Member Since: 1/20/2012
Posts: 27,830
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Empire critique - is it true?
Empire has its pedal to the metal and its wheels stuck in the mud
What we tweet about when we tweet about #Empire
Quote:
When Empire is good, why is it good? When it’s bad, what makes it so? The challenge in comparatively evaluating Empire’s second season against its first is trying to pinpoint why the show blew up in the first place. Despite roughly a thousand think pieces since the first season concluded, there has yet to be a precise theory about Empire’s success, but the process is ongoing. Whether it’s a comment thread or a critic’s roundtable, conversations about Empire tend towards figuring out what the show is doing rather than how well the show is doing it. That’s why an unshakeable malaise is setting in just three episodes into season two. Everyone is trying to figure out if they still like the show without ever having fully untangled why they liked it to begin with.
The broad explanation is that people love Empire for the “spectacle,” a word that comes up often in discussions about the show. It’s not an unfair description. There’s no more fitting word for a television episode like “Out, Damned Spot,” in which Cookie attends a Lyon family dinner to celebrate his engagement to Anika, only to fling open her purple fur coat revealing the immodest lingerie underneath. Obviously a show can’t sustain that type of high drama from scene to scene, but the deeper issue is the way that, in a show fueled by spectacle, anything that doesn’t rise to that description seems inept. It’s the same issue faced by pop culture awards shows, which also measure their success on social media saturation. At the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, Miley Cyrus grinded against Robin Thicke’s crotch until tiny wisps of smoke appeared. As for what happened the following year, who can even recall?
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More at the source
An interesting read tbh. I still think the show could go either way, but it does feel like it's already on the decline to me.
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