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Empire starts off by introducing us to Lucious Lyon, played by Terrence Howard, the head of Empire Records, the biggest rap label in the known universe. He announces to his children—the hotheaded Hakeem, the introverted musical genius Jamal, and the scheming Andre—that he's got ALS and is going to die soon, but needs an heir to run the label once he takes it public. Just then, his wife Cookie, who's been in the slammer for years, gets released, and all biblical hell breaks loose. By the end of season one, more members of the family are murderers than not, everyone has made strategic alliances with each other and then gone back on them, and each character has become entangled in a web of deception so complex that even they themselves don't know what's true any more.Taraji P. Henson's Cookie is one of the most entertaining TV characters since The Fonz.
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There's a certain balance you've got to maintain in a show's second season, between giving viewers more of what they want and not simply hitting the same beats over again. To his credit, Empire showrunner Lee Daniels seems to understand this, promising to Vanity Fair that in season two, "We show Cookie and Lucious's family and friends that are still in the ghetto, and their sense of loss to a community that they were once associated with."Still, Daniels also knows what his show does best—he also told Vanity Fair, "There's fashion! Sex! Intrigue! Fights! Catfights with weave pulling and pearls dripping to the floor! Bloodshed! And more sex!" In a world where more is more, Empire is king.Follow Drew on Twitter.The second season of Empire premieres Wednesday night at 9 PM on Fox.On Noisey: A Tribute to the Gloriously Crappy Mall Rock of the Past