YMMV / Accused (2023)

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Was Danny the victim of a psychopath who wiped out his entire family, or was he actually a paranoid schizophrenic and his last conversation with his Wicked Stepmother was a hallucination?
    • In favor of the former: A hospice nurse marrying a patient’s rich widower so soon after her death is unethical, very suspicious, and consistent with being a manipulative psychopath.
    • In favor of the latter: Danny had a family history of schizophrenia. Six months after the court ordered a psych evaluation, he was still institutionalized, indicating a genuine diagnosis of schizophrenia (unless they took some extreme artistic liberties with the Insanity Defense). Also, Alison marrying her patient’s rich husband right after her patient dies, only for him to die of a heart attack on their honeymoon, all while his son is screaming to everyone that she’s a murderer, is just too many red flags for police to ignore. If anything, killing both John and Matthew less than a year after Isabel will only make it more likely for people to suspect Danny is right, even if hard evidence of murder is still required.
    • Or maybe, he really does have paranoid schizophrenia but his suspicion of his stepmother is still right.
  • Is Lamar just a person filled with anger and hatred against a world that has hurt his people, desperate to not go back to prison even if it means selling out his friends, or is he a sociopathic manipulator who exploits others for his own benefit while corrupting them before tossing them aside when they are of no use anymore.
• Don't Shoot the Message: Ava's impassioned speech in "Ava's Story" is a very touching and poignant testimony to the value of not denying deaf people their identities, and of hearing parents needing to accept their deaf children rather than force their ideals on them. The problem, however, is that not only does this message ring hypocritical since Ava was trying to force her ideals on Lucie, but it has nothing to do with the actual case, which is about the fact Ava kidnapped an infant just because she disagreed with their parents' intentions about treating her. From a legal standpoint, the question of giving a cochlear implant to an infant is irrelevant to the kidnapping and child endangerment charges Ava was facing, and Ava ultimately receiving no punishment for either due to her speech convincing the parents to withdraw the charges should in itself not have mattered to the trial outcome, since it was a state case being tried; the case only got thrown out because the judge was sympathetic to Ava.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: A recurring issue many viewers had with episodes is that, even when the ending of the episode is framed as having a happy ending, it can be bogged down by the various details that the episode itself is keen to ignore.
  • "Jack's Story" leans more on the "sweet" side of Bittersweet Ending, as while his fiance leaves him, he is cleared of the rape charge, and Clara is gotten away from her rapist step-father. However, Jack is convicted on illegally transporting a minor across state lines without parental authority since he did take Clara out of Texas to get the abortion pills, meaning he is more than likely going to lose his teaching license in Texas, and either be forced to search for a different line of work, or move to another state entirely to continue teaching, and even that doesn't bode well since such a conviction would be a black mark on his record. What's more, while Clara's step-father was arrested, he was a Villain with Good Publicity due to teaching Sunday School and being a "man of god" means there's no guarantee he'll be convicted and that Jack won't still be Convicted by Public Opinion if he chooses to remain in Texas.
  • "Jiro's Story" sees Osamu freed from his abusive care facility and now happily living with Jiro and his family. However, Jiro never resolved the issues with Videla that got him unjustly suspended, and had to bail on the trip that would have gotten Videla's agent to drop the complaints against him since he had to save Osamu, meaning Jiro could very likely lose his job. What's more, he had to plead guilty to the assault and kidnapping charges, meaning he now has a criminal record, and it's never said if the facility will actually face punishment for what their staff did to Osamu, nor if they did or will continue to do something similar to their other patients.
  • "Morgan's Story" sees Morgan cleared of the false drug dealing charges against her, and free to be with Ari and Kashir as she pleases. Eric however is arrested for his unwilling part in the Frame-Up, and considering he's a cop, his chances in prison don't look great. Even worse, Jason is still not done with trying to ruin Morgan's life, and is last seen approaching Ari from within the woods after he wanders off to get something that was thrown back there, giving the impression he is about to kidnap Ari.
  • "Jessie's Story" has Jessie and Kara warmly welcomed by Dominic, Will, Fern, and even Andrea despite the latter being the most hurt by Kara and Dominic's affair, with the six all set to now be a close and happy family. The fact though that Jessie and Will have been romantically attracted to each other for some time though only to learn they're siblings is largely swept under the rug, Kara and Andrea's "reconcilliation" comes rather easily, and the years worth of lingering issues between Jessie and Kara regarding Kara's behavior is all but forgotten in favor of ending on a "happy" note.
• Informed Wrongness: In "Ava's Story", Max is treated like an antagonist due to being somewhat ableist, and is depicted as being in the wrong for not sympathizing with Ava after meeting her mother, and his suspecting KJ of lying about his involvement when he comes to the station is treated as being prejudicial. However, Max is completely justified in not feeling sympathy for the woman who kidnapped his baby, regardless of her upbringing. He likewise is entirely right to be suspicious of KJ, as he was a willing accomplice of Ava's after it became clear she wouldn't change her mind, and was left behind by her so he could claim innocence after her plans to go to Michigan proved fruitless. On the cochlear implant side, the device only gives deaf people the option to hear when and if they choose to do so, and it's known that the earlier in life they get it, the more effective it is. Even then, the implants don't provide perfect hearing, making much of the argument entirely irrelevant.
• Strawman Has a Point: In "Ava's Story", Max is depicted as being ableist for wanting to get his daughter a cochlear implant, and while he has some genuine ableism that he overcomes, his wish to get a cochlear implant for his daughter is far from ableist. Ava and other characters act like the implant erases her deafness, when in reality, it allows the deaf person the choice of hearing or not. Having the implant allows the daughter to hear if she so wishes in the future, while Ava's wish to prevent the cochlear implantation procedure robs her of that choice, and research has shown that the younger someone is when getting a cochlear implant, the better.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The first season quickly ended up gaining this reaction upon it's completion. The majority of the episodes largely focus on sympathetic defendants that are portrayed in ways that make the audience want them to be acquitted even if they are guilty of the crime, only for them to be convicted and ending the episode on a Bittersweet Ending at best, a Downer Ending at worst, chief examples being "Danny's Story", "Kendall's Story", and "Laura's Story". Whereas the episodes that have "happier" endings ended up focusing on characters that were either Unintentionally Unsympathetic like "Ava's Story", are bogged down in execution resulting in an Esoteric Happy Ending like "Jessie's Story" and "Jiro's Story", or are left on cliffhangers that suggest things are going to get bad again but will in no way be resolved. As such, many viewers found it hard to be engaged in any episode when there existed a lingering feeling that the character will either be sympathetic but get screwed over, or get only a surface level happy ending.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Ava in "Ava's Story", while her belief that cochlear implants are a form of abuse is understandable given her own experiences (she was never able to master her own implant's use and it gave her constant headaches, and her mother only treated this as further grounds to look down on her), her refusal to admit (a) that Lucie, as an infant, would have a much higher chance of successfully learning how to use the implant than she did, and (b) that she had no right whatsoever to intervene in parental medical treatment of a child, are not.
  • Kara in "Jessie's Story", as while she genuinely loves her daughter Jessie, her behavior regarding Jessie's desire to learn who her biological father is was highly manipulative and controlling, making her come across as an emotionally abusive Control Freak trying to force Jessie to be dependent solely on her. It's only made worse with the reveal that Dominic is Jessie's father, not a sperm donor, and that Will is her half-brother, as her reasoning has large shades of It's All About Me, and is so wangsty that it makes it sound like she wanted to have her cake and eat it too, only to have a meltdown when that predictably didn't work out (not helped by her being a Karma Houdini by the end of the episode).