Empire - The Rap to Riches Answer to Nashville on Fox

kinda loved the premiere. i like my drama melo.

https://latricebutts.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/empire-on-fox.png

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/12/28/arts/28EMPIRE4/28JPEMPIRE4-articleLarge.jpg

kinda love cookie...

http://www.fox.com/sites/default/files/video-image-thumb/Empire_1AXP01_2500_1280x720_381269571876.jpg

lee daniels and precious together again.

snoop dog is gonna be in it...

taraji is swagger on 100 thousand trillion

Pilot was filmed at the hotel I work at (pretty skyline view from a suite in that third photo above).

i hope they can step the music up a la nashville. so far i haven't heard anything that would build an empire.

gay brother has made videos nobody has seen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s5mcJpycuE

Haven't watched this yet. NPR writer has:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2015/01/07/375601954/empire-a-world-of-unbuttoned-shirts-and-dishy-music-stories

There's an interesting show in here somewhere, to be sure. But there's also a lot of ornamentation trying to hang hip-hop trappings on a pretty standard piece of television. That's not necessarily bad

"(Everyone in this show seems to know multiple people who have been shot, which is perhaps an intentional and valid narrative choice, but seems a little tossed-off at times for effect, mentioned at times it might not be mentioned in real life.)"

luv ya, NPR. stay real.

when i heard abt the whole 'leading character has ALS' part i was a little annoyed, like every lead character on a drama post-breaking bad has to having some kind of ticking doom clock. well, not *every* but i don't necessarily think it serves every or even any show as well as it served BB.

this sounds terrible

Timbaland handling the music will lead to some serious badness before long

it wasn't terrible. it was entertaining. the music was not as good as the music in nashville though.

the look and the feel is very 90's for some reason.

the highly expository commercials for this were so so corny i'm turned off to it forever

something about taraji's "DON'T FORGET ABOUT ME, ME, IT IS I, VIEWERS AT HOME, MY INTRODUCTION TO YOU (I'M THE EX-WIFE, THE EX-WIFE OF THE MAIN CHARACTER), I WANT HALF MY COMPANY BACK, THIS IS WHERE WE ARE"

just something about the way it was edited together that made me cringe

i will watch this. i really hate terrence howard's face, though. <3 <3 <3 taraji p.

also: malik yoba!

wait is this actually set in the present day? I had assumed it was set in the 90s

i think it's set in the present day.

(i have watched the pilot and am not 100% sure if i'm right tbh)

i enjoyed it. enjoyed gabby sidibe. enjoyed the gay son. feel like the eldest son's white wife is a little evil-er than she needs to be, but eh.

obama invites gangster king to the white house. that's really the only way you know it's not the 90's.

So I just got cast as an extra for the season finale.

So excited; I love this show.

Awesome. Congrats.

Thanks, man. It's supposed to be a concert scene with a big celebrity guest. It's been fun considering who that might be.

Drip... drop

That song was horrible, but it was plausibly horrible. I could definitely hear chart potential.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez0mB4zZPYA

Courtney Love tonight

gross

was this posted elsewhere? hooooooooooly sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet....

http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/terrence-howards-dangerous-mind-20150914?page=8

that is truly bonkers for the ages...

h/t the raggett...

wow

can't even attempt an armchair diagnosis on this one, wowee

"wow" is really the only appropriate response

the math mistake is pretty simple; he is confusing addition and multiplication because 2*2 = 2+2 and is extrapolating in the wrong direction

the rest of it, I'm not qualified to comment on

yeah the lack of understanding basic multiplication is a symptom, not even close to whatever the hell is actually going on here

random outbursts of violence, his hobby is transcribing great ideas using both hands on plastic shapes in a made-up language, I don't think "bad at math" is the message

my first thought was "schizophrenic" tbh but I am not qualified to diagnose anyone's mental disorder

I feel like the first question professionals ask is about a family history of mental health issues and uhhhhhh

new directions in idempotency

I often wonder if the stress of having to be someone else for money drives actors insane, and causes them to act out by developing larger-than-life personalities to represent "the real them." Or would Howard have become some kind of nutbag outsider artist, filling his house with weird polygonal sculptures, even if he wasn't famous?

it doesn't sound like his problem is getting paid lots of money to act

if anything that's probably why he isn't currently in jail

yeah i think he might be one of those rare cases where the old "if i wasn't doing this i'd probably be in jail or dead..." line actually applies.

because he has obviously paid his way out of a lot of trouble. which you can't really do if you are just a garden variety cuckoo bird.

regardless of his professional success I am going to make sure there is not even the possibility he might think I cut in line in front of him at the supermarket

the effort the author takes to make terence seem edgy and cool while semi-acknowledging that he's an obvious danger to those around him is pretty deplorable and astounding.

i mean how can you put this sentence

It goes on for almost 13 endless, weird, brain-frying minutes, with Howard keeping his cool throughout, both on the recording and in the present moment.

and this one

But at the moment, all he can do is glare at the laptop, leaning toward it, hissing, "You fucking bitch. Shut the fuck up! Shut the fuck up!"

in the same paragraph?

