TV Review: EMPIRE: Season 2, Episode 7: True Love Never [FOX]

FOX’s  Empire True Love Never TV Show Review. Empire: Season 2,  Episode 7: True Love Never wakes up and gets out of bed with Cookie’s (Taraji P.Henson) eyelash extensions batting at Laz (Adam Rodriguez) for a marathon she decides to miss work for. At least she has ideas about a new summer jam they can plan together from in between the sheets. They must have had a Midsummer Night’s Dream together, and in some dreamy dream she never notices his back tattoo, or maybe she wasn’t paying attention to Hakeem when he told her, or love is blind and she is a cliché. It’s your guess.

Lucious (Terrence Howard) and Freeda (Bre-z) have competing daddy issues, but it still works for them in the studio. I don’t see him slipping her the bone any time soon. Thank goodness. He better not even try. I will stop watching this show.

Jamal (Jussie Smollett) and Cookie start texting and he works his way right up to cheating on daddy after getting tipsy with mommy on some champagne. They wind up in the Lyon Dynasty studio working on his new track, but Hakeem (Bryshere Y. Gray) almost catches them and Jamal slips out just in time.  This all felt like filler for me. I realize that Jamal and Hakeem are still in a love-hate thing, but Hakeem is willing to deal with the dudes who kidnapped him. What is the big deal with big brother? So, what if daddy gave him the company. Hakeem has his own thing going with Lyon Dynasty.

Lucioius bonds over whiskey balls with Sir Huey.

Cookie has a promotional event for her new jam featuring Mirage à Trois for all the hip hop bloggers, and Laura gets bumped out of her lead spot due to lack of personality. Hakeem takes the time out of the goodness of his poor horny heart to introduce her to some of Tiana’s (Serayah) moves. Grr.  

Mimi Whiteman (Marisa Tomei) is in deep this week with a doped up merger and some more weird paid sex, this time with Lucious as a side gig. He and the CEO of SwiftStream, Jago Locke (Patrick Mulvey), get into a spar in the boxing ring, and Lucious knocks him out cold when he calls his lyrics shallow. He and Mimi pay him a visit while he’s on a morphine drip and ‘convince’ him to have his lawyer draw up a contract for the merger. For as dorky as Mimi is, this wily streak in her is just as amusing.

Hakeem finds a public exercise for Laura to beef up her presence after Cookie doubts on Hakeem about her ability to command the stage again. If it weren’t for this uplifting performance, way better than Jamal’s martyr-ish jam session, I would have lost hope in this episode. Cookie really has it out for the innocence in Laura, who after singing in a public square seems ready to command the stage like a power house, and then bumps herself back into play at the next studio performance. When Hakeem first saw her sing in the bar, she initiated her performance with a heavy demure. Hopefully, it is all gone and Cookie won’t keep coming after her. I can’t stand how cold Cookie can be when it comes to the talent, but that’s show business.

Laz tries to handle his boys who kidnapped Hakeem just to get paid to work with her after the shakedown they pulled. Cookie decides to work with them to Hakeem’s dismay. They handle it. Cookie’s Cookout is set up in Rock Steady Park.

Mimi and Lucious have the same taste in hookers. This bit of True Love Never went down the darkest path for Lucious who has several flashbacks of his mother’s infatuation with a pistol he then uses as a prop in his track with Freda. He flips his perspective from shallow to empowered and believes they are making history together. It’s his egomania talking.  

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