Critic’s Ranking: 3.3 / 5.0
3.3
The place do we start, Accused Fanatics?!
Are you able to consider every other method to wrap up essentially the most inconsistent season of Accused than a weird, seemingly futuristic case about homicide and intercourse robots?!
It’s completely, unquestionably essentially the most ridiculous case we’ve ever had on this sequence but, however that apart, it was not less than weird sufficient to be weirdly entertaining.
That’s greater than may be mentioned for among the humdrum installments of the season.
With Accused Season 2 Episode 8, the sequence broadened its timeline. They expanded into the longer term with circumstances as a result of the entire scenario with Humanix looks like one thing meant to be within the not-so-distant future.
We don’t at the moment stay in a world the place humanoid robots are so mainstream that they’ve taken over job positions like meals servers and private assistants. And that was the case throughout this hour.
So, with “Megan’s Story,” Accused takes a large leap with this method; frankly, I don’t know how you can really feel about it. However given the character of the season at massive, not less than I can provide them factors for creativity.
Megan wasn’t a flat character however was positively loathsome, egocentric, self-absorbed, formidable, jealous, self-serving, and manipulative. She was nothing wanting an advanced lady with layers, and the hour didn’t hesitate to place her worst traits on full show.
The extra we noticed of this lady, the much less seemingly one needed to root for her, and that’s one thing that Accused doesn’t usually do because it likes to make the individuals on trial sympathetic most of the time.
It was refreshing to see the sequence deviate from the norm by build up the story and including context to complicate the scenario and ensuing crime.
Megan was merely an terrible particular person, and one thing was gratifying about that, even when it bumped up towards the sometimes unsatisfying tendency to vilify feminine characters for his or her audaciousness, ambition, and possession of all society usually praises in males.
Thematically, the hour took a ahead method in exploring issues like massive firms in tech, not solely not like Accused Season 2 Episode 3, whereas additionally tackling synthetic intelligence and its takeover.
Megan was the top of a music firm the place it appeared AI was utterly taking up the music scene, one thing that’s rapidly changing into a actuality and a grating and irritating thought.
We’ve naturally been weighing the professionals and cons of synthetic intelligence and the way it may be a great tool in our lives versus a blight on how we stay, pursue our jobs, or do anything.
“Megan’s Story” touches upon that as we instantly see the battle between Megan and John over the character of her firm and the way she finds success.
John, as an artist and musician, values creativity and originality and what artwork brings to the world, one thing that will get utterly misplaced by way of using AI.
John’s music died out, and he resented Megan for not doing sufficient to combat for it or him, as an alternative chasing after the very factor that was killing the business within the first place: AI.
It’s sufficient to make your pores and skin crawl when you consider a whole music business working on music compiled and created by synthetic intelligence as an alternative of precise people.
But Megan was ecstatic about these developments and seemingly had the whole business on lock, leading to her success as a music mogul alongside John’s outdated good friend and bandmate.
John and Megan’s relationship was tense earlier than she pushed it over the sting by introducing a intercourse robotic into their lives. Megan’s self-absorption prevented her from noticing it.
Megan was a narcissist, at all times blinded by her ambition, at all times striving for the subsequent massive factor, new milestones, and accomplishments. In the meantime, John was like a saved husband withering away on a vine.
Their marriage was doomed effectively earlier than Eve got here into the image, and it will’ve dissolved rapidly whether or not she was there or not. Eve was merely a catalyst for one thing a lot worse and an actual tragedy.
It was jaw-dropping that Megan thought getting her husband a intercourse robotic to primarily delegate her “wifely duties” of intercourse could be the reply to all of their prayers.
In fact, she could be jealous when she needed to see this in motion or when her husband linked to a tailored robotic to appease him in all of the methods he desired.
Nobody can compete with a robotic programmed to go well with all of an individual’s wants, so she set her personal self as much as fall painfully brief with a husband who was already midway out of the door within the first place.
