S02.E01: Lorraine’s Story

[Snazzy Daisy]

Quote

A psychic medium (Felicity Huffman) attempts to help a couple desperately looking for their missing son.

Air Date: Oct 08, 2024

 

Other cast — William H. Macy, Daniel Maslany, Isabel Arraiza, Tammy Isbell.

[DanaK]

Note, as mentioned in the Media thread, Accused is now set to show at 9pm ET, so that's where it will premiere

[AnimeMania]

Felicity Huffman as Lorraine Howell

William H. Macy as Raymond

Isabel Arraiza as Melissa

Daniel Maslany as Frank

José Zúñiga as Detective Serrano

Tammy Isbell

[Halting Hex]

"Exploiting [Our] Situation and Standing in the Way of an Investigation"??  Not that I know the North Carolina Criminal Code, but that certainly sounds made up.  If it's Larceny by False Promise and Obstruction of Justice, just say so.   (And good luck to the DA with that.  I'm pretty sure I never heard Lorraine promise Frank and Melissa anything.)

And nice to see that the show still plays it fast and loose with courtroom procedure.  I mean, I'll defer to Actual Lawyer Chicago Redshirt pretty much always, but when I hear Det. Serrano testify "maybe [Lorraine] wanted to keep her name clear for the future", I'm going "Objection! Speculative!" before he's finished the "maybe" part.

Jose Zuniga still plays sleazy detectives as well as he did in Law & Order episode 9.03 "Bait", I see.  A bit of a niche career, but good work if you can get it, I suppose.

A pleasant change that Lorraine had a skillful defense attorney, though.  So that's good.

Edited October 9 by Halting Hex

[Starchild]

I think I may have said this last season, but this show is very unsatisfying. I can't be the only one who wanted that kid to be found safely by the end. It may be realistic writing, it may be good writing and great acting. But as a piece of entertainment it's just not a show I enjoy watching regularly.

An occasional unhappy ending is refreshing. But every week? People just aren't built that way.

[Madding crowd]

I wanted a happy ending here too-I know it isn’t realistic but I still wanted something concrete. I didn’t understand Lorraine wanting to live with strangers for months and I could see how both the parents reacted to her.  The courtroom scenes seemed a bit off especially when the prosecutor tried to suggest Lorraine was somehow responsible for her brother’s death by not predicting it-why would that be allowed? 

[DanaK]

As usual, this episode didn’t provide a pat ending nor whether Lorraine was really a con or not but ambiguity is what the showrunners want so I guess we have to accept that or not

I thought it was solidly acted. I do question why Lorraine was able to see actionable details in the first abduction, but not in this one, but maybe she saw her main task to be to convince the parents and the police that the boy was alive and not to give up and that the accused killer was lying. But she should not have accepted all that money from the parents

Was Lorraine just an employee of that dry cleaning business or did she own it? She seems to have chosen estrangement from family and being alone due to her alleged gift rather than try to make connections. She also wasn’t making much of a living. Perhaps getting together with Ray will give her some peace

[Chaos Theory]

Honestly I watch this show for the guest stars.   I will skip a week if I don’t care or if I haven’t heard of the main star involved.  It is nice to see that prison hasn’t cost Felicity Huffman a step.   She always was my 2nd favorite Desperate Housewife.   The story seemed vaguely realistic but the acting was solid which makes up for it.

Edited October 10 by Chaos Theory

[Snazzy Daisy]

Is Lorraine a psychic or a fraud? She doesn’t oversell her psychic ability but she’s clearly driven by money. I think she’s lonely and needs something to cling onto.

She’s sobbing at the end. Is it because everything is over or her connection to Rory is now severed?

William H. Macy is criminally underused. He should be given his own story instead.

 

[possibilities]

Huffman disgusts me, so I almost didn't watch this episode. 

I think the obviously engineered confession would have been a more interesting story than the focus on the "is she psychic or not?" case. The desire to clsoe a case leading to that kind of behavior is a compelling story. No repercussions for the detective, the family and everybody else is just focused on Huffman's character.

