! Which meant that he snitched, yes, but only to make a big ol’ power grab. (Tariq didn’t like this very much.) But credit where credit’s due: Shyne isn’t messing around.
Jamal hadn’t yet arrived, but the crowd seemed pretty excited to see Tiana and Hakeem duet. Especially when they made out at the end! Tiana seemed perturbed by this sudden rekindling of their relationship, but once Hakeem offered to let Tiana meet his baby, she was into it? I don’t know. Love is a mysterious, baffling, possible prank. But it happens!
Nearby, Andre had wandered onto the beach and was having a nice romantic moment with nobody at all, while he imagined Rhonda in his arms. It was a very touching scene, especially when Rhonda commanded Andre to murder the f*** out of Anika for throwing her off a hotel roof and also murdering their baby using marble stairs. Andre dutifully agreed, and they bid each other adieu.
Roughly 100 percent of us have daydreamed about simply walking into the ocean forever, but Ghost Rhonda actually achieved this dream for real. Farewell, Ghost Rhonda! Enjoy Neptune’s wet embrace!
Jamal was uncertain about his long-delayed return to the live stage, but as we knew, he was now hopped up on slimy painkillers and could do no wrong. Reader, he nailed it. He nailed it real good. Jamal was BACK.
But just when he wanted to ride his high backstage (the regular kind of high, not the pill kind), his entire family had assembled for an intervention of sorts. It was time for rehab. Even Lucious seemed to want this. See, he can be a non-d*** sometimes.
Unfortunately, Lucious’ goodwill ended there, as he quickly got revenge on Phylicia Rashad for failing to break up Cookie and Taye Diggs. (She’d decided not to, after Taye Diggs’s poll numbers kept climbing). So Lucious allowed the story on Taye Diggs’s DUI to go public, and that’s how we learned that not only had it been a DUI, but a girl had been killed! Cookie did not love this revelation, and it seemed to put a real damper on her relationship with Taye Diggs.
And then, to really underscore his villainy, Lucious walked off while setting free a bunch of balloons, presumably in order to murder some dolphins. Has he no shame?
Our final scene involved Andre, clearly of unsound mind, wandering into Club Leviticus and interrupting Shyne’s stripper party. Andre knew what Shyne had done (snitching-wise) but before they could come to blows, Andre flipped the script: He wanted Shyne’s help to KILL LUCIOUS. Whuh-oh. Was this going to be another of Empire‘s hollow threats (Terrence Howard is sorrrta the star of this thing)? Or are we gearing up for a pretty memorable spring finale? Stay tuned like h*ck.
“A Furnace for Your Foe” was a sprightly, hilarious, and even moving episode of Empire. Though we’re only halfway through it, Season 3 is already a huge improvement over Season 2. While the characters and realities of this world remain grounded, Season 3 has remembered to be fun and just the right amount of ridiculous. It’s almost like someone shoved a handful of moist uppers into its mouth and pushed it onstage, because Empire is back and it is shining.
What did YOU think of “A Furnace for Your Foe”?
Empire airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on Fox. Watch clips and full episodes of Empire for free on Yahoo View.
