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The “Empire” mid-season finale employs yet another bisexual twist

Last week on Empire, Jamal kissed a woman: Skye Summers, a pop star played by real life pop star Alicia Keys,

On last night’s mid-season finale, Skye seemed really excited about her new man friend. Jamal is nervous, although he says it has to do with the American Sound Award nominations and performance they have that day.

Jamal wants to talk about what happened between them, but Lucious slithers in and overhears Skye calling his son “babe.”

Skye leaves the two alone, and Lucious is overjoyed his gay son might be less gay. “Are you hitting that?” he asks. A hopeless romantic.

“I’m still gay, alright?” Jamal says. “So don’t get weird.”

“She fixed you?” Lucious is tearing up, thrilled with himself because anything that goes right for him is obviously his own doing. He’s also completely ignoring the idea of bisexuality, which extends throughout the rest of the episode. Men can’t be bi, but the women on this show sure can, especially in a SURPRISING TWIST! More on that later.

But speaking of, lesbian billionaire cancer survivor Mimi is up to no good (again), recording Lucious’s shit talking the board on a secret device hidden in a pen. It’s not obvious at all.

Mimi has a lot of money and free time so why wouldn’t she try and take Lucious down from the inside? That’s what she meant when she said she was going to have fun with the rest of her life now that she’s out of remission. Other people run marathons or write insightful books or create wine made from weed, but Mimi prefers to spend her time with Lucious Lyon before trying to ruin his life.

“Is you is or is you ain’t my Mimi?” Lucious asks, sensing her disillusion with his plans for Empire. “Because I always thought we saw the world the same way, darling.”

Sadly, they do, which is why Mimi is a backstabbing and conniving womanizer. But suddenly, she has a wife, and that wife has flown in from Milan to be with her. Lucious is sad this means they won’t have any more “private celebratory parties,” thanks to the old ball and chain. Mimi mentions she has to leave town anyway. She has some follow-up treatments in Rancho Mirage, probably at a resort and not a hospital.

At an ASA event, Tiana is singing another song about a boy wanting her and making his move. Her relationships with women have been completely non-existent this season and the show really has no idea what to do with her if she’s not sleeping with Hakeem.

Skye and Jamal take the stage next, and they perform their song “Powerful,” which is followed by a Q&A with Charlamagne of Guy Code fame. He asks really weird questions like, “Skye, what up, though? You black now?” and “Jamal, you gay right?” Skye says, “I identify as me.” Jamal is over labels and boxes, a true Millennial. “It doesn’t have to be like that!”

Back at Empire, Skye’s manager Judith is not pleased about what transpired. People are photoshopping Skye to look like Rachel Dolzeal.

Lucious is condescending to both women, telling Judith to settle down and calling Skye “Sweetie.”

Later that day, Jamal is premiering his Pepsi commercial with the man who is spending the rest of his life dedicating his time to LGBT artists. He brings Jamal to the stage and is like “Here he is, the gayest gay. So proud of him for the gay he’s exuding all over the gay land. Gay.”

Lucious smirks in the crowd, and later makes sure the man who loves LGBT artists knows Jamal has a girlfriend now. This is apparently horrifying, despite the letter B being a part of the acronym for a reason. Jamal can’t be bisexual, can he?! Technically, he is. Whatever transpired between Jamal and Skye was “beautiful,” they acknowledge, but Sky says she knows he can never care for her like he could Michael. She knows because she saw Jamal talking to another guy and so clearly he wanted to fuck him. “You couldn’t possibly love a woman like you love a man,” Skye says.

So despite their shared moment (did it go beyond a kiss? Sounds like it, but they don’t go into detail), it seems Jamal identifies as gay (based on what he told his father earlier in the episode), like Mimi identifies as a lesbian, despite being totally willing to have a threesome with Lucious. Whether they are motivated by a musical connection that turns into a meaningful moment (Skye/Jamal) or the same interest in a willing woman (Mimi/Lucious), the shock and awe part of these reveals are really uncouth ways to get people invested in this show again. In Season 1, it was Tiana’s having a secret girlfriend, India, that surprised us when she was dating Hakeem. And this is, of course, not the only BIG BISEXUAL REVEAL we have coming. Just wait.

Cookie is bummed that her cookout isn’t happening any more (the man we knew was no good turned out to be no good), but she is trying to get her spirits up to take Hakeem and Laura to perform at the prison she used to live in. Inside she sees an old friend, Spider, who asks if Porsha is “Wifey.” Even though Porsha protests that she is strictly dickly, I loved that Spider would assume Cookie would have a wifey at all. Perhaps indicating there was a little bit of a LURD situation while she was doing her time? Cookie tells Porsha she needs to learn how to take a compliment; it is indeed a compliment to be thought worthy of Cookie Lyon.

Spider hopes Cookie is bringing in her singer Veronica (“Her fine bald ass!”) but will be disappointed when she sees it’s Hakeem. Meanwhile, Cookie is looking for Jezzy (aka Da Brat), who she promised to sign as soon as she was released. But Spider shares the bad news: Jezzy is in for life after taking out her bunkmate over some dyke drama toothpaste. Later, Jezzy tells Cookie she didn’t do it and scolds her for wanting to free Lucious instead of help incarcerated women. “What about us women, Cookie? The one you ate with; lived with.”

At yet another ASA event and the longest day in recent history, Lucious takes the stage to introduce his “business partner in crime, Mimi Whiteman.” Mimi comes to the stage and maniacally laughs into the microphone before saying that she wants to bring up someone that is “very important to her.” Someone that is her “reason to live”; her “be all, end all.” That woman is Naomi Campbell, perfectly cast as Camilla, the woman who both turns people on and terrifies them at the same time.

And then we were all Lucious.

Camilla stops by to visit Hakeem, who notices her wedding ring almost right away. “It’s not what it looks like,” she says, confirming that her marriage to Mimi has been motivated by something other than love. MARRIAGE EQUALITY. LOVE WINS!

“Everything I did, I did for you; for us. You have to trust and believe me,” Camilla says. Yet another woman on this show who will use bisexuality to get ahead. (Speaking of Boo Boo Kitty, she’s just gone off the deep end and probably killed Rhonda.)

Hakeem eventually finds out that Camilla is married to Mimi, but it doesn’t seem to phase him. PHEW! It’s only MIMI! Not, like, a dude or anything. So when Mimi calls for the board to meet and plays the recording she made on her pen, the members ready for a vote to oust Lucious. When they reconvene, Hakeem fills in as Cookie’s proxy and the final AYE or NAY is up to him. He sees Camilla through the window.

Blinded by love and lust, Hakeem votes his father out and Mimi, the new head of Empire, immediately names her wife the new boss. In the hall, Cookie takes one look at Mimi and spits in her face.

There are so many questions unanswered about Camilla and Mimi’s relationship, like if they’d planned this all along; were they ever really in love, or at least, is Mimi truly in love with Camilla? Because if not, the sad truth is that the writers on Empire only allow women to explore a lesbian and bisexual identity if it exudes some kind of shock value. Jamal’s relationship with Michael was treated with respect, even with their trust issues and ultimate demise, but Tiana, Mimi, Camilla, Anika-their sexuality is used in a different way and taken much less seriously. For Jamal, bisexuality cannot exist-the show hammers in that he is a gay man, regardless of what happened with Skye. But the women are all fluid-so fluid that they will have a serious girlfriend but date Hakeem on the side, or marry a woman so that they can be with Hakeem, or have sex with Lucious because they think the same girl is sexy (ultimately in a ploy, we can see now, to become closer to him and his position of power), or sleep with Mimi to secure a business deal.

Empire is, unquestionably, a soap with hyper-dramatic elements and larger amounts of queer themes and characters than ever before seen on network television, to be sure. But its lack of esteem for most of its women characters and their sexual identities as opposed to their male counterparts is frustrating and offensive. Even though Lucious is (arguably) the worst human on the show, we’re expected to root for him over Mimi and Camilla, the ruthless couple who will do just about anything to get what they want. I would take way less issue with that being a storyline should the show have any kind of Jamal-esque lesbian or bisexual female character to level it out. Because right now, it is severely unbalanced and the take away from the show is never trust a woman-she’s probably evil and a promiscuous bisexual, to boot.

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