Cable television, the source you turn to if you’re looking for a veritable cornucopia of <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/media/trumps-crackdown-on-drug-ads-could-sting-tv-networks-673c322a?st=jaKxKb&amp;reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink">drug commercials</a> with bits of mid-tier shows aired between them, is <a href="https://x.com/RoadMN/status/2062598828889440556/photo/1">not doing great</a>. Of the top 10 programs for the 2025-2026 season, seven were available only on streaming platforms. The other three were available both on streaming and on broadcast television. None were solely on broadcast. 
This is a <a href="https://adwave.com/resources/cable-vs-streaming-viewing-share-q4-2025">generational trend</a>, with those 55 and older being more likely to choose cable and those under that age preferring streaming services. Factor in that 28% of Americans have <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/01/83-of-us-adults-use-streaming-services-far-fewer-subscribe-to-cable-or-satellite-tv/">both cable/satellite and streaming subscriptions</a>, and it’s easy to see which offering is winning the battle. Cable is on the way out, and this represents a huge failing not just for the cable companies and pharmaceutical advertisers, but for America as a whole. 
Because, America, it’s time to admit that while streaming is great and gives us a whole host of options, it’s also terrible. When cable was king, we could turn on the TV, check the guide, and go to the on-demand offerings. It was all right there. It was one bill. There was only one company to have to deal with. Now, subscriptions rule our lives. 
Not only is the cost of cable-cutting a mirage because of all the subscriptions, but we also no longer have one-stop shopping when it’s time to watch. We have to figure out which service has the program we want. We have to remember to cancel that one service we only wanted to watch that one program on. We have to wade through a panoply of garbage just as we did when we had cable. And that doesn’t even get into sports. 
Sports used to be the reason that some of us got cable. Sure, there were add-ons. There were also market limitations. If you were a Tennessee Titans fan but lived closer to the Kansas City Chiefs, guess which AFC game you were getting on Sundays. At least you could watch games, though. 
Now, who knows? While there is a lot on the major networks plus ESPN and its satellite stations, to get everything you’re going to need a bunch of streaming services. Then you’re right back in the same problem the streamers give us when it comes to finding shows. And you still can’t get most out-of-market games without paying for upgraded streaming options. It’s ridiculous.
Don’t get me wrong. I tuned in for “Stranger Things.” “Sean Combs: The Reckoning” was gut-wrenching but also admirable because Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson is the pettiest man on earth and no one makes petty work better than he does. Those are the only programs from the top 10 I’ve watched, but I’m admittedly not the best example. I’m more the person you look to if you want to know what’s going to get prematurely canceled.
Still, when we get below the top 10 and realize that “Matlock” comes in at 13 and see “60 Minutes” at 27, we know where viewers are tuning in, and it ain’t on a streaming platform. It’s easy to hate on boomers. It’s more challenging to admit they were right about things. Television is one of those areas, at least in terms of medium, though maybe Bari Weiss can turn “60 Minutes” into a show that appeals to those whose age doesn’t start with the number six or higher. Getting rid of that insufferable <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/scott-pelleys-glasses-were-a-prop-for-a-grown-man-play-acting-as-an-anchor">glasses guy</a> was a good start. (Maybe replace him with <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DYYhJDFx-S_/">Jordan the Stallion</a>?)
Regardless, if we stay on our current trajectory, cable is eventually going to stop slowly failing and collapse all at once. Then, all we’ll be left with is streaming. Will we have a world of choices at our fingertips? Sure. Will we have to spend way more per month than if cable had figured out a way to thwart and integrate the streamers for a slightly higher price than we were paying? Absolutely. 
And we have no one but ourselves to blame. We could have stood athwart our streaming services and yelled “stop,” but instead we embraced them, invited them into our homes, our lives, and our relationships. (Password sharing is a bond that outlives marriages, not because people want to see their ex’s name on the “choose profile” screen, but because they don’t want to add another monthly bill.)
 We said “no” to sticking with one monthly bill and a variety of programming all under one banner. Instead, we allowed ourselves to get greedy for content while satiating the greed of the companies that owned the intellectual property we were too lazy to pirate. Now, we’re barreling towards a future littered with seemingly infinite options, so many that we often fail to choose before it’s too late to finish our offering before we go to sleep. Alternatively, we find there&#8217;s nothing to watch other than the monthly payments leaving our bank accounts. 
***
Rich Cromwell is a writer living in Northwest Arkansas. He produces the Cookin’ Up a Story podcast, which you can listen to <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cookin-up-a-story/id1624969096" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>. You can also follow him on X: <a href="https://x.com/rcromwell4">@rcromwell4</a>.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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We Thought We Beat Cable. We Were Wrong.

