CHICAGO — To celebrate the 100th episode of “Chicago Med,” series co-creator and executive producer Dick Wolf visited Chicago in January and helped the cast cut a red velvet cake shaped like a human body on a gurney.
The 100th episode of “Empire,” also filmed in Chicago, is scheduled to air at 9 p.m. Eastern Tuesday — but plans for a celebration were scrapped because of the coronavirus pandemic. A Fox network spokesman said a “large party” for the 100th episode and the series wrap was supposed to take place the third weekend in March.
Not only was there not a party, but the sixth and final season of “Empire” was cut short amid the outbreak. The series finale is now set to air April 21.
It’s a quiet end for “Empire,” once seen as a pop culture phenom. The hip-hop drama, which stars Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson, was losing viewers even before cast member Jussie Smollett was accused of faking a hate crime against himself in Chicago in January 2019. He has denied that allegation. His character, Jamal Lyon, was written off the New York-set series.
The “Empire” team was tasked with explaining Jamal’s absence on the fly and cobbling together the finale, which will be the show’s 102nd episode. There were supposed to be 104 episodes in all, but “Empire” and other Chicago casts stopped filming as the pandemic spread. The sets were still up at Cinespace Chicago Film Studios as of Friday.
One hundred episodes was once considered the magic number for syndication. “Empire” reruns have been airing on the TV One channel since 2016.
It’s unusual for scripted TV shows filmed in Chicago to reach 100 episodes because some series that film here don’t even make it past the first season. Besides “Empire” and NBC’s “Chicago Med,” “Chicago Fire” and “Chicago P.D.” have hit that milestone. So did “E.R.” and “Shameless,” both partially filmed in Chicago. Chicago was once a hotspot for daytime shows like “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “The Jenny Jones Show” and “Steve Harvey,” which easily surpassed 100 episodes.
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