My Review of Empire's 4x14: "False Face"

Written by Diane Ademu-John & Janeika James & Jasheika James
Directed by Millicent Shelton

Cookie (to Lucious): "We gon get rid of Eddie together."

Well, this episode certainly tried it's best to undo a problem such as Eddie Barker with Lucious going it alone at first and then letting Cookie help and while both attempts were pretty decent, it's no wonder that Eddie was still hard to beat.

The first attempt with getting Eddie's ex-wives - Monique, Celeste and Giselle all in the same room to stop him from wooing Edna was a nice ploy. Then there was Lucious getting to Shyne first before Eddie could get the latter to turn on Lucious, which was also a nice ploy. The third attempt saw Cookie do some digging into Eddie's mentoring and unveiling his penchant for feeding his stars their addiction and that should've been the killer blow to him. Except it wasn't.

Nope, instead the episode ended with Eddie throwing his lot in with Anika with the promise of her becoming CEO if they succeed in ousting the Lyons from Empire for good. The last four episodes have been great with Anika not factoring into things and this latest team up just seems to cement the fact that the show has no idea what to do with Anika other than have her scheme against the Lyons.

Although this season won't do it, it'd be nice if we actually lost Anika by the finale but we won't. Eddie on the other hand is on borrowed time, which makes this team up with Anika even more pointless to watch. Also despite her protests, Anika probably will be Mrs Barker 4 before the season ends as well. Assuming anyone cares, which I certainly don't.

As for the rest of the episode, Cookie had some great moments here. Whether it was communicating with Lucious on how to deal with Eddie or taking Tiana down a few pegs (which was certainly needed), Cookie truly delivered on the smack downs with this episode. However her best moment was reaching out to Poundcake's daughter, Maya even if she wasn't successful in getting the latter to see her dying mother though.

We also got some more prison flashbacks, only this time it was with Cookie getting a visit from her estranged mother, Renee. We got some great acting from both Taraji P. Henson and Alfre Woodard in those scenes and the best part is that next week's trailer showed us that we'll be seeing Renee in the present day. I'm not surprise Renee doesn't like Lucious though.

- Jamal castigated Tory for her drug use while at the same time, the two of them roped in Preacher Azal to help with their music while Hakeem hooked up with Tiana and Andre organised an event for Hakeem.
- Now that Anika has crawled out of the woodwork, can we see Warren as well again?
- Standout music: Tiana's Sweat and Preacher Azal's Handle The Heat. Also a good use of En Vogue's Don't Let Go and Ol Dirty Bastard/Kelis's Got Yo Money.
- Chronology: Not long from where Of Hardiness Is Mother left off.

False Face made some strides in trying (if also failing) to take Eddie out of the equation and there certainly wasn't a lack of trying on Lucious's part there. The prison flashbacks were great as were most of the other subplots but I do not care for Anika being brought back into the mix.

Rating: 8 out of 10