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Critic’s Rating: 4 / 5.0
4
A friendship that ends in tragedy is one of the worst things.
And Accused Season 2 Episode 3 explores that with “Marcus’ Story,” where a stressor over an emotionally charged bug in a tech company’s product applies pressure to a fractured friendship and partnership, resulting in death.
Nick Cannon and Patrick J. Adams were at the center of this hour as Marcus faced the trial of his life for the involuntary murder of his best friend.
Friendships Comprised of Opposites Are a Blessing and Curse
Marcus and Peter carried themselves with a totally different energy.
To outsiders, they made an unlikely duo as Marcus was a morally centered, nerdy family man compared to single lothario Peter, who lived high on life and had a reckless streak.
Again, to most, they probably would’ve never crossed paths, let alone became friends, yet they came together to form a tech company, Caraxon, that revolved around Peter’s facial recognition software.
It’s all that you’d expect, as the hour touches on (albeit briefly) many current issues regarding tech, from the flaws of AI to the abysmal error margin when it comes to facial recognition software still enacting the same racial profiling and issues that humans enforce on the regular.
It touched on the culpability that comes with this and the, at times, deadly ramifications of a bug in a system.
Accused Season 2 Episode 3 Briefly Juggles Multiple Current Issues
Suppose the same programming that’s used as a tool to aid law enforcement is racially skewed almost as much as humans enforcing the law.
What does that say about society and the chronic issue of disproportionate arrests and deaths of individuals in the criminal justice system?
The Caraxon scandal felt similar to Chicago PD Season 7 Episode 6, which explored the dangerous effects of identification software that resulted in a false positive of a person and resulted in their death.
So many of the issues that Accused Season 2 Episode 3 are timely, and the hour finds a way to bring them all home amid this tumultuous friendship between two business partners.
It’s evident that Marcus is the “good one” out of the duo; his heart is too big, and his moral ethics will eat away at him at anything that challenges them.
In many ways, that’s what made having a shrewd business partner like Pete who could handle the harder and grayer issues understandable.
Accused Season 2 Episode 3’s Software Glitch is Complex but Not Unexpected
The glitch in the software was bad, but it’s also not uncommon.
Pete noticed and fixed the error. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t mention it to Marcus, either.
Chances are, he never expected anything to come from it, and it’s possible that he really didn’t want to burden Marcus with the knowledge that this glitch existed in the first place and had some role in the death of a man.
It’s a difficult situation made more so by their different positions in the world and outlooks because of those experiences.
As typical of an Accused episode, one can understand both sides of Pete’s actions.
It can be true that Pete was all too aware of how sensitive and good a soul Marcus was and that he would not be able to handle the news well and would’ve beaten himself up about all of this and possibly affected their hard work selling their software in the process.
Pete is a Character Who Is Hard To Figure Out
But Pete could’ve also been concerned about the racial component of things and Marcus and didn’t know how to navigate the landmine of those issues because, as a privileged White man, he couldn’t fathom how big of a deal this man’s death was.
Those ideas could coexist. Since Pete came across as a guy who took risks, was morally questionable, and sought the money and prestige to maintain his lifestyle, they likely coexisted for him.
Pete was a difficult character to understand because he seemed like a bundle of contradictions, but I can settle on the fact that he was both genuinely protective of Marcus and purely selfish about covering up this blemish.
However, these clashes and issues can arise and test even the strongest friendships.
Marcus was right about how Pete is damn near conditioned to always let himself off the hook and extend grace to himself, and it’s a privilege that he gets to have without much thought.
Marcus Faces More Nuanced Challenges in This Conflict
For Marcus, these things are infinitely more layered, and at the core of their disagreement was that Pete simply couldn’t understand that in the least or thought he was somehow sparing Marcus the weight of all these things that Pete couldn’t begin to understand.
Their argument was moral, but there were so many other factors, and Marcus’ wife hit that point home, providing another outlook.
Pete’s reasoning for burying this error and trying to make the blackmail issue go away is for self-gain, and of course, it looks worse on him as the White guy because it reads as him forgoing any sense of moral fiber or awareness to get what he wants.
It’s as cliched as it gets for Pete, which is why it was such a sticking point for Marcus.
Pete’s desire to simply move on and ignore all of this stings because it reads as a total disregard and ignorance of the racial component.
But Lycia’s self-interest for herself and her family ironically comes from the same place that software resulting in a Black man’s death does: systemic racism.
For Lycia and her family as Black people in America, where the odds are often stacked against the demographic because of systemic racism, she saw that after 20 years of hard work and good fortune, they could ascend to a prestigious status she could only dream of before.
Marcus’ Pursuit of the “American Dream” Clashes with America’s Reality
And the thought of missing that rare shot was terrifying enough that she could agree with Pete, even if her reasoning came from an entirely different place.
Even as she spoke on the stand to the widow of the man police killed via the faulty software, there was some baser level of unspoken understanding between those two women because it’s just a sad reality of how the world works for some demographics.
However, for Lycia and Marcus, their ascension to status, power, and prestige comes with the weight of how they get there and who gets hurt in the process.
It comes with the concept of the “crab in the barrel,” wherein the focus is so much on which crab can get to the top that people generally lose sight of the fact that crabs shouldn’t be in a barrel in the first place.
Self-interest and greed in pursuit of money, wealth, and a better life motivated all the characters.
Accused Season 2 Episode 3’s Story Centers Self-Interest and Greed All-Around
One of their own employees for decades being the one to blackmail in the first place over a racial glitch, despite being a person of color herself, was evidence of this.
She weaponized that information to drive a wedge between Marcus and Pete to get the money and partner equity she desired.
It’s awful that she couldn’t simply converse with both parties to get what she desired.
Even if Pete kept putting her off, she knew Marcus wouldn’t, so it’s sad that she didn’t realize how much damage she was causing until it was too late.
Her remorse was notable, and at least at the trial, she seemed insistent on proving that Marcus wasn’t guilty of intentionally killing Pete.
Marcus Never Should’ve Been on Trial
But she caused so much pain, and it was genuinely upsetting to see this seemingly close-knit company fall apart because of ambition and the pursuit of money.
Pete’s death was such a clear-cut example of an accident that it was surprising that Marcus ever made it to trial over this.
Everything hinged on Marcus’s ability to somehow reach Pete and pull him forward to prevent him from falling over the banister rather than any wide array of reasons why that expectation was positively absurd.
The likely strategic choice of having a Black male prosecutor try this case wasn’t lost either.
And nor was placing the widow of the man who died because the police relied solely on the glitched software rather than recognizing it as a tool.
That particular move was so glaringly prejudicial it was puzzling.
A Clumsy Case Has the Best Result in Serviceable Episode
The case was so flimsy it would’ve genuinely been upsetting if Marcus went away for it.
But Marcus was a decent enough man to feel some guilt over the situation still and carry the weight of all these terrible things.
It was a rough case.
It’s clear that Marcus and Pete, while friends, weren’t in the same space, and at least one had outgrown the other.
You can still love someone from a distance; it was probably time for Marcus to do that with Pete.
On the flip side, Marcus also knew who Pete was the whole time, so Pete’s feelings were valid.
Cannon and Adams did a decent job with this installment, even though this story wasn’t as gripping as Accused Season 2 Episode 2.
But that’s our thoughts on the matter, Accused Fanatics. What are yours?
Did you enjoy this episode?
What were your thoughts on it?
Hit the comments below, and stay tuned for our exclusive interview with Patrick J. Adams.
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