The TV Room: Just Enjoy It, by David Bax
Every Wednesday night on Fox, I experience the same conundrum. I love watching Empire but I’m not sure why. I’ve always bristled at the notion that any show or movie can just be enjoyed without bringing thought or analysis into it. The analysis is the fun. Then again, it’s also a blast just to watch Cookie Lyon (Taraji P. Henson) show up to a family brunch wearing lingerie and a fur coat. Or to glimpse teenage Hakeem’s (Bryshere Y. Grey) bathtub escapades with an older woman he calls “mama.” What I’m trying to say is that I’m nuts about this show but I haven’t yet developed the vocabulary to describe why. So, in true Empire fashion, I’m about to dive in and try to figure it out as I go along.
Many who have attempted to review Empire episode by episode have fallen into the trap of seeking to make sense of character arcs and ongoing story developments. This is quixotic at best. Though the show never displays the same flailing schizophrenia as its network-mate, Glee, its linear elements are not the focus. A character like Cookie is, to some extent, an exception because the actor portraying her has the talent necessary to keep her on the rails. Tiana (played by Serayah), on the other hand, would present a challenge to even the most seasoned thespian. First she’s too career-focused to care about Hakeem’s side piece, but then she does care, but then she’s gay, but then she’s in love with Hakeem after all. Tellingly, perhaps, the one truly consistent character so far has been Jamal (Jussie Smollett), whose struggle to come out of the closet despite his father’s steadfast homophobia has held the show’s interest in a way that could speak to the hidden motivation of the show. Let’s put a pin in that and come back to it.
Creators Lee Daniels and Danny Strong previously collaborated on 2013’s Lee Daniels’ The Butler. That film, like Empire, featured characters who often behaved more as archetypes than human. With a closed-ended venture like a movie, though, it’s possible to step back, consider the whole and arrive at an appraisal. The Butler used broad characters because it set out to encompass the many different facets of the twentieth century black experience in America. With Empire, it may still be too soon to see the forest what with all these far-fetched trees.
What Empire does have in common with The Butler is its almost exclusively black viewpoint. It may not be as overtly about blackness but neither the series nor any of its characters are colorblind. There’s nothing subtle or coded about the Lyon family’s distrust of oldest son Andre’s (Trai Byers) white wife – in fact, that’s often how they refer to her. Lucius Lyon (Terrence Howard) is a former criminal turned pop/hip-hop/R&B star turned CEO who, in the pilot episode, murders a friend who threatens to destroy what Lucius has built. Is his rise a Horatio Alger story or the tale of a man who profits from his own unchecked moral corruption? If you think race doesn’t enter into your answer to that question, you’re living in more fantastical world than the one where Empire takes place.
Speaking of that world, just what are Daniels and Strong saying about it (and, allegorically, about us) that it would so readily and widely accept Lucius? The seemingly obvious real world comparison initially was Jay Z but the show has established that not only was Lucius’s music not quite similar to Hova’s but that he was and remains even more famous. His looming IPO and family intrigues are front page, top of the hour news material. Yet, amidst all this, there appears to be no uptight outrage about his thuggish past.
It does help matters that the music that comes out of Empire the show and Empire the record label is not only good but plausibly popular. I’ve been humming last week’s “Conqueror” for days. Unlike Nashville, which also has good songs but apparently takes place in an alternate dimension where mainstream country music still sounds like country music, Empire is clearly aiming for the here and now.
So, with catchy songs and crazy, soap-on-steroids stuff going down (Cookie had a man killed and it’s literally never come up once since), along with delightful guest stars like Courtney Love, Gladys Knight, Judd Nelson and Cuba Gooding, Jr., maybe Empire really is just a show I should shut up and enjoy, right?
Maybe so. But then, a few times an episode, all that entertaining stuff – all the decadence and scandal – brushes up against some things that are intentionally not fun, like Lucius’ retrograde social values and the truly devastating effect they have on Jamal. Or Hakeem’s song that was blatantly anti-woman and, in fact, praised for its marketability in that aspect. Tempting as it would be to take that storyline simply as an attack on entrenched misogyny in hip-hop, Empire isn’t just a show about hip-hop, or about music or about the music business.
After all I’ve written above, I’m starting to think that Empire, a show about the coolest corporate brand in all the land run by a cheating, lying homophobe, might actually about the internal friction of an America defined by radically clashing values. We have a black president; most of our states allow all adults to marry the people they love; and in some of those states you can even buy legal marijuana. But we also have politicians spouting anti-gay dogma in the name of religion; we have young men exhibiting medieval levels of misogyny under the banner of Gamergate; and, in Florida, government officials aren’t even allowed to use the words “climate change.”
We are a nation that is progressing at a faster rate than we know how to handle. The swirling plots, characterizations and songs of Empire are an attempt to take a snapshot of us as we are right now.
Then again, maybe the show will be something completely new this week and I’ll change my mind.