[Chicago Redshirt]

3 hours ago, Chaos Theory said:

Honestly I watch this show for the guest stars.   I will skip a week if I don’t care or if I haven’t heard of the main star involved.  It is nice to see that prison hasn’t cost Felicity Huffman a step.   She always was my 2nd favorite Desperate Housewife.   The story seemed vaguely realistic but the acting was solid which makes up for it.

Who is your first? Felicity/Lynette was dead last for me of the four main ones. I'd place it as Gabi/Bree/Susan. I was both motivated by shallow-poolness (no offense to Felicity who is of course gorgeous but comparatively, a distant fourth) but also storylines. Lynette was Karen-ing before that was a thing. 

I will give the show credit in that they de-glammed the heck out of Felicity for the role. 

On 10/8/2024 at 9:03 PM, Halting Hex said:

"Exploiting [Our] Situation and Standing in the Way of an Investigation"??  Not that I know the North Carolina Criminal Code, but that certainly sounds made up.  If it's Larceny by False Promise and Obstruction of Justice, just say so.   (And good luck to the DA with that.  I'm pretty sure I never heard Lorraine promise Frank and Melissa anything.)

And nice to see that the show still plays it fast and loose with courtroom procedure.  I mean, I'll defer to Actual Lawyer Chicago Redshirt pretty much always, but when I hear Det. Serrano testify "maybe [Lorraine] wanted to keep her name clear for the future", I'm going "Objection! Speculative!" before he's finished the "maybe" part.

Jose Zuniga still plays sleazy detectives as well as he did in Law & Order episode 9.03 "Bait", I see.  A bit of a niche career, but good work if you can get it, I suppose.

A pleasant change that Lorraine had a skillful defense attorney, though.  So that's good.

I took it that the actual criminal charge was ?fraud" of some sort, and this time they had a defense attorney who did talk about what actually seemed like elements of the alleged crime, so kudos to the show for that. It may be that they fictionalized it up somewhat, but I'd be inclined to give them a pass.

Googling for "north carolina fraud" eventually got me to this definition of "obtaining property by false pretenses."

(a) If any person shall knowingly and designedly by means of any kind of false pretense whatsoever, whether the false pretense is of a past or subsisting fact or of a future fulfillment or event, obtain or attempt to obtain from any person within this State any money, goods, property, services, chose in action, or other thing of value with intent to cheat or defraud any person of such money, goods, property, services, chose in action or other thing of value, such person shall be guilty of a felony.

Lorraine clearly obtained money/services from Melissa and Frank -- they paid off her debt, paid for her travel, and let her live with them for more than a month.

It at least arguably false that she knew Rory was alive, had psychic gifts, had actual visions.

The defense attorney zeroed in on what seemed to be the best defense from what we know about the case, which is the mens rea or criminal mindset was wholly lacking. As presented, Lorraine 100 percent believed that she had this gift and 100 percent "should" have been found not guilty since even if she was wrong, there was not sufficient proof that she knew she was wrong and she was doing what she was doing to extract money.

Maybe I'm just in a better-than-usual mood, but I overall liked this one. And specifically what I liked about it is that things are ambiguous. It could indeed be that Lorraine is a fraudster, although the evidence suggest she's not. It could be that Rory is in fact dead and in fact the victim of the serial killer who was caught (although again, there's reason to think that he indeed just was parroting the detective's line about the convention.) I thought that just before the verdict they were going to have Lorraine finally see where Rory was. I'm glad that they did not go for the happy ending, even though part of me still wants it. 

It again is somewhat absurd that they would try Lorraine. Having Melissa testify against Lorraine can only get you so far, especially when she would be subject to some cross-examination about how she offered to refuse to testify against Lorraine if Lorraine would just tell Frank that she was a liar. That is pretty impeaching of Melissa, and pretty powerful evidence for Lorraine to be telling the truth. After all, if Lorraine were a fraud who could avoid criminal charges by telling one more lie, why wouldn't she? 