Boomers

Netflix

Upstream

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This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
&#8220;Margo’s Got Money Troubles,&#8221; a novel-turned TV series about a 19-year-old single mom who turns to OnlyFans to get by, has attracted plenty of attention and acclaim — especially with its star-studded cast that includes Elle Fanning, Nick Offerman, Nicole Kidman, and Michelle Pfeiffer. 
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We’ve come a long way since “Pretty Woman,” but why is a story about a 19-year-old driven to OnlyFans by financial desperation so popular? 
Rufi Thorpe, the author of &#8220;Margo’s Got Money Troubles,&#8221; told <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/14/entertainment/onlyfans-economy-margo-cassie-euphoria" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/14/entertainment/onlyfans-economy-margo-cassie-euphoria&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781272699067000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3hQeCv1SS_V5FcVFCnT1yk">CNN</a> she believes OnlyFan’s “rising cultural relevance” is because “people are trying desperately to afford their rent.” The article explains that financial struggles in a harsh economy have led OnlyFans to be more “accepted” and less “stigmatized.” Thorpe has also been clear that she supports the destigmatization of the sex industry, <a href="https://m.dailyhunt.in/news/india/english/mashable-epaper-mashable/to%2Bget%2Bmargos%2Bgot%2Bmoney%2Btroubles%2Bright%2Brufi%2Bthorpe%2Bhad%2Bto%2Bearn%2Bthe%2Btrust%2Bof%2Bonlyfans%2Bcreators-newsid-n709795228" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://m.dailyhunt.in/news/india/english/mashable-epaper-mashable/to%252Bget%252Bmargos%252Bgot%252Bmoney%252Btroubles%252Bright%252Brufi%252Bthorpe%252Bhad%252Bto%252Bearn%252Bthe%252Btrust%252Bof%252Bonlyfans%252Bcreators-newsid-n709795228&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781272699067000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0CfR8xFnYN7goshQyHyeI9">saying</a> that her goal with the novel was to “explore sex work as work.” 
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But it is a failing position to accept that financial necessity should drive women to OnlyFans and that society should refrain from condemning OnlyFans as a result. 
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To be clear: I certainly don’t believe women who turn to OnlyFans out of economic desperation should be condemned; it is the systems and individuals who exploit their desperation that deserve our censure. 
Consider an analogy: A landlord approaches a woman in his building who is struggling to pay her rent. “If you send me nude photos a few times a week,” the landlord says, “I’ll forgive your debts. Otherwise, you’re out on the streets.” 
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Does it make your skin crawl? 
How about this one: A CEO arranges a private meeting with a female employee. Behind closed doors, he explains the offer: “Come into my office at the end of every workday and do a strip tease. If you do that, I’ll double your wages.” 
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In contexts like these, most people recognize that coercing sexual consent through financial necessity — or even financial opportunity — is exploitative and abusive. There’s a good reason for this. It’s because sexual consent is a uniquely sensitive type of consent, which must be given completely freely. Generally speaking, it is not wrong to pay someone to do a job that they may not really desire. But sexual consent warrants a particularly high standard of freedom and autonomy. As such, it is wrong to use money (or any other means) to pressure someone into accepting sexual situations that they do not authentically desire.
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As a society, we largely understand this — hence our reactions of repulsion to the landlord and CEO examples. But for some reason, when it comes to OnlyFans and the commercial sex industry, there’s a clear double standard. 
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Society is increasingly happy to accept and even celebrate the sex industry. Social media and mainstream TV are full of glamorized stories of women who went from making minimum wage to raking in millions on OnlyFans. And this, the popular narrative goes, is empowering to women. 
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But leveraging a woman’s economic need to coerce her into unwanted sex acts is not empowering. It’s exploitative. 
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It’s worth noting that very few women actually make good money on OnlyFans. In fact, the average creator earns only <a href="https://ofstats.net/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://ofstats.net/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781272699068000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0l8V_pf2M2tpDa38eGNlPj">$131 per month</a>. However, even if it were true that OnlyFans was the answer to women&#8217;s financial problems, the question becomes: How did we end up with a society where accepting sexual exploitation is a woman&#8217;s best option to support herself? 
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As Thorpe and the CNN note, the struggling economy certainly plays a role. But it’s far from the entire answer. If it&#8217;s just the economy, why aren’t men flocking to OnlyFans to make money? Why are the vast majority of people selling content on OnlyFans women and the vast majority purchasing content men? 
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This is about much more than the economy. It’s about a society that has commodified women as sex objects. A society that tells women their primary worth is in their ability — nay, their obligation — to please men sexually. And a society that withholds or grants financial rewards on the basis of women fulfilling that obligation.
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I’m reminded of a man who once said to me, “Pornography is empowering to women because it’s one of the only jobs where a woman can make more money than a man.” 
At the time, I was simply rendered speechless. But I’ve long wished I could go back and say what I really thought about his absurd argument.
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A world where the only way a woman can make more money than a man is to strip for those leering men is not a world that’s empowering to women. That’s not a system that was created by and for women. It’s a system that was created by and for men. 
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The hard truth is that the sex trade has always been a misogynistic industry whose sole purpose is to cater to male sexual entitlement. It has never been about what’s best for women. 
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Even the glamorized OnlyFans is not exempt from that fact. Diving deeper into common experiences on the platform <a href="https://endsexualexploitation.org/wp-content/uploads/Proof-Compilation_2023-DDL_OnlyFans.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://endsexualexploitation.org/wp-content/uploads/Proof-Compilation_2023-DDL_OnlyFans.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781272699068000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3cLJI5uYKuRHWXSWswjTXT">shows</a> creators face a <a href="https://endsexualexploitation.org/wp-content/uploads/Proof-Compilation_2023-DDL_OnlyFans.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://endsexualexploitation.org/wp-content/uploads/Proof-Compilation_2023-DDL_OnlyFans.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781272699068000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3cLJI5uYKuRHWXSWswjTXT">myriad of serious harms</a> at the hands of subscribers, pimps, traffickers, and even the OnlyFans corporation itself. These women deal with stalking, rape, abuse, threats of physical violence, financial exploitation, psychological manipulation, death, suicide, mental health harms — you name it. 
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Embracing the sex industry as “empowering” does not erase its fundamentally misogynistic and exploitative nature. It simply obscures it.
***
Lily Moric is the communications and content strategist with the <a href="https://x.com/NCOSE">National Center on Sexual Exploitation</a>, the leading national nonprofit organization exposing the links between all forms of sexual exploitation such as child sexual abuse, prostitution, sex trafficking, and pornography.
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The OnlyFans Success Story That’s Missing A Dark Reality

