Aaaannd we’re back to Suspension of Disbelief Land. Welcome to a world where preachers randomly show up in music studios, mothers sneak out to get drunk with their sons and B-list starlets train their ex’s new love interest to be a star!

Lucious’ petty ass is not having a good week. His eldest son has gotten saved and refuses to commit adultery for his flailing company, his middle son gets validation from an icon right after he gets rejected and his youngest still doesn’t need him. To top it all off, everyone has picked this time to let Lucious know that if his rapping were a board game, it was be “Sorry.” Good grief!

On the other hand, Cookie is having a great time, full of naked nights with her gangster promoter and bonding with her obviously favorite son. Lyon Dynasty is on the rise with snazzy looking offices and an increasingly likable girl group. If Cookie’s Cookout were an actual event, I’d want to go.

Unfortunately, this show’s cast is incredibly bloated and we can’t focus on fun things like music festivals and tense family dinners. We have to introduce a weird side story with Mimi’s wife or girlfriend and meet the founder of a made-up music streaming service. Worst of all, the flashbacks of Lucious’ mother showcase the writers’ complete ignorance when it comes to mental illness. It can be hereditary, but it usually manifests itself in different ways. A habit of playing Russian Roulette is not genetic, guys.

I was not impressed with this episode and am not looking forward to more of Lucious’ childishness or Cookie’s blindness. He needs to learn how to be supportive when it comes to his sons and she needs to wake up and smell the scam when it comes to Laz.

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down

UP: Mirage a Trois drama! I’ve missed girl groups and boy bands so much that I’m obsessed with this fake one.

DOWN: Marisa Tomei has managed to take the sludge the writers are feeding her and turn it into even goopier slop. Down with the slop.

UP: Cookie+Jamal 4eva! They have great chemistry and make great music together.

DOWN: Lucious opening up actually turned into a huge down. His past his ripe for a real song, which wasn’t magically created just because he added a few empty gunshots to a chorus.

WTF Moment of the Night (there were several, but I picked just one)
Mimi and Lucious decide to have a threesome instead of each going to their separate Playboy mansions with their own whores. And they kiss each other. Blech.

Final Grade: C-

About The Author

Stephanie Taylor

Co-Editor/Entertainment Reporter

She may be a traffic engineer by day (hence the ‘stopsigngirl’ alias), but do not let her technical skills or multiple calculators fool you. Stephanie Taylor has a way with words. She will destroy any opponent in Scrabble, and get 50 points for using all 7 of her letters in the word “destroy.” She can a-n-n-i-h-i-l-a-t-e you in a spelling bee, having competed in no less than ten as a child. She uses correct punctuation in her text messages. It’s no wonder that copy editing comes naturally to her, and she is happy to fine tune the work of other writers before it reaches TRR readers.

Proofreading is not all that Stephanie loves to do. Regular reading without the proof is just fine, and she also loves to write. In fact, Steph has been writing since the tender age of 6 when she penned her would-be bestseller Mouse in Jail. It “would be” if all literary critics were in Kindergarten. Since elementary school, Stephanie has helped publish newsletters, yearbooks, and the Arts & Entertainment section of The Rice Thresher, Rice University’s student newspaper.

Stephanie’s other gigs have included singing her heart out in the chorus of My Fair Lady in Houston, doing improv comedy in front of hundreds of people in Atlanta, and teaching A.P. English in Los Angeles. She loves to travel and have cultural adventures like tubing down a river in Ecuador, dancing in a South Asian festival, or riding a ferry from Italy for 19 hours just to get real Greek food. Cooking and Yoga are also among Stephanie’s list of favorite things to do, but she cannot do them at the same time.

This native Texan genuinely adores reporting on entertainment as much as she loves to entertain, and is looking forward to learning more about what the D.C. area has to offer and sharing that news with you.

Stephanie Taylor also likes to write about herself in the third person.

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