Diksha Sundriyal
The penultimate episode of Fox’s ‘Accused’ Season 2 poses a very difficult question in the form of Eugene’s story. Starring Ken Jeong in the lead role, the story focuses on a reformed man named Eugene who loves his wife more than anyone in the world. However, shocking truths come to light when Eugene is accused of murdering his wife, Grace. Keeping with the tone of the show, the episode questions whether intention matters more than action. Eugene’s life hinges on the answer to this question, and the outcome decides whether his story will end in a tragedy or if it will have a happier outcome. SPOILERS AHEAD
Eugene Park’s Happy Life is Disrupted by a Blast from His Wife’s Past
Eugene Park had a difficult past. He tells his story to a customer who is still dicey about proposing to his girlfriend. Eugene tells him how he grew up in several foster homes and then wasted his youth by being indulged in all sorts of things. But eventually, a man decided to give him a chance, believing in him when no one else did. The same man also led Eugene to Grace, with whom he fell in love and has been married. This was the time he turned his life around for good, and the story is supposed to serve as a motivator for the customer to buy a ring, propose to his girlfriend, and take a chance at starting a life together.
A quick look into Eugene’s life reveals that he hadn’t been lying about his life. He is happily married and loves his wife to the point that he would do anything for her. But when she starts to receive calls from an unknown number, he becomes suspicious. Usually, Grace would say anything to Eugene, but this time, she acts a little nervous and hides things from him. It gets worse when Eugene follows her one day to a coffee shop. She told him that she was going to meet her friend, but Eugene finds her with a man. When he confronts his wife about it, Grace reveals that the man is her ex-boyfriend. Before she met Eugene, Grace had been through a tough time. Following her mother’s death, she felt neglected by her father and sought comfort in drugs. She became a junkie, which is when she met Rex.
Years ago, Rex tried to rob a liquor store and ended up shooting the man in the shop. He went to prison for it, but now he is back. Grace feels obliged to help Rex because he has nothing at this point. She didn’t tell Eugene about it because she didn’t want her husband to worry, but that’s not the whole truth. To Eugene, Rex seems like a dangerous person, and he doesn’t want Grace around him anymore. He tries to pay Rex, hoping that money will drive him away, but Rex is not so easily dissuaded. Moreover, he reveals that there is more to the robbery story. It turns out that the reason Grace feels she owes Rex is because she was with him that day. They went to rob the store together, but then Rex fired the gun, and Grace ran for her life and never looked back. Rex holds the threat of revealing the truth over her head. This makes Eugene realize that Rex is more dangerous than he thought. Still, he thinks he can get rid of the man and free his wife.
Eugene Pays the Price for a Crime He Never Meant to Commit
Before Eugene can come up with a plan, he is woken up in the middle of the night by his father-in-law, who reveals that their jewelry store is being robbed. By the time Eugene gets there, the cops are already there. Moreover, they discover that someone opened the safe in the store using the codes, which means the store was robbed by someone who knew them. The cops ask to access the security tapes, but before they can do that, Eugene’s father-in-law has a heart attack. From the neighbor, who also happens to be Grace’s close friend, Eugene discovers that it was his wife who robbed the store with Rex. Despite the evidence pointing towards the fact that Grace went with Rex willingly, Eugene believes that his wife couldn’t have robbed her father’s life’s work. Her father had done too much for her to destroy his life like this. The only reason she went with Rex was that he threatened her, and Grace, who had kept the truth about the robbery from her father, didn’t know what else to do.
From Grace’s friend, Eugene finds out the motel Grace has been staying in. And that’s where he goes to find her and Rex but with a gun. It’s not that Eugene had not carried a gun before. He just knew better than to use it. He avoided confrontation whenever he could for as long as he could. However, on the night the jewelry store is robbed, he thinks that there is only one way to deal with Rex. His intention was to kill Rex or at least scare him off. However, the plan backfires. Eugene underestimates his conviction to shoot a person, especially because he’d never done it before. Rex, who went to prison for murder, knows this. He uses this against Eugene and tries to take the gun from him.
Grace tries to stop them, and in the midst of this tussle, she is fatally shot. Grace doesn’t survive her wounds, and Eugene is arrested for her murder. Meanwhile, Rex is arrested for robbing the jewelry store. At his trial, Eugene tries to show that he never intended to hurt, let alone kill, his wife. If anything, he intended to kill Rex. What happened with Grace was a mistake that Eugene can never forgive himself for. However, the prosecution spins all evidence against him to make it look like he was an angry husband who wanted to kill his cheating wife. Moreover, they claim that even if Eugene killed Grace by mistake, he still had murder on his mind when he went to the motel that night. If he hadn’t killed Grace, he would have killed Rex, and whatever Rex may have done, it doesn’t give Eugene the license to kill him.
In fact, if Eugene really wanted to help his wife, he should have notified the cops about her and Rex’s location and let the law take its course. But he didn’t, and now he is the one being accused of bloodshed. Despite Eugene’s remorse, the jury agrees with the prosecution and believes that even if his intentions were different, Eugene still ended up killing Grace, and while he should repent for it, he cannot be forgiven for it by the law. He is found guilty and must go to prison to reflect on the consequences of choosing violence.
Read More: Fox’s Accused Season 2 Episode 6 Recap: Val’s Story
