With “The Tameness of a Wolf,” Empire has unfortunately taken a break from respecting the audience’s intelligence to hitting us over the head with the simple points they want to make.

The first cranial walloping comes at Camilla’s memorial service, when Cookie calls her death a “carpet-munching Romeo & Juliet.” We didn’t need her crude jokes to get the Shakespeare reference.

We then get to witness a very contrived and drawn out Battle of the Weaves between Hakeem’s ladies, as if Ti-yawn-a didn’t mentor Laura a few months ago.

Lucious and Cookie then bond while making a video about his horrible childhood. I’ll never understand how Cookie could have fallen so hard for someone she didn’t really know, or why they had to take Freda’s verse out of the song. Her childhood was pretty hard, too! But back to Cookie and Lucious. He is a giant, violent child and does not deserve Cookie, but the writers make her melt into a pool of pity for the man who never visited her in jail and then killed her cousin. Oh, I’m sorry, those were just “a few misunderstandings.” We get it – they love each other. Ugh.

Lastly, we get more confirmation that Lucious’ sons are nothing but moneymaking props here to carry on his fake last name. He completely dismisses Andre’s pain and anger over how he pretended not to know what Andre was going through. It’s heartbreaking and infuriating that not only did Lucious do everything he could to psychologically damage his children, the writers are going to invent more reasons for us to hate him as if we don’t have enough already.

The best thing about this episode was that it’s obvious that Rhonda will soon find out Cuckoo Kitty has the hands that both rock the cradle and pushed her down the stairs.

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down

UP: Jamal and Freda should do an entire album together, and then do a Daddy Issues Tour or something.

DOWN: Becky’s role is so dull. What is her job? Why is she here?

UP: Cookie’s outfits are becoming more and more fabulous. I need a measuring tape scarf and a shirt with chain links over gold chains. That will complete me.

DOWN: Lucious’ aversion to everything he isn’t. If you’re female, Christian, White, gay or mentally ill, he has nothing but disdain for you and I’m sick of his hateful ways.

WTF Moment of the Night

Cuckoo Kitty is Rhonda’s confidant? Since when does a woman in distress immediately go to her father-in-law’s ex? She needs to call one of her old sorority sisters or check Facebook or something.

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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