Let's not call him Jamal any longer. Lee will be more than sufficient because everything this character does is about Lee and what he went through as a young gay man. Its also showing his wildest dreams as a gay man. I'm no sissy, and I can roll with the best of them. I can face off with gun men and attempt to throw gangsters off buildings. I can also get up on stage with tired rappers and show that gay people can rap too. Ugh! I'm so [!@#$%^&*] tired of this crap with this character! How anyone gets any enjoyment watching him is beyond me. Lee is best in scenes performing with the other characters. Lee and Hakeem are gold! Lee and Lucious were amazing in that duet last night. Outside of that, Lee is "change the freaking channel" material. I just can't stand it!

This is so true.

Jamal really annoyed me last night. The last straw was the "I'm going to threaten to kill a major CEO by throwing him off the balcony" scene. That was beyond pathetic and unbelievable at best.

Who autotunes Patti LaBelle?

Chit, all I can think of when I see your avi is Lucious/Dwight's face when he said " Checkmate, bitch!" Boy that continues to have me howling.

YES!

YASSSSSSSSSSSSSSS, CHEAP!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, you bet I hit it up on YT. I cheered when she flipped that trick onto the pool table and started to choke her. And when she charged after that...just so grrrr good.

LOVED. I hate jumping out of order when I watch shows, but that was worth it.

Chit, all I can think of when I see your avi is Lucious/Dwight's face when he said " Checkmate, bitch!" Boy that continues to have me howling.

I walked out of the living room to get my house shoes and heard that line. I was screaming, and my sister didn't know what was going on. I ran back into the living room to rewind.

I could not love him more if I tried, and when Lucious gets out, it is so on. Not one of them stands a chance together or individually!

I did a re-watch after I straightened out a bit and the show actually confused me more. These two episodes contained a full season's worth of stories and I spent half the time going "Wait, how long has Andre been out of the hospital?" "Why is Rhonda leaving him now?" "Where did Hakeem and Anika come from?" "Did Lucious change his mind about Jamal overnight?" "When the [!@#$%^&*] did Vernon go to rehab?!" and "Who the [!@#$%^&*] is Black Rambo?"

Empire wants to be a soap so it needs to learn from one of the genre's biggest mistakes: too many plot points without enough follow through makes it harder to invest because it lowers the stakes.

You summed up my feelings perfectly. The cliffhanger at the end was just empty to me because...NOTHING about it was built from previous episodes. It honestly felt like the whole season up until this point was a waste of time because the finale was so self-contained with TOO much self to contain.

If JamaLee wants to shout from the rooftop he is gay, I'm good. The problem is, Daniels is overcompensating here, and its a turn off. He's forcing us to love Gay Jamal as opposed to allowing us to just like Jamal because he's a cool character. Currently, I loathe the sight of him unless he's performing with other characters.

Oh I totally agree with your point. But I just can't turn my back on my man. Especially now that he has the keys to the Empire. All that money ... chi... I can finally pay off Sallie Mae.

Y'all gonna stop coming for my bae, Jamal! Just stop!

I want to come for him to, but I like you so I'll keep that to myself

I want to come for him to, but I like you so I'll keep that to myself

Thank you! *wipes tears away dramatically*

You can't fight the future! Lucious tried for most of the season but he ended up getting carted off in bracelets begging his heir to sing his song. Jamal is exactly the kind of forceful gay presence TV needed right now, and I'm sure he'll keep evolving. He's also a great deal like Lucious - the showrunners called Jamal's arc "the Michael Corleone story" in the press last night and that's exactly what I suspect it is.

Nor was what he did to Beretti so ridiculous, since it came directly from the Suge Knight playbook. In conclusion, I'll take your hate individually on alternating days!*

* - that Black Rambo rap battle was terrible though

Edited March 19, 201510 yr by Vee

I forgot to mention my favorite part, which was when Cookie opened her gift. Lucious' face was priceless, he was like "yeah, I know what you tried to do".

Thank you! *wipes tears away dramatically*

LMAO!!!

