My Review of Empire's 3x15: "Civil Hands Unclean"

Written by Ilene Chaiken & Carlito Rodriguez
Directed by Howard Deutch

Jamal (to Lucious/Cookie): "I want for the Lyon family to work together."

And with this episode, that was exactly what was beginning to happen to be honest. We had Cookie working with Andre and Shyne to make Lucious's Las Vegas gig beneficial to them, Jamal and Lucious actually agreeing to work together for both their respective albums and even Jamal managed to get the DuBois clan off their backs.

Then everything went to hell as a lovely Lyon family and it was to my utter shock, actually a nice meal turned into a carnage fest when child services came in and took poor Bella off everyone. It was certainly a way to end the episode and the blame looking like it's going to be on Angelo, I have a feeling the reason why Bella was taken will be a lot closer to home though.

Of course the timing of this storyline is perfect from a dramatic standpoint. Hakeem's overly saccharine but well meaning live stream was enough to prompt Lucious into having his son's name on Bella's birth certificate while Lucious also granted Anika a divorce and 25 million dollars to boot. Much as I do loathe Anika, even I felt bad for her towards the end of this episode.

Needless to say, the Lyons will get Bella back but as Cookie pointed out in the preview for the next episode, it's going to require them working together. This episode showed that the Lyons are actually capable of doing that, especially when it came to Angelo and his mother trying to make things hard for the gang prior to Jamal stepping in.

As for the rest of the episode, well they did seem to be setting up future stuff with Cookie and Lucious. Cookie wasn't pleased when she realised that Lucious was seeing Giuliana and she did come close to telling him that she broke up with Angelo because of her feelings for him. I did like that Cookie tried to make things right with Angelo, even if he was being a total prat within the episode itself.

- Tiana and Tory are having a casual sex thing going on, which Hakeem doesn't seem too bothered by. I did call it from last week though.
- I did laugh at Leah's reaction to Anika being served divorce papers and now Thirsty gets to attend family dinners, which is oddly sweet.
- Standout music: Hakeem's Elevate was the standout this week.
- Chronology: Not long from the previous episode.

Civil Hands Unclean was a brilliant episode, especially in the last quarter. I loved the family meal and the last scene was an appropriate shocker. Definitely looking forward to the final three even more now.

Rating: 8 out of 10