I get it. This does not fit into the majority demographic on this board.

I have no use for Tyler Perry, Kevin Hart, Ruby Rhod et. al.

In fact, I had totally ignored this show until I read this review by Grantland's Wesley Morris:

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prosp...evision-drama/

Anyway, I watched the first three of the thirteen, first season, one hour episodes on Time Warner Cable prime time VOD - Fox. I was entertained. Very accessible so far with little memorization required.

The show's really messy, but it was definitely one of the most purely entertaining shows on this season.

I started watching it over the weekend and have been pretty entertained by it so far.

First episode looks like a terrible soap so far

It's a soap for sure, but it's good at what it wants to do. Certainly much better than something like Nashville, for example.

I watched a bit of Nashville and don't remember the writing to be that bad. Tell me it get better after first episode because the "pirates are killing artist" "omg rappers can't be gay" and awful acting made it thought to watch for me

The show excels at building dramatic tension. In my opinion, the show drastically improves probably about 3 or 4 episodes in (they really hone the look in that time to what it becomes). It becomes one of the most entertaining shows on TV by about mid way through, and the finale was kind of a mess where they threw in a ridiculous amount of material to cover in a very short amount of time (I counted 24 major story beats in 44 minutes).

Keep in mind, this is not an elite drama, nor does it pretend to be. It's modeled in the idea of a show like Dallas from the late 70s/early 80s. But, they don't have the writers to keep the rambling wreck of a show in check. So, you'll see goofy stuff like random plot lines added and dropped like they never existed, and some kind of strange editing. But the dramatic tension, Taraji, Trai Byers, and ultimately Terrence Howard whose performance is kind of all over the map in the show are what makes it work. The music also gets a lot better as the show progresses, and the show only becomes about 20 percent cheesy by then (the finale felt more like the Pilot than the previous episodes, though). It's also great that it's timely, and is mining an issue that has been a big deal for many years in hip hop music (though the character is really an R&B artist who writes the music for some of the hip hop songs). It's challenging what people think (in a way that could actually change that industry, as the rampant homophobia has been due to fears of people not buying the music), and it ultimately gets there with what it's trying to accomplish.

It's no joke that the show's a mess and sometimes cheesy, but there are a lot of good things about it, and it had an extremely high entertainment value pretty much from episode 3 on. Even the too much to handle in 44 minutes finale had that going for it.

One last interesting note is that the Empire soundtrack album debuted at number 1 on the Billboard Top 200 last week. That's an impact. Its DVR numbers were astronomical, as well, and it grew its audience week to week almost the entire first season, with a huge number for the last hour of the finale.

The writing is always bad. The acting if bad in most cases. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed it as my ****ty popcorn show. Turn off your brain and it is a hell of a ride.

Exactly this. I really enjoyed this but not a very complex show...