John was lonely in his marriage, and he discovered all of the assist and gratification that he wanted through this intercourse robotic, falling in love with it and discovering true happiness in a means he hadn’t in fairly a while.
By that time, nothing Megan may have finished would make up for the years she spent neglecting her husband, disregarding and invalidating him in favor of her personal wants and needs.
Even her selecting to implant the embryos they saved in order that she may lastly have the children that he had been wanting from her for a lifetime was completely self-serving and never about him.
It took Megan’s come-to-Jesus second to resolve that it was finest for her to leap into this subsequent massive resolution.
It didn’t bode effectively and merely highlighted their points within the first place when she didn’t speak to him about this new alternative and as an alternative went to get the embryos implanted as “a shock.”
Who does that? If she couldn’t even sit down and have a correct dialog along with her husband, who was already on the point of divorcing her, would they ever be an excellent couple or first rate dad and mom?
As soon as once more, Megan made a unilateral resolution that affected them with out consulting him and anticipating him to go together with the ordeal.
Besides this time, he didn’t, doubling down on wanting a divorce in order that he could possibly be with Eve.
And that was laughable, like one thing pulled from Lars and the Actual Woman, the place he actually believed that he’d be genuinely completely happy and in a wholesome relationship with one thing that wasn’t even actual.
There was barely sufficient time to unpack how John’s answer to the years of coping with a strong-willed, formidable lady who emasculated him was to hunt a relationship with a beautiful robotic incapable of particular person thought who was programmed to like all his pursuits and serve all his wants.
Naturally, there’s this deep, inherent sexism in that, however the installment is such a fast-paced, weird one which there’s little room for that to settle in. We don’t want the present to handhold us by way of a few of this, so it’s effective in the long run.
It’s a pity that John may really feel so torn down after residing in Megan’s shadow for therefore lengthy that he in the end provides up on even contemplating an actual lady able to her personal ideas who may problem him.
The infidelity angle of all of it was distinctive as a result of Megan greenlit it, so it wasn’t dishonest, and Eve wasn’t actual within the first place, although that didn’t matter in the long run.
The ethical conundrum in all of that, whereas not a singular premise, was fascinating sufficient.
However the hour constantly confirmed us from starting to finish that Megan is a manipulative, self-serving lady who at all times will get what she needs.
She talked her sister, whom she was by no means near, into jeopardizing her job and examine to offer John a intercourse doll.
Megan always manipulated John, after which when he lastly had sufficient and needed to go away her, she killed him in a match of damage and rage as an emotional response to what occurred after which blamed it on being pregnant hormones.
She additionally blamed it on Eve, realizing full effectively {that a} robotic wouldn’t be held to account, and he or she manipulated her sister but once more to cowl for her.
Megan was ruinous, not hesitating to govern her sister into throwing her total profession away, tanking a full examine, and destroying progress with AI, all to cowl her tracks.
She succeeded in all of that, too, with an acquittal for her husband’s loss of life, a belly-full of twins she immediately needs, and her sister below her thumb.
Megan was one of many sequence’s most diabolical and loathsome characters, which made issues fascinating.
So far as a finale goes, it’s not the strongest end, and the sequence totally leans right into a loss of life but once more.
It’ll be fascinating to determine if there’s a future for Accused Season 3 and what that might probably appear to be after this shockingly weak one. Was the primary season only a one-off success?
Can the sequence proper the ship and discover its footing and rhythm once more? What number of tales can they inform with this formatting with out feeling redundant?
These are all questions I by no means gave a lot thought to heading into the season, however I’m ending it interested by them.
It largely looks like Accused has gone out with a whimper, albeit with this one, it was a salacious little bit of sci-fi bizarreness that added some oomph to the previous “Eugene’s Story.”
And I don’t know what to do with that. How about you?
Over to you, Accused Fanatics.
How do you’re feeling about this uncommon episode closing out the season?
What have been your total ideas on the season? Do you suppose Accused has earned a renewal?
Let’s hear your ideas under.
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