I don't have a dog in this fight, but I do think that it's weird that people's major complaint is that Empire is a soap. Why be mad at the show for being what the producers intended it to be. I have issues with episodes from this season that were not soapy, dramatic, or serialized. Too many episodes had no impact…

I think that it was a great episode, with classic soap moments. If you are not a fan of soaps, you won't be a fan of Empire. There were duds, like the Alicia Keys storyline, and Andre not having a purpose, but they were outweighed by good character development and solid cliffhangers. Anika should have been behind…

You have a point, but I think that one of the issues is that Jamal is one of the few, if the only, gay black males on broadcast television. The story should come first, but a major draw of the first season was that Jamal was not the typical gay caricature. He was out to his family, and was not ashamed of his sexual…

I've always thought that the show was making a case that Lucious is mentally ill, and that the main difference between him and Andre, is that Lucious has developing certain coping devices, so that he can pass through life without people questioning him. His illness has lead to him alienating his family.

Do recurring characters have to be in every episode? Rhonda was showing a baby bump last night. Jamal did talk about Michael with Lucious.

The radio deal did not go through. The last thing that Roxanne Ford did was put that into litigation.

Hakeem did the choruses of known songs, the audience was just repeating the lyrics of those songs.

The escalation of the war with Hakeem is in character for Lucious. It may be needless, but it is a key part to the story, since it is in line with something that Lucious would usually do. We didn't need Andre to spell it out for us, Lucious is a control freak.

But, Hakeem did rely on his own devices. He realized that he could not beat Freda by addressing her, so he followed Jamal's advice, and played up to the crowd. I think that was realistic, because we can see these two styles in music today. We have singers and rappers who no one can touch in terms of flow, but that…

This was a really good episode. Much better than last week, and maybe the best of the season.

"Cookie and Jamal were inseparable, then estranged, and are now reunited, but those phases don’t resemble any sort of recognizable journey. As with any other Empire story, it’s mostly a sequenced collection of events."