Empire
Genre Good
Drama
Musical
Stylish
Adult
SpectacleThe review
Empire is a glossy, gloriously over-the-top musical soap opera built on the Lyon family's fight for control of a hip-hop entertainment empire — a deliberate fusion of *King Lear* and prime-time Dynasty-style melodrama, with a soundtrack of original Timbaland-produced songs woven into nearly every episode. Its craft strengths were consistent and substantial: a magnetic, menacing lead turn from Terrence Howard as the patriarch, and above all Taraji P. Henson's Cookie Lyon, a performance critics almost universally hailed as the show's beating heart and one of the great TV characters of the decade. The music was genuinely catchy enough to top the Billboard 200, and the show's visual opulence — fur, diamonds, concert spectacles — gave network TV a theatrical grandeur it rarely attempts.
The style was excess by design, and that is both the charm and the ceiling. Critics consistently described the plotting as glutted and breathless — a relentless pile-up of betrayals, murders, paternity shocks, and cliffhangers that occasionally tipped from delicious into outright ridiculousness, with several reviewers noting it was derivative soap opera elevated by sheer confidence and star power. A recurring complaint was pacing: seasons packed so many twists that character development could feel sacrificed to the next shock. Most disputes about the show were not over whether the flaws existed, but whether the excess was thrilling or exhausting — and the honest consensus is that the first two seasons were the peak, with the back half of the run sagging badly.
Thematically, Empire was unapologetically confrontational, tackling homophobia within the Black community, racism, mass incarceration, police brutality, and mental illness head-on, sometimes weaving real-world racial-justice imagery directly into its fiction. Critics split on whether this was bold and necessary or opportunistic issue-dropping, but few denied its cultural significance: it was a Black-led broadcast hit of a kind network TV had largely stopped making, and its first-season ratings growth — up every single week — was a genuine broadcast phenomenon. The show's ending, truncated by the COVID-19 pandemic, was widely regarded as unsatisfying and unintended, closing the run without the finale its creators had planned.
Seasons
- Season 1
Season 1 (2015, 12 episodes): A midseason debut that became a genuine ratings phenomenon, growing its audience every single week and finishing as the highest-rated new drama on broadcast television. Its defining elements arrived fully formed: Cookie Lyon as an instant icon, a Central father-son story about acceptance, and an original soundtrack that became the first TV-series music collection in decades to top the Billboard 200.
- Season 2
Season 2 (2015–16, 18 episodes): Expanded the canvas with high-profile guest stars and an even more opulent, confrontational tone — opening with a protest-concert sequence that deliberately echoed real-world racial-justice demonstrations. Critics called it bigger and bolder than the first season, while a few noted the show was now straining at the seams with plot. Cookie's awards sweep, including the Golden Globe, cemented the performance as the show's centerpiece.
- Season 3
Season 3 (2016–17, 18 episodes): The ratings began sliding from the historic peak as the family saga moved to Las Vegas and faced fresh broadcast competition. The season took darker, more violent turns and served as the launch pad for Lee Daniels' spinoff *Star* in the wake of its fall finale.
- Season 4
Season 4 (2017–18, 18 episodes): A transitional year that featured a crossover with *Star* and concluded with a finale critics described as an hour of almost nothing but big moments — a reset-flavored episode that cleared the decks for the show's final stretch. New producer Brett Mahoney began steering the series toward a leaner approach.
- Season 5
Season 5 (2018–19, 18 episodes): Brett Mahoney formally took over as showrunner, but the season was overshadowed off-screen by the real-world scandal involving Jussie Smollett, which led to the actor being written out and a significant ratings collapse. On screen, the show attempted a reinvention following the previous finale's upheaval, with mixed results.
- Season 6
Season 6 (2019–20, 18 of a planned 20 episodes): The final season ran at series-low ratings and was truncated by the COVID-19 production shutdown. The April 2020 episode that became the de facto series finale aired without the intended ending, with the creators saying they were heartbroken not to shoot the conclusion they'd planned and hoping to one day return to it. It was an unsatisfying farewell to a show that began as a broadcast phenomenon.
