Empire

Stopped watching after season 2.

Taraji P Henson and Terrence Howard are amazing leads and excel in the right episodes of this series. This musical production is top notch but the narrative weakens over certain stretches leading us through a series of events wherein which we never feel like the Lyons are never going to lose. This is a show where the main characters get knocked down but they always rise up again and that certainly hurts the narrative flow of a show so bent on capturing the realism of the rap game.

(Re-review partway into season 2:) Knocking twelve points off my first review, and sadly, I think I'm out, unless I hear later on it got way better than it is right now. Just too much endlessly circular family melodrama and so-so hip-hop music. I still like the central characters (particularly Taraji P. Henson as Cookie and Jussie Smollett as Jamal), but removed from season 1's faster pacing, I see many more holes in it than I did earlier this year.