Fox's "Empire" is Bigot Bait

I recently had the opportunity to binge the first 3 episodes of Empire, the Fox network prime time drama about black entertainment mogul Lucius Lyon (Terrence Howard) and his dysfunctional family.  The show is lushly produced (it is obvious that significant money has been spent.)  However, shortly after the viewing stopped and the thinking started, I began to cogitate on the characters and their stereotypes.  The characters, I don't care how well-meaning or well-written, are complete stereotypes from top to bottom.  From the tortured patriarch/CEO with an as-yet unnamed disease who also happens to be a complete asshole to everyone around him, complete with his killing an long-time family friend to the cop with the doggedness to return to a nearly incoherent homeless guy who witnessed the killing and the first face he showed the homeless guy (who he bought beer for to gain his confidence) was the patriarch/CEO.  We the audience are in the know, but how could he?

The family members are no less out of central casting's bin of obvious characters.  The matriarch, Cookie Lyon (Taraji P. Henderson) spent 15 years in prison and is now out to "get what she's owed" and acts like the most broadly brushed Key & Peele character, yelling, scheming, interrupting high-powered meetings and even throwing a shoe.

The sons are equally ill-served - the eldest, Andre Lion (Trai Byers) is college educated, smooth, womanizing and married to a white woman, Rhonda Lyon (Kaitlin Doubleday); the middle child, Jamal Lyon (Jussie Smollet) is gay (which displeases Lucius greatly) and as a child played dress-up with mommy's clothes, his partner, Michael Sanchez (Rafael de la Fuente) is latino. Jamal sings sensitive ballads John Legend-style.  The youngest, Hakeem Lyon (Bryshere Y. Gray) is a charicature rap artist who behaves badly in public, mostly failing to live up to his potential, yet he keeps badgering his father for more.

Supporting characters, from Lucius' secretary Becky (Gabourey Sidibe), who fawns over the gay brother (at his concerts anyway) to Cookie's sister/aide who's along for the ride and also maintains her ghetto attitude and dress despite the new surroundings of wealth.
The only character that, as yet, remains uniquely unique is Puna (Cuba Gooding Jr.).  He lives on a horse farm, and does not desire the spotlight.  He's the definitve cameo/minor character, appearing only once so far for about 3 minutes. (IMDB indicates he will not be showing up again this season.)
The shame is that this cast deserves better.  Terrence Howard, Taraji P. Henderson, Malik Yoba (Vernon Turner, Lucius' chief  of staff) and the others have demonstrated time and again that they can perform any character they've been called upon (although, honestly, Yoba's pretty well cast here as an infrequently seen upper-level advisor to Anderson) from Howard's turn opposite Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark to Henderson's now-defunct role on Person of Interest to Sidibe's hotel maid in Tower Heist.

Even if the setting of urban record label remained at the core of this show, a few changes might have eminently improved the whole enterprise, and lifted it from its cavalcade of stereotypes.  Make Lucius gay, Cookie "classier," and at least one of the sons should be trying to be something important outside the music industry - maybe an artist (the kind that paints) being badgered to contribute album covers, when he'd rather be doing mixed media or something.  Anderson shouldn't have straight-up killed a family friend in episode 1 and the oldest son's beloved could be a black nationalist social worker, distressed about the impact of some of the label's artists on the youth she works with.  Changes on this level would result in plenty of conflict, without resorting to crude stereotypes.

As beautifully shot, well designed and excellently acted as Empire is, the sheer magnitude of the stereotypes is just astounding.  I trust the producers and all the others involved in this production have, as a goal, story-telling of the highest quality.  While they certainly succeeded at that, the results are not so innocent as all that.  Unless the characters became welfare queens and abusive drug dealers, a Grand Wizard could not paint more unlikable and stereotypical characters with such a broad brush.  Melvin Van Peebles, Gordon Parks, Spike Lee and John Singleton made careers out of creating sympathetic, diverse and creative black characters.  "Empire" sets their efforts back several decades.  I can only hope that the rest of the series corrects this trend. From writer/director Lee Daniels, the creative force behind The Butler and Precious, I can only hope for this.