> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://go-fug-yourself.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Fug the Show: Other Noteworthy "Empire" Moments in Season One - URL: https://go-fug-yourself.ghost.io/fug-the-show-other-noteworthy-empire-moments-in-season-one/ - Published: 2015-03-18T21:00:43.000Z - Updated: 2015-03-18T20:16:54.000Z - Author: Heather - Tags: #wp, #wp-gallery, #slideshow, #Import 2026-10-07 07:41 ## Empire Season One ![empire season one](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bf/b9/bfb99790-924d-4e41-a7e6-5e3c6e04fe57/content/images/static-gofugyourself-com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-img_5864.png) Terrence Howard is a weird dude. and potentially unsavory in his personal life, if domestic abuse allegations are true. But it's hard for me to root against this show, because of all the OTHER minority actors it employs. The top new show of the season is not only multiracial, but predominantly African-American. Andd the way it's handling issues of sexuality and mental illness is impressive, and of course a woman has stolen this whole thing out from under Howard's nose. There's a lot of GOOD being done, which helps me separate the art from the artist, so to speak. And also, hey, the show might actually be more interesting if they do kill off Lucious, so we can always root for THAT. In the meantime, his intangible weirdness -- and fearlessness about looking and saying terrible things -- works REALLY WELL on this show. I keep reading that Wesley Snipes was a hot contender for this role, and I cannot imagine that working AT ALL. Like, not in the slightest. Terrence Howard has this bizarre charisma but also plenty of slime. He believably plays his character's prejudices but also his sincerity... or what he believes is his sincerity. I don't know. I haven't liked him in anything else since Hustle & Flow, basically, so maybe Taraji P. Henson is just his magic dust. That, and music, and crazy jackets. ## Empire Season One: Lucious Lyon ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_5868.png) A lot of the first season deals with the spectre of the Empire stock IPO, which a) can't happen if people find out Lucious has ALS, because the stock sale is pinned to his bill of good health; and b) causing him to make his three sons compete to run the company. That has kind of gotten sidelined, but there's Andre, the businessman with no musical talent but bipolar disorder; Jamal, the homosexual and HUGELY talented one; and Hakeem, the brash and immature rapper who is the baby of the family. This massive ball sadly does not recur, although I suspect Lucious believes it to be a faithful replica of the ones in his pants. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_5901.png) That is some LOUDNESS. He also, by the way, excels at these Very Dramatic Stares. He probably needs about seven significant others in real life, because I feel like Terence Howard would be GREAT FUN for like three hours a day and then you have to clock out for the day because it's too intense. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_5911.png) Lucious doesn't limit his arsenal to shirts, either. He LOVES a silky ascot. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_5902.png) But I also need you to know that his doctor -- the one who here delivers the news that he has ALS -- did so IN A GREY WOOLEN PONCHO. He appears to be in a real hospital room. Could she not have tossed on a lab coat for three seconds so that he might feel reassured that she isn't reading off his test results while killing time before her flight to Aspen? ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_5882.png) I love that Hakeem gets his hair cut while wearing a gold barber's apron. I should get Jessica one for her birthday. It's only appropriate that she should match her iPhone while at the salon. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_5922.png) I love that this show had a symbolic piece of bling, also. Cookie's cousin, whom Lucious secretly killed (and his henchman pinned it on someone else), used to wear this necklace. Hakeem inherited it. It kind of looks like 24-karat DNA. Lucious spends a LOT of time saying "Empire was built on family" for someone who a) ignores one son's mental illness, b) hates another son's gayness, and c) watched his wife take the fall for their drug business and then used the proceeds to build the company while not visiting her in prison. Cookie angrily yells "LUCIOUS!!!" a lot and frankly I would too. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_7681.png) Hakeem is also responsible for "Drip Drop," which has the stirring lyric, "Drip, drop, drip-drippety drop." It's the dumbest song ever and I once had it in my head for three straight days. ... Wait, shit, there it goes again. Anyway, his music video is such a wonderful parody and yet I'm not at all sure it was intended as such. Which makes me love it more, strangely. