The third season of Empire can be considered as a roller coaster. It has its juicy moments, but it's filled with boring or useless storylines. Like in these two episodes: the fall finale was full of interesting twists, but the previous episode fell pretty flat. Let's recap The Unkindest Cut and A Furnace for your Foe.
In the first episode, Andre is setting in motion his plan to take down Empire's legacy and his father. He arranged for Tiana a series of problems: Nessa destroys the gown Tiana was supposed to wear during her performance at a fashion show for a designer. She records her outburst and puts it on the Internet. Then he manipulates Empire's staff suggesting a real soul singer like Nessa should take Tiana's place. Andre's storyline is getting more interesting. As usual, Lucious finds a way to use his mother to stall his investigation: Leah talks with Tariq and convinces him to do so. But that's not the end of Lucious' screentime: he has sex with Anika, a WTF storyline that is not as bas as I could have predicted.
As you can expect, in A Furnace for your Foe the rhythm is crazy and more entertaining. Let's start with the most touching and greatest moment of the episode: Rhonda's and Andre's goodbye. We finally got what we waited for and deserved: a decent farewell for Rhonda. In a crazy-good scene on a beach, Rhonda kissed goodbye his husband and let go of him. Dressed in white she told him that she believes in him and she wants him to kill both Lucious and the "bitch who murdered me and our baby". Finally someone remembered what happened to her. I loved this moment even if it's totally crazy. I also enjoyed how they handled the Jamal's storyline: sending him to rehab was the proper choice and the confrontation between him and Cookie was heartbreaking. We finally discovered that Angelo is not as perfect as he seems. This won't end up well. Lucious revealed everything to Cookie.In an attempt to gain power, Andre discovered struck a deal with Shyne.
All in all, I'm still watching Empire without getting bored. It still has its juicy moments and the perfect Macbethian vibe that gets me hooked time after time. We'll see how they are going to handle this mess. I hope they will dare to do something bold: like getting one of Andre or Lucious killed. They always hint at a possible crazy twist, but apart from Rhonda, they don't dare to do so.
And you? What do you think of these two episodes?
