This week’s Empire, “Chimes at Midnight,” Empire Extreme is hacked. All of the emails on the Empire server, including songs and confidential secrets, begin to leak and won’t stop unless the Lyons pay an offshore account $1 million. It’s a race to find out who is inside the server and to do damage control before it’s too late.
Tiana On Repeat
Cookie and Angelo’s relationship is heating up just in time for his campaign for mayor. Cookie is even sending her new boyfriend naked photos (hasn’t anyone learned anything from Anthony Weiner?). Then Cookie, Lucious and Jamal’s phones all start to play the new Tiana song and they cannot turn the track off. Lucious learns that Empire Extreme has been hacked.
Lucious accuses Vaughn (another appearance by French Montana, another episode that requires subtitles) off hacking the email server. He denies it, and while he’s in the office, more emails begin to leak. The Lyons receive a message that they need to pay an offshore account $1 million or they will continue to release emails and tracks. (Now the question is, hasn’t anyone learned anything from Hillary Clinton?)
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Secrets Exposed
Everyone’s secrets at Empire start to get exposed through the email leak and the consequences follow shortly. Tiana’s boyfriend breaks up with her, Jamal finds an email backlash about when he came out as gay and Cookie’s nude photos leak. Not surprisingly, Cookie has an epic reaction. “What the hell are y’all looking at? They perky!” Lucious thinks Shine is to blame, but he insists he doesn’t want to see “Cookie’s cookies.” The threats keep coming and the tracks start to be erased from the studio. This episode has turned into Pretty Little Liars, and A is definitely the hacker.
Damage Control
Cookie breaks up with Angelo because she does not want to be the reason he loses the race for mayor. After discovering a key log in studio six, Andre and Lucious question Tiana about who has been working in the studio with her. They think Graham, Tiana’s ex-boyfriend, is to blame for all of this after Tiana says he was going to humiliate them as revenge for not letting him rap with Hakeem. (Tiana also says he was able to hack her phone without the passcode, so he’s basically Kristen Doute from Vanderpump Rules). Lucious and Andre confronts Graham, and even though he denies it, they think they have enough evidence and hire Shine to kill him.
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Better Luck Next Time
After leading the mission to find the hacker, Andre is named the new President of Empire Extreme at the post-hack concert event. Xavier then takes credit for Becky’s idea to change Tiana’s single and is named the new head of A&R, a position Becky has been fighting for. The only person not at the concert? Jamal, who is struggling to stay sober after he quit his pain pills. He relapses and will not wake up after he passes out.
President Andre
After a shower and a lot of panic (and a long commercial break), Jamal wakes up. Andre brings Nessa to his meeting with Vaughn, and it is revealed that Andre was behind the hack the whole time. He set up a disaster that only he could fix to impress his father and the entire company. The plan goes off without a hitch – besides the whole naked Cookie scandal – and Andre is thrilled with his new position of power and his new partner in crime. Rhonda would be so proud … and so pissed that he moved on so quickly.
Empire airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on FOX. Like more news? Like BuddyTV’s Empire Facebook page.
(Image courtesy of FOX)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