I remember being in the womb, found comfort there, and have been aware since that moment.

agreed completely, I'm kind of wondering if the editorial direction was "edgy puff piece" and the writer was more "holy shit, this guy has some issues" and the latter overrode the former, leaving an irresponsible thing that paints this guy as highly successful and diminishing the fact that something is not OK

i was curious what else the author has done and judging from his website i don't feel like giving him the benefit of the doubt

http://ehedegaard.com/

I love John Mayer. I think he’s probably one of the most genuine geniuses out there. Absolutely the real deal. The problem is, his mouth is always messing him up. He just can’t help it. He’s got to say what’s on his mind, he’s driven like that, and there’s no stopping him. I spent two days with him and all I had to do was sit there while he flapped his lips about “the Joshua Tree of vaginas” and the like. Every once in a while, I’d try to get a word in edgewise, but mostly it was to no avail: he’d just roll right over me with his verbiage and keep on going. At the end, I felt flattened, and it took me days and days to recover enough to write my story. It turned out okay and caused a big stink that was shortly overshadowed by more blab-blab by Mayer. Like I say, he can’t help himself.

*toilet flushing noise*

hope i'm wrong but i feel like howard's gonna join randy quaid in his bunker when his career finally peters out again for the last time

lol that is likewise the first comparable person I thought of here

I remember thinking something had to be off with this guy when he publicly announced how awesome it was to hug on Oprah's "tig old bitties" while shooting "The Butler".

what about the interview where he detailed how important anal hygiene is

i love that they were gonna try and get wesley snipes for empire before they ended up with copernicus there...

now i'm thinking martin lawrence would have been amazing in that role...

wesley ain't exactly a beacon of sanity or proper decisions himself (mostly financially speaking, though)

snipes' biggest reported crimes - nodding enthusiastically when some accountants told him a crazy way he might be able to avoid paying taxes, answering only to Blade while on-set - pale compared to howard's

welp, actually there's some rumors that he abused halle berry when they dated so nevermind

has DMX appeared on the show yet

[what about the interview where he detailed how important anal hygiene is

lol tbf this is not a dude I follow closely obviously

i never saw this. did anyone see it? craycray X 2...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5uedknXVq0

some motherfuckers w some dark secrets

that was one of those "if you want more than 10 episodes, you have to commit to making 100" shows like charlie sheen's anger management. considering anger management had to change female leads halfway through the run (they made 45 episodes a year) thanks to charlie, i can't even imagine what might have happened if that show had attempted a similar grind.

he showed off one of his things back in april:
http://twitter.com/terrencehoward/status/590687376902590464

he showed some at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore one time:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/museums/art-review-the-visionary-experience-at-american-visionary-art-museum-in-baltimore/2014/11/06/dcd1067c-6119-11e4-91f7-5d89b5e8c251_story.html

Among the surprises also is a familiar face: Terrence Howard (yes, that Terrence Howard). The Academy Award-nominated actor’s geometric constructions of acetate and glass aren’t showstoppers; they have a dated feel, halfway between op art and a kid’s science project about molecular structure. But give the guy a break. They were, after all, made in the mid-1980s, when he was still a teenager.

"yeah, high school," *sweat trickles down his forehead*, "silly kid's stuff. i'll probably throw them in the trash after this. i just thought i'd submit them to this art show as a goof."

tbh that looks cooler than I expected

"That poor boy," he says, fiercely protective of his actor. He then alludes to other actors who have been the subject of domestic abuse allegations in the past. "[Terrence] ain't done nothing different than Marlon Brando or Sean Penn, and all of a sudden he's some f—in' demon," says Daniels. "That's a sign of the time, of race, of where we are right now in America."

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/empires-batshit-crazy-behind-scenes-823518

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/09/22/sean-penn-lee-daniels-lawsuit

i do my best to handle how batshit it is on screen, trying to keep a backstory straight is too much for me. marisa tomei's facial expressions were otm and her clothes + cookie's + basically everyone on the show is good imo

the concert + gorilla thing was a good way to set the mood but ?!?

Courtney Love, omg

I've figured out at least 1 secret to Cookie's wardrobe -- take a few accents or elements and make them disproportionately large, like anime eyes but for necklaces and laced-up closures.

saw an episode of this for the first time the other night, mariah carey guest-starred. i don't know anything about this show except for the basic premise but i thought the episode was good! mariah was great