The drama never ceases on Empire...
After their night together, Cookie demands that Lucious break it off with Anika (aka...Boo Boo Kitty...aka fake Halle Berry...aka fake Lena Horne...smh...Cookie and these names for Anika) if he wants "Cookie's Nookie." She also tells him about her idea for a Lucious legacy album with him, Hakeem, and Jamal. Lucious loves the idea, including breaking it off with Ms. Boo Boo Kitty...SN: did anyone else notice the Scarface music come on as soon as Cookie said the word "legacy."
That is, until Anika confronts him about having her father falsely certify that he was in good health for key person insurance and threatens to take everything down if her father goes down for it. Then she hit him with the revelation that she knows he slept with Cookie the night before. Pinned in a corner with his legacy and label threatened, he decides to switch from his original plan (which was clearly to break it off with her, as he's the one who said they needed to have a discussion first), and seeks her forgiveness. Anika only agrees to forgive him if he marries her ASAP...in less than a week (though she originally wanted to get married the NEXT DAY!).
Lucious, Cookie, Jamal, and Hakeem proceed to work on a remix to one of Lucious' song. Leaving Andre looking on as the untalented black sheep of the family.
In a later scene where Lucious, Cookie, and Hakeem are in the studio, Hakeem gets upset at Cookie for doing what she's supposed to do as the producer...give him feedback on how he's sounding. Lucious makes them talk it out, and gets Hakeem to reveal what we could all probably sense...he feels like Cookie loves Jamal more than him. Of course, Cookie says that is not the case, and that she just knows Jamal better. They hug it out and get back to work.
Later, Hakeem spends time with Camilla. His healing relationship with Cookie leads to him telling Camilla to stop it with the "mother" thing (thank goodness...). He decides to take Camilla to the upcoming White Party as his lady, and Camilla decides it is her job to butt into his musical affairs by saying he should demand to be last on the track despite him agreeing to let Jamal be last.
Hakeem, taking advantage of his improving relationship with Cookie, asks Cookie to put him last on the track. And wanting to continue down the positive path they are on, she agrees to talk to Jamal and Lucious about it.
Meanwhile, Andre and Vernon are still plotting on how Andre can take over the company. Vernon's latest plan is to get the board to vote to make Andre interim CEO should Lucious become incapacitated. To win the votes of board members, Andre gets his wife to agree to sleep with one of the female board members. But when they get to her home, he tells her there's a change of plan and she needs to sleep with the board member's husband who looks to be about 80 and is wheelchair bound. Shortly after the board member's husband suggests he can still get an erection, Rhonda throws up in her food...and they leave. During their car ride leaving the board member's home we learn this is not the first time Andre has used her in this way, and now she's tired of doing it for him. These two!
Then the White Party happens...
Anika asks everyone to make sure they stay after the party for a special announcement (she made Lucious agree to announce their expedited wedding plans at the White Party, where Cookie could hear about it). Being surprised to see Anika there (as she was supposed to be kicked to curb), Cookie confronts Lucious about her being there and asks what the announcement is. Lucious tells her he's not breaking it off with Anika and that they are getting married the next weekend. A little while later Cookie asks to speak to Anika. Anika thought she won when she told Cookie she already knew about them sleeping together the other night. But then...Cookie hit her with...but did you know we slept together last night in the studio after probably promising not to sleep with Cookie again...OUCH!! Later in the episode we see Anika take off her engagement ring and go meet with Baretti.
Later at the White Party, Cookie and Camilla have a confrontation about Camilla's relationship with Hakeem. The scene ends with Camilla telling Hakeem he's not doing the track. (Really?).
Now, before I go into the next scene...I should say that Cookie also had the idea of a documentary being made of the family making the album. The filmmaker is another Black, gay man, like Jamal. After an interview and over drinks they discuss being gay and having Black fathers, and Jamal seems to be inspired by how the filmmaker does not choose to conceal his sexuality. He even tells Jamal he should come out for his daughter...and that scene was followed by the most adorable scene between Jamal and his daughter (including singing a Lion King song...tear, tear).
Ok...so back to the White Party...After Cookie asks Jamal to let Hakeem go last, for the sake of the relationship she's trying to rebuild with Hakeem, Jamal becomes agitated that Hakeem is going back on his word and opts out of doing the song all together. He later has a conversation with his dad about doing the song for the music, not for the family or Lucious. So...Jamal performs the song by himself...
The crowd is loving the song...Lucious is looking so proud of Jamal (probably thinking Jamal will be the next CEO), but then Jamal switches up the lyrics a little bit and hits the crowd with, "this the kind of song that makes a man love a MAN..." Yep...Jamal came out to the world while performing his father's song. Of course, all of the crowd is still feeling the song (especially Cookie, Vernon, and his brothers)...BUT Lucious is clearly upset by it (including flashbacks to the scene of Jamal walking in heels as a child and Lucious putting him in a trash can...).
But you know Empire can't end the episode there. There seems to be a pattern of having Andre's last scene in the show show him in a shocking position. And this episode is no different. So the day after the White Party, Andre and Vernon speak with Lucious about the board vote. Earlier in the episode, Lucious had the final and deciding vote on Andre being interim CEO if Lucious ever became incapacitated. Cookie had voted in favor of the decision (the board member who's married to the man Andre's wife was supposed to sleep with voted no). But she wasn't the only one to vote no. To Vernon and Andre's surprise (and Cookie's too, heck probably the entire Board) Lucious voted against having Andre be the interim CEO. In one of the final scenes of the episode Lucious says he doesn't trust Andre...and it seems to be for two reasons. The main one being that Lucious feels Andre tries to tear the family apart (not sure if he knows what all Andre has been doing, if Andre has always been pulling these sneaky moves, or if that's just the vibe Lucious has been getting). But the other reason, actually the first reason Lucious mentioned, was because Andre married a White woman. Lucious literally said he couldn't trust Andre, because Andre brought a White woman home. Now this seemed a bit racist, which would not be hard to believe from a character that treats his son Jamal the way he does for being a homosexual. However, it went a bit deeper (though not necessarily right)...Andre says the real reason is because he's not talented like them and instead focused on his academics etc. To which, Lucious says he doesn't trust him, because he's too concerned about being accepted by White people (who he says will never accept him no matter how many White women he marries).
So...you know Andre never takes it well when his plan to take over his daddy's label doesn't work (why is the Pinky and the Brain playing in my head... #80sBaby #90sKid... this is becoming a repetitive plot line for Andre..."Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?"..."The same thing we do every night, Pinky - try to take over the world!"...sorry I had to...LOL). Anyway...so our last time seeing Andre in this episode is of him sitting in the studio with a gun to his head. He pulls the trigger, but no bullet (and he seemed surprised and almost upset about there being on bullet)! Yep...that happened...