Who it's for
This is squarely aimed at viewers who love juicy, glamorous prime-time soaps — the Dynasty/Flintstones school of maximum melodrama, gorgeous people, and escalating betrayals. It's also a strong fit for fans of musical television in the Glee vein who want original hip-hop and R&B woven into the drama rather than cover versions. Anyone hungry for a Black-led broadcast drama that unapologetically centers race, class, sexuality, and the music industry will find a lot to love, as will Taraji P. Henson fans — her Cookie alone justifies the watch for many.
Who it's not for
Viewers who need realism, grounded character logic, or subtlety will bounce off hard: the show is allergic to restraint and will happily burn a dozen plot twists in a single episode. Prestige-drama purists who found the tone exhausting rather than exhilarating are the show's natural detractors. People who dislike tonal whiplash — one scene addressing police brutality, the next staging an absurdist music-industry power play — should also steer clear. And viewers who want a satisfying, self-contained ending should know going in that the series was cut short by the pandemic and does not conclude the way its makers intended. — Moderate violence (murder, shootings, physical confrontations) · Sexual content (affairs, seduction, implied intimacy) · Substance use (alcohol, drug references within the music-industry setting) · Homophobia themes (depicted and confronted as a central subject) · Coarse language
Birds of a feather...
- TVScandal (2012)
Shared high-stakes melodrama about power, race, and family, with a Black protagonist wielding influence in a corrupt world. Both use glossy, fast-paced storytelling and larger-than-life performances to explore how ambition corrodes loyalty.
88% - TVSuccession (2018)
Both are dynastic family-power operas where paternal approval is the currency and siblings use the family business to wage psychological war; Succession trades hip-hop for media but shares Empire's brutal vision of love and ambition as inseparable, and its taste for high-stakes betrayal.
85% - TVPeaky Blinders (2013)
Both are stylized music-driven sagas about a family building an empire, with a magnetic patriarch whose ambitions are haunted by trauma; Empire's maximalist spectacle and Peaky's cinematic swagger both turn business success into a mythic, bloody family inheritance.
80% - TVThe Sopranos (1999)
Both are family-and-enterprise dramas about fathers and children locked in a cycle of power, secrecy, and emotional violence; Empire's music label and Sopranos' crime family both expose how work and family contaminate each other, with no clean exits.
78% - TVTransparent (2014)
Both center on a patriarchal secret that cracks a family open, using queerness and Jewish/Black identity as inescapable inheritance; Empire and Transparent share a volatile tonal mix of melodrama, music, and social critique, treating identity as something passed down, hidden, and fought over.
75% - TVAmerican Horror Story (2011)
Empire matches AHS's signature blend of high-camp melodrama, social commentary, and maximalist spectacle. Both are built on families at war, flamboyant performance, and a fearless (if messy) engagement with race, queerness, and institutional power. The show's 'trashy and landmark' duality is essentially the same dynamic that defines AHS at its most vital.
72% - TVGame of Thrones (2011)
Both are sprawling, serialized dynastic conflicts where every family bond is tested by ambition and betrayal; Empire applies Game of Thrones' crown-and-poison logic to a hip-hop kingdom, complete with shocking power shifts and an appetite for operatic chaos.
70% - TVOrange Is the New Black (2013)
Both use an institutional crucible, prison or the music industry, to examine race, class, sexuality, and the criminalization of Black and Brown lives; they share a tonal whiplash that swings from absurdist comedy to raw, systemic grief.
65% - TVMiami Vice (1984)
Both are music-video-influenced dramas where glamour is inseparable from corruption; Empire's hip-hop opulence and Miami Vice's pastel neon both critique the commerce of drugs, art, and identity while indulging in the spectacle.
60% - TVThis Is Us (2016)
Both are serialized, tear-laden family melodramas built on generational trauma, hidden parentage, and the long shadow of a charismatic parent; Empire's music-industry setting gives it a sharper edge, but the emotional machinery of grief, identity, and memory is strikingly similar.
55% - TVRome (2005)
Both are dynastic power struggles in which family loyalty and political/artistic ambition are transactional and theatrical; Rome's republic-to-empire plotting and Empire's label throne both show how power is won and kept through spectacle, patronage, and ruthlessness.
55% - TVL.A. Law (1986)
Both are glossy prime-time soaps that pair professional glamour with timely social commentary on race, sexuality, and money; Empire modernizes L.A. Law's case-of-the-week moral dilemmas into serialized music-industry power plays.
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