I really hope next season they settle on a directorial style. The finales felt completely different to me from the rest of the season. It seemed like they were really trying to play up the Shakespearean angle and mix it with the feeling of a telanovela and an opera but it felt like a dream. I really expected Lucious to wake up at the end of the first hour and Pam Ewing the [!@#$%^&*] out of it. At first I thought that was because I was...impaired when I watched but looking at comments on the web I see that a lot of people had the same feeling.

I have to admit though that I'm not a fan of Debbie Allen's direction. She makes Tyler Perry look subtle.

I forgot to mention my favorite part, which was when Cookie opened her gift. Lucious' face was priceless, he was like "yeah, I know what you tried to do".

"Checkmate, bitch!"

Edited March 19, 201510 yr by marceline

"Checkmate, bitch!"

Episodes 11 & 12 were a lot stronger than 8, 9 and 10.

The pacing point has been spoken about already, so I won't belabor that point any further. I will say this is the first time that I have ever really liked Lucious in the entire series, and literally all it took was for the writers to inject something into his character that was at least semi-understandable, nearly human and relatable. Hearing him say that his treatment of Jamal was due to fear and his own internal struggle with his innocence and insecurities alleviated and illuminated a lot about him, and the parallel of Dwight Walker and Jamal was a nice metaphor. His fear that Dwight/Jamal couldn't exist in the world and needed to be changed was something that one could at least logically follow. Where the hell was that all season?

The flashbacks and everything was a really nice touch, it highlighted the journeys of Cookie and Jamal particularly very well, but the writers have always done very well in highlighting these characters. That being said I am tired of the Jamal character at this point of the story, and I think it would do them well to limit his centrality to the show over the course of next season. The character work and focus for Cookie, Jamal and Lucious in these episodes ere at a completely different level than the rest of the cast. They really need to start spreading the wealth. Jamal in particular has been strongly defined as a character but it's to the detriment of others two brothers. He's overexposed and Andre and Hakeem are starting to feel like side characters and foils, they really need to expand the other two brothers, asap. I do wonder if they will have Jamal go over to the dark side, next season and align with Lucious or if they will try to have him mediate on both sides.

Not convinced on this quartet, like at all, I don't buy it, these relationships and alliances felt contrived and forced to near incredulity, I can buy Andre's deference -- that's been the big picture from the beginning, but the Hakeem and Anika connection feels both gratuitous and unrealistic, and having a four minute cat fight doesn't change the sheer ridiculousness of having Cookie work with Anika. The audience isn't there yet.

Vernon, like Bunky has felt like such an after thought on this show that they feel like plot contrivances to push things along. I don't understand why Andre and Rhonda won't go to the police, when it's obvious it was self defense. That kind of stupidity isn't justified primarily because we've seen how intelligent Andre and Rhonda are in there schemes, corporate espionage and general manipulation and mind tricks. That said I am glad Rhonda took Andre out of the church storyline and pushed Jennifer Hudson off screen, that storyline needed to die with the quickest death possible. I am really hoping the fatherhood storyline will give the character of Andre some depth and real character opportunity in the second season. Rhonda's been a very unappreciated supporting character this season right along with Becky to me.

I am glad Malcolm is taken out of the Cookie storyline, I don't even know why that proposed story tangent wasn't nixed early in the writers room. Cookie doesn't need an extraneous love interests that don't mean anything in the larger context of her narrative story. she really doesn't need a man in her storyline at all, especially one who seems inconsequential as Malcolm was. She works better as a walking tornado that disrupts Lucious life, excels in business practices, street and other wise and is there for her children.

Empire wants to be a soap so it needs to learn from one of the genre's biggest mistakes: too many plot points without enough follow through makes it harder to invest because it lowers the stakes.

This is another point where I feel stronger character work is needed. I can fill in the blanks more or less if I have solid characterization down and say without a doubt "oh yeah Cookie would do this", but in other cases where that isn't inherent there needs to be better build up. That was pretty much where the quartet fell apart for me. Hopefully Empire can make up for it next season, cause even now I don't buy it.