Empire‘s finale fizzled rather than going out with a bang. The show ended with a cliffhanger that was as weak as day old coffee.
The best scenes occurred when Rhonda went for Anika‘s throat after concluding it was Anika who caused her to lose her baby.
What woman didn’t feel Rhonda’s pain when she went for Anika’s neck? Yet the ultimate showdown between Rhonda and Anika didn’t bring the drama that Empire viewers expected and deserved after tolerating the show’s quirky script writing all season.
Like most of Empire‘s schizophrenic screen writing, the season finale of Fox Tv’s hip hop soap opera left viewers confused and scratching their heads.
Rolling Stone magazine called the finale “both a cheat and a cheap shot.”
A cheat because Jamal Lyon (Jussie Smollet) should have been killed off. And a cheap shot because, after diving in front of his father, Lucious Lyon, and taking a bullet to the gut — a gut shot that would have killed most men — there was Jamal walking around healthy after spending just one day in a wheelchair.
Rolling Stone — In retrospect it’s tough to understand why co-creator Lee Daniels and showrunner Ilene Chaiken, who co-wrote the finale, decided to end the season here instead of on that blood-soaked red carpet. Even if the singer’s status had been left up in the air, at least you’d know exactly what happened and who it happened to, giving you plenty of daddy-issue drama to chew on over the long months before Season Three starts up. Moreover, Lucious and his musical progeny are far more important to the Empire than their in-laws; using their conflict to close out the year would just feel right in a way that the Anika/Rhonda duel doesn’t.
Video source: Ddotomen.com