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_5912.png) Meet Rhonda, wife of Bipolar Andre. She wears a bib while pleasuring him orally (a creepy infantilization that would bother me more if this show didn't empower Cookie a lot), enjoys plotting with him to pit his brothers against each other to assure their destruction, and likes Andre to re-enact the ways he uses sex with other people to achieve their Machiavellian ends -- although she drew the line at having to straddle an old dude in a wheelchair so that Andre could get his wife's boardroom vote, and got drunk and vomited all over her dinner plate instead. Help me, Rhonda? No. Help YOU. My favorite factoid about Kaitlin Doubleday here is that she was the blonde with Thomas Jane at the Fashion Week when he went to the bathroom right before Herve Leger started, then WALKED ON THE RUNWAY DURING THE SHOW to get back to his seat. Amazing. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_5925.png) Rhonda actually doesn't do THAT much except show up occasionally with breasts in the ready position. This may be the single worst outfit that has appeared on this show, and yes, that includes the leather overalls that are forthcoming. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_7743.png) See? Rack 'em up, Rhonda. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_5944.png) Rhonda also thoughtfully wore a very tiny skirt -- and, yes, also her cleavage -- to a big family funeral. She has a marvelous sense of occasion. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_7774.png) Rhonda has no patience for when Andre goes off his meds. However, the crazier he goes, the higher up her necklines get. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_7856.png) Things are getting to ... if not Defcon 1 then at least a solid Defcon 2 at this pout, and here cleavage is barely anywhere to be found. Perhaps it could HEAL him, Rhonda, did you ever think of THAT? ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_5928.png) This is Anika, a.k.a. the infamous Boo Boo Kitty, a.k.a. Lucious's A&R head/fiance. This show makes ample and creative use of her chest, but has no idea what to do with her hair. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_7731.png) Cookie refers to it as newscaster hair at one point, and in this incarnation, it really kind of is. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_5935.png) In THIS hot mess of a hairdo, though, it's just grounds for a harassment complaint against the hair department. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_7863.png) When Anika finds out Lucious has resumed snacking on the cookie dough, she puts on her Evil Sexpot Finest and goes to see Lucious's blood rival Billy. They make a plan to cut off Empire at the knees. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_7875.png) But once she's actually there, and Judd Nelson isn't as broody and interesting as he was in "The Breakfast Club," she puts up walls. Seriously. That neckline says STEP OFF, PERV. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_5961.png) Tiana -- Hakeem's onetime girlfriend, a Secret Lesbian who gets outed in one of Andre and Rhonda's scenes, and artist of Cookie's -- gets some awful clothes as well, including this real winner of a dress that is really more like lingerie with sleeves. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_5974.png) it is she who gets the leather overalls, which of course Lucious catches Hakeem trying to remove. In his living room. He should not have stopped him. Those overalls DO need to be disposed of hastily. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_5965.png) Porsha here is Cookie's mouthy assistant, and she is A TOTAL DELIGHT. I am sad I didn't get a screen grab of Gabby Sidibe, who is also good on the show, but Gabby doesn't have a loaf of bread attached to her head. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One courtney love](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_7725.png) Courtney Love guest-starred as Elle Dallas, a washed up and strung-out artist in need of image repair. Incidentally, that might be what this show was supposed to be for Courtney, although she sounded... well, look: I have always found her music to be unlistenable, so there's no way I was going to notice a difference between "Elle Dallas singing poorly" and "Elle Dallas pulls it together and sings with her heart." But I do appreciate the Fur Collar of Divadom. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One courtney love](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_7718.png) She DID, however, act without vanity in the scenes where she's back on the rock and Cookie finds her and has to straighten her out. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One courtney love](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_7768.png) Anika, of course, spikes her drink on her big night and renders her unable to perform. Courtney plays that to the hilt, in a dress I firmly believe she may have just wandered to set in from her own house. ## Courtney Love ![Empire Season One courtney love](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_7769.png) She also got a pratfall, which I appreciate. You don't get to see that every day. I haven't found a GIF of it yet, but in lieu of that, [please enjoy this one of her dramatically ripping out her fake hair at Cookie's urging](https://wifflegif.com/gifs/588922-courtney-love-empire-gif?ref=go-fug-yourself.ghost.io). ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_7858.png) Naomi Campbell also recurred as Hakeem's girlfriend Camilla, and was kind of amazing. They seem to have written her out, but hopefully they can convince her to come back and sneer at people again, because it worked like a charm. Although Cookie won, as she did here: "So Yoko Ono here wants to play on the song, too. Well, what can you do Yoko? Can you play the tambourine?" And then, in response to a dig about her being a jailbird, "You probably would’ve made a good bitch for me. You look like you got a long tongue.” ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_7754.png) This is terrible, though. She looked like a pirate wench who ran her blouse through the wrong wash cycle. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_7772.png) During a song that sampled Dire Straits's "Money for Nothing," women walked out wearing microwaves on their heads. Because *Empire* has mastered the subtler arts. This must have been a VERY exciting time in the costume and props departments. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_8098.png) Please giggle with me at Jussie Smollett's flashback wig. He is Jamal, he is ADORABLE, and he did not look any younger with that thing on his head but I love that they made him try. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_8094.png) Mary J. o "blige"d HAR HAR by making a cameo in a fringed shirt. She looks insane. I wish they had put her ON the piano, but what can you do? Lucious needs his baby grand open, which I'm sure is a metaphor for something. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_7745.png) Raven Symone showed up as a girl named Olivia -- I hope she is playing her same-name character from "The Cosby Show" -- whom Lucious forced to beard Jamal for a while. She has their love child who, SPOILER, may actually belong to Lucious. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_8114.png) Her "I Dumped My Kid With You And Tried To Escape My Abusive Lover, But Then He Found Me So I Brought Him Here To Take Her Back, Can Someone Please Shoot Him In The Forehead?" wig is really egregiously unflattering, though. (Also, Malik Yoba on the left plays Lucious's coked-up second-in-command, whom Lucious thinks made a power grab with Andre and so they're BOTH in his bad books and so Malik bitterly hit the powder again -- which is Not Great, Bob, because he also helped cover up that Lucious killed Cookie's cousin. He's a pressure cooker ready to blow. And on blow.) ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_8099.png) Why is EVERYONE blonde in the flashbacks? Cookie, Olivia... even Mary J., although in fairness she's blonde now also. Anyway, the curious thing about Raven Symone is that she had almost no lines at all. That doesn't seem so Raven to me. ## Empire Season One ![Empire Season One](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-IMG_8111.png) But THIS little moppet? SHE IS PERFECTION. Olivia/Raven took her away to Florida or something -- I'm not sure why she couldn't stay in the city, get some child support, and let the kid see her family? -- but I hope she comes back, and as the same actress, because she is an adorable delight and seeing Hakeem and Jamal sing to her and cuddle her made my ovaries dance. [Fug the Show: Other Noteworthy "Empire" Moments in Season OneWe covered Cookie already, but given again that the finale is tonight -- and that I wish we'd been able to write about this wackfest all along -- I figured I'd provide some Best of the Rest grabs for your entertainment. And hey, if you were thinking about watching, this will be... oh, at least a 30-percent decent primer.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bf/b9/bfb99790-924d-4e41-a7e6-5e3c6e04fe57/content/images/static-gofugyourself-com/uploads/2015/03/best-of-empire-season-one-img_5864.png)](https://go-fug-yourself.ghost.io/fug-the-show-other-noteworthy-empire-moments-in-season-one-03-2015/)