But more than that, it seems like Frank would be called by the defense to say that he still believes in Lorraine and that Lorraine has never given him reason to doubt her.

[Chicago Redshirt]

30 minutes ago, possibilities said:

Huffman disgusts me, so I almost didn't watch this episode. 

I think the obviously engineered confession would have been a more interesting story than the focus on the "is she psychic or not?" case. The desire to clsoe a case leading to that kind of behavior is a compelling story. No repercussions for the detective, the family and everybody else is just focused on Huffman's character.

I do appreciate that the show does its bit to help it sink into the public consciousness that just because someone "confesses" to a crime doesn't mean that they do it, that the police aren't always pure as the driven snow. Of course it is fighting against decades of pop culture where the police and prosecutors are always on the right side. There's the occasional Perry Mason and whatnot, but even those shows portray the cops as decent folks who just happened to pick the wrong guy because all the evidence suggests they probably did it. 

Accused tends to focus on defendants who are either factually, legally or morally innocent. It would be interesting if they do a story about someone who is factually, legally and morally guilty. Which probably means that they won't.

I'm anti-death penalty, but a two-time child killer/possibly three is living proof  for the strongest pro-death penalty argument there is: "Some people just need killing." That the murderer was able to skate on that in a death penalty state (and since IIRC he committed his murders in at least two states, so he could be tried federally and earned the death penalty there) may be the show quietly pointing out the injustice of the death penalty. (I.E. the fact that he doesn't get it to cover up the detectives' shoddy police work when by all rights a triple child murderer should get it).

[dancingdreamer]

This is the first time I've watched  this show. I want Lorraine  to come back, and I want them to find their  son. She still has his hat.  

[candall]

On 10/8/2024 at 9:06 PM, Starchild said:

I think I may have said this last season, but this show is very unsatisfying. I can't be the only one who wanted that kid to be found safely by the end. It may be realistic writing, it may be good writing and great acting. But as a piece of entertainment it's just not a show I enjoy watching regularly.

An occasional unhappy ending is refreshing. But every week? People just aren't built that way.

 

On 10/10/2024 at 1:19 AM, dancingdreamer said:

This is the first time I've watched this show. I want Lorraine to come back, and I want them to find their son. She still has his hat.  

 

This is the first time I've watched Accused, as well.  Are you telling me this nowhere ending is typical?  Boooo.

 

I used to love Cold Case--the young/old actors gimmick, the civil rights storylines, the cool camerawork on the aging switcheroos, the MUSIC (heart, heart).  But I was in tears at the end of every episode and eventually that got old.

 

I'm going to need the occasional upbeat ending for the Accused people.

.

[Chicago Redshirt]

13 hours ago, candall said:

This is the first time I've watched Accused, as well.  Are you telling me this nowhere ending is typical?  Boooo.

I would say that at least in the first season, most of the endings were relatively upbeat. The accused tended to be clearly some combination of factually, legally and morally innocent of what they were accused of and the jury typically found that way. There were a couple times when the accused was some combination of factually, morally and legally guilty of the crime and the jury found that way. There was at least one case where the accused was innocent of the crime they were accused of but still found guilty. I don't think there was a case where the person was guilty of the crime they were found accused of and yet acquitted.

I don't think that there were many episodes from the first season where I had a particular yearning to see more about what happened in that case. One episode starred Michael Chiklis, best known from The Shield, as a surgeon who had a psycho for a son. Michael Chiklis is supposed to star in an episode this season, but I don't know if it's supposed to be as a new character or a continuation of that character's storyline.

[possibilities]

I would say the keynote of the show is ambiguity. You tend to see how what actually happened is really complicated, and the court system isn't really set up for a nuanced response, and it's not 100% clear what is going to be the outcome until you actually see the verdict, and you kind of understand why the confusion gets legs.