With the season one wrap up of Fox’s “Empire” behind us, Wednesday nights now leave many viewers with acute “Empire withdrawal.” Until season two airs this fall, a remedy is to check out the new and upcoming webisodes,” The Inside Track: The Rise of Empire.” These entertaining documentary-styled flashbacks and interviews fill us in on back story, give us deeper character development and possibly can answer any questions we may have about the Lyon family rise to power. The webisodes can be found on Fox.com and YouTube.
Empire hooked more and more viewers each week during its twelve weeks air time. According to Nielsen ratings, the show rated in at number one with a 9.9 rating during the week of March 16, 2015. To those of you that have not seen Empire, all episodes are available for streaming on Fox.com, and on your smart phone and other devices using the app FOX NOW.
Brought to us by Lee Daniels and Danny Strong, Empire is a fast-paced, action and drama-filled series that just like a bag of chips, once you’ve opened it you can’t have just one. The series opened with an introduction to Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard), music mongul and ex-drug dealer, finding out he is dying, leaving him to decide between his three sons as to who should take over, each with their own issues regarding how they were parented. Enter Cookie (Tarija P. Henson), the mother, fresh from prison and ready to claim her spot at the throne, and you now have a family at war over power, money, control, prestige and image. With murder, backstabbing, affairs, secrets exposed, fights, conflict and controversy on a weekly platter the show is addicting. We want to see what happens to the characters we love, and even more importantly, the characters we love to hate.
With Timbaland behind the riveting soundtrack, celebrity guest appearances and cameos, it sometimes makes it hard to forget that Empire is fictional. Now that Jussie Smollett, the actor who plays middle son Jamel, in real life signed on with Columbia Records last month, the line between fiction and reality blur a little more for the viewers. LA Times recently shared that the Empire soundtrack was at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 during the week of the season finale, and this week holding well at the No. 2 spot. Season two is sure to promise more music and talent to be exposed, and making these over the top characters and plotline all the more believable.
While Lucious waits things out behind bars, we are also are doing our time waiting for the shows return this fall. Meanwhile, make sure to check our out our beloved Cookie, Tarija P. Henson, host Saturday Night Live April 11, 2015, The show airs at 11:30/10:30c on NBC.
