'Empire' Recap: Cookie and the Case of the Stolen Furs

What is it with New York power struggles this week? Hillary and Bernie, Trump and Cruz, Hakeem and Lucious. While I am grateful that I didn’t have to read endless Facebook rants about that last matchup, all these face-offs have gotten exhausting! Here is a spoiler for you: Someone will eventually be the president and at least half of the country will hate that person for his or her entire term. Similarly, someone will run Empire Entertainment, and that person will be unseated by a scheming family member within weeks. Are we actually supposed to feel passionate about any of it? Thus concludes a very well-thought-out comparison between Empire and the presidential race, did you like it?

“Time Shall Unfold” continued the saga of Hakeem’s reign as CEO. It also ended that saga. He’s out! But yeah, that’s just how Empire is. If you are wondering if the show has begun to see diminishing returns for its cyclical storytelling, I am here to say yeah probably. Lucious will be in charge again, until he’s not! But it’s still a fun, well-produced hour of television where insane things occasionally happen out of nowhere. Let’s talk about this episode now!

We began at some random playground in St. Louis where Thirsty had worn his best Soviet cosplay outfit so that he could yank locks of hair from a child’s head!

This was Lola, Raven-Symoné’s daughter! Clearly Thirsty was about to run a DNA test on the poor girl, probably for the sole reason that biological descendants of the Lyon dynasty were suddenly important on this show and it was like everyone had forgotten there already WAS a Lyon cub out there. (Sired by Lucious himself, last we checked.)

From that creepy moment, we cut to Anika’s living room where she and Rhonda were sitting on the floor eating Chinese food like a couple of ‘80s business besties in the city. But before they could fully get into discussing their love of synth sax or Patrick Nagel paintings, Andre arrived to have a word with Rhonda about their relationship. But even THAT conversation was interrupted by some very suspicious and disgusting noises coming from the bathroom.

Either the Chinese food wasn’t settling very well or Anika was straight-up pregnant! (It was the latter.) But knowing Anika, she was clearly trying to make her pregnancy known in the most casual yet conspicuous way possible. Nothing grabs a household’s attention like a well-timed vom. So the cat was now out of the bag, and that cat was pregnant as hell.

The next day at the barbershop, Jamal and Freda recorded a hot new track on his Zune while she buzzed customers’ hair. But lest we forget that Freda is REAL and not to be trifled with, an unruly customer sat in her dead father’s old barber chair and she was forced to PULL A GUN ON HIM. Freda Gatz is forever freeing her gats and that’s just a fact. But at least she was making sweet jams with Jamal. How sweet were these jams, do you ask? Well, just ask Becky: