‘Empire’ Season 5, Episode 12 ‘Shift and Save Yourself’ Recap: Don’t Cross Paths With Damian Cross

It’s been a good week for Jussie Smollett, as charges against him by the Chicago PD were dropped. But this relatively good news did not translate well for tonight’s episode of Empire, titled “Shift and Save Yourself.” It was a bit… mundane, at the very least. For some reason, FOX playing it safe by keeping Smollett on the show pre-case drop somehow made the episode’s quality tank a bit. Despite that, though, it still set up major shifts in the narrative and gave us a few more clues as to who that mysterious Lyon in the casket is.

“Shift and Save Yourself” gives us five subplots to follow. We’ve got Cookie (Taraji P. Henson) being offered a career in Hollywood (all thanks to her compelling Instagram stories). Jamal (Smollett) is trying his best to have Treasure (Katlynn Simone) and Tiana (Serayah McNeill) to work together. Lucious (Terrence Howard), Cookie, and Giselle (Nicole Ari Parker) are pitted against each other as they plan to organize a tour for the Empire and Lyon Family Management artists. Meanwhile, Andre (Trai Byers) struggles to get a grip on reality when a disturbing medical issue disrupts the perfect flow of his life. And then we’ve got poor Thirsty (Andre Royo) being pressured by the FBI to give up information about Lucious and Damon Cross (Wood Harris). Apparently, Thirsty is caught up in a complicated mess between the two future enemies.

Desperate Times, Desperate Measures

Empire is back in the hands of the Lyon family, but it comes with so much debt and problems. At breakfast, Cookie tells her sister Carol (Tasha Smith) and Lucious about an agent calling her up for a meeting. She’s a big shot talent manager, but Cookie wants to test the waters with her first.

The workday begins at Empire with Jamal directing Hakeem’s (Bryshere Gray) comeback music video. It’s flashy and all, but the dance routine’s a little bit off. Maya (Rhyon Nicole Brown), who’s desperate do something of value in Empire, offers to choreograph. This impressed Jamal and his parents when he showed them a draft of the video.

That’s when Jamal proposes a comeback project—since this is Hakeem’s first gig after laying low for two years, Jamal thinks that it’s best to put him back on the spotlight through a nationwide tour with him. Lucious and Cookie think it’s a great idea, but Giselle sees the cost of it all and grows concerned over how Empire would cover it. Cookie tries to talks some sense into her, but Giselle believes the risk is too high especially when Cookie plans to have both Empire and LFM artists in the tour. That’s when Giselle pulls her power card—Kelly Patel (Pej Vahdat).

Later, Cookie meets with Christina Ayoud (Sayjal Joshi), the talent manager. Christina loves how Cookie resonates with people through her Instagram Stories. She then offers Cookie a spot in The View to fill in for Whoopi Goldberg’s absence. It all sounds very promising, and it’s something that obviously piques Cookie’s interest.

Kelly arrives to deliberate the plan with Giselle, Lucious, and Cookie. When they couldn’t seem to agree on anything, Andre barges in, angrily screaming about how Empire fails to gain their consumers’ trust because of the dissent within the company’s inner circle. Of course, this screaming fit shuts everyone up, including Lucious and Kelly.

During Treasure and Tiana’s recording session, Lucious has a realization about the tour. He hurries over to Kelly and proposes making the tour free for anyone. Giselle, surprisingly, sees the silver lining in Lucious’ plan—it’s an bold way to gain the trust of their fans back. The more people show up for the tour, the higher likelihood of album sales soaring back up. The costs will be covered exponentially.

Giselle, Lucious, and Cookie then announce the tour to their artists, ensuring that they would still get paid even though it’s free. Meanwhile, Jamal’s admiration for Maya’s talent finally rubs off on her as Jamal tells her to choreograph for the entire tour.

Finding the Needle in the Haystack

Thirsty is brought in for questioning by District Attorney Meghan Conway (Alicia Coppola). She wants to nail both Lucious and Damon down so she could get that promotion that she’d always wanted. Well, everyone has an ulterior motive, after all. Conway threatens to come after Thirsty if he doesn’t give what he knows.

Reluctantly, Thirsty shares his history with Damon. A year ago, when Empire fell out of Lucious’ hands, Thirsty had to be let go from his service as Lyons’ attorney. Coincidentally, Damon was already eyeing Cookie during this time. So he approaches Thirsty and offers him to be his attorney, Vera (Liza Lapira), Thirsty’s girlfriend, grows concerned over Thirsty working with Damon. Fast forward to when Thirsty sees Damon’s ruthlessness first hand. They were dealing with a shady transaction when Damon lost his cool and killed the guy they were wiring money from.

A few months later, it’s revealed that it was Thirsty who arranged for Damon to be in the poker game with Lucious. When Damon lost, Thirsty gave him the painting that Lucious had to sell to get into the poker game. Now, Lucious thinks that someone else bought the painting when he wanted to buy it back. But in truth, Thirsty had to give it to Damon because he was mad that he lost in the poker game.

Thirsty twisted the story to Conway, though. He made it look like it was Lucious who sold the painting to Damon after the latter “cleaned” Lucious out during the poker game. Seeing how Thirsty is only a middle man, Conway loses interest and lets him go—for now.

Later, Thirsty meets with Damon, who has Vera at gunpoint. Damon knows that the feds went to talk Thirsty into giving him up. But we all know his motive here—he hired Thirsty so he could get closer to Cookie.

The Lyon Brothers Deal with Squabbles and Life-or-Death Problems

Jamal side of the story still involves trying to get Tiana and Treasure to work together. Their first session goes south as neither of them refuses to lower their attitude. Frustrated, Jamal sits down with the two and find the common ground—they are both black women artists who have been under a patriarchal form of treatment. Jamal encourages them to take it from that commonality and stand up to be the independent, powerful women that they are. It turns out that that pep talk was the only thing the two needed to end their feud.

Meanwhile, Andre gets the bad news from his doctor—he’s dying of Lymphoma Cancer stage 4. And because he only has a few months left, he wants Teri (Meta Golding) to sign his last will so they can have a better future. But Teri refuses, she wants to fight this with Andre and help him accept that there is still hope in the broken.

‘Empire: Shift and Save Yourself’ Overall Verdict

As mentioned, there’s something about tonight’s episode that makes it one of the lowest in Empire‘s five-season run so far. For one, the logic behind Cookie and Lucious decisions are all based on the “we-built-this-company-as-a-family-so-deal-with-it” argument; which honestly doesn’t work anymore, given where the show is right now. Sure, the Lyons are back to claim what’s theirs, but all practical judgment was thrown out the window tonight. It used to work before, but not anymore. It felt as if there was a missing aspect to “Shift and Save Yourself,” and I can’t seem to point out what it is exactly.

We still have a long way to go before the season finale (not to mention how the showrunners would treat the good news from Smollett’s case), but it already feels as if the show is on a downhill path.

I surely hope not.

Empire continues next Wednesday, April 3rd, with “Hot Blood, Hot Thoughts, Hot Deeds” at 8/7c on FOX.