by Megan Bailey, Staff Writer

Hot on the heels of Galavant, Empire entered stage left. It premiered just days after Galavant but ended up lasting much longer. The show would run for 6 seasons, though it steadily lost viewers as it went on. Created by Lee Daniels and Danny Strong, Empire tells the story of a rap music empire.

The patriarch of the Lyon family, Lucius (Terrence Howard), runs a record label (among many other things), but when his wife, Cookie (Taraji P. Henson), is released from jail tensions begin to run high between them and their children. The first season focuses on who Lucius intends to leave his empire to, since he believes he’s dying from ALS. There’s infighting between Lucius’s sons, Andre (Trai Byers), Jamal (Jussie Smollett), and the youngest, Hakeem (Bryshere Y. Gray). Each brother has a vastly different approach to impressing Lucius, but they all make a play for the company by the end of the season.

But it turns out that, after Cookie attempts to kill him toward the end of the season, Lucius doesn’t have a debilitating illness, but something much more benign. He’ll be able to hold onto the empire for much longer, to everyone else’s disappointment.

As a sort of meta-narrative, the show’s dwindling numbers sort of chronicle the end of primetime television. No show currently on air will ever hit 17 million viewers again, but the season one finale of Empire did. Over the course of its run, the show would experience the epic highs and lows of viewership, though it eventually ended with a fizzle rather than a bang.

Adding to Empire’s chronicling of television in the modern era, the show ended two episodes sooner than intended due to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The shutdown kept the crew from shooting the intended finale, so the eighteenth episode of the season served as a series finale, though several executives mentioned that there might be room to return to the show one day.

For the first two seasons, Timbaland wrote the music for the show. Starting with the third season, Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins, a producer, and Ester Dean, a songwriter, took over the music duties. They were tasked with coming up with original songs based on the plot lines for each episode. In the first season, Timbaland’s work is a mixed bag; the songs ran the gamut from fun to genuinely great to not exactly hits.

Like Nashville, this show functions like a soap opera. Characters you think are leaving for good come back an episode or two later. Plot lines are dropped for several episodes and then picked back up with a vengeance. Every plot point is turned up to eleven. Jamal is gay, and everyone has something to say about it. Hakeem has an affair with an older woman (played by Naommi Campbell of course), and it’s a big-time scandal. Andre is bipolar, and it’s dramatized to the high heavens.

The heightened energy serves the story, and it ties in with the Shakespearean influences the Daniels and Strong pulled from. They were inspired by King Lear and James Goldman’s The Lion in Winter, about Henry II of England. Those influences and the excess in the modern music landscape perfectly sync up to become Empire.

On the whole, Empire shows just how successful a soapy musical show can be, just like Nashville. Both ran for six seasons, though Nashville had a bit of a bumpier ride in between networks. Like I mentioned in last month’s column, it seems like realistic musicals are a bit more successful than fantastical ones, though that doesn’t explain Smash’s less-than-successful run. Maybe Broadway is more niche than mainstream country and rap music? Or perhaps the machinations aren’t as fun to watch?

In any case, we’ll tackle the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend next month, so until then, keep getting bi.