OnlyFans

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
Taylor Sheridan has discovered that his keyboard is a money-printing machine for both himself and Paramount+. From “Yellowstone” to “1883,” “Mayor of Kingstown,” and “Landman,” Sheridan has built a sprawling empire of gritty American archetypes: Montana ranchers, Oklahoma mobsters, Texas oil barons, and anyone else Hollywood might have deemed too working-class and out of touch with its consumer base of working-from-home metropolitans.
His latest work, “Dutton Ranch,” combines many of the best elements of “Yellowstone” without much of the whiny, self-aggrandizing nonsense that hampered the show in its later seasons. We get it, Monica: You are a proud Native American woman and think the loving multimillionaire ranching Dutton family you married into is a bunch of racist colonizers (thankfully, her character has not returned).
Kevin Costner’s gruff, commanding charisma is sorely missed, but the heart and soul of Sheridan’s cowboy universe was always Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser). I may be a stereotypical yuppie software engineer who has only once tried (unsuccessfully) to ride a horse, but most scenes with Rip leave me compelled to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-city-sold-me-the-dream-the-fine-print-changed-everything">sell the downtown condo</a>, buy a Stetson and a pickup truck, and move to a ranch.
Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly), meanwhile, returns as formidable as ever, but with a renewed sense of purpose. In the final seasons of “Yellowstone,” Sheridan seemed to lose sight of how to write her, reducing one of television’s more compelling characters to impulsive tirades and alcoholism. Her drinking alone could have kept Tito’s running. Here, she remains profane and ferocious, balancing farm-girl tenacity with Christian Louboutins and investment-banker shrewdness, but her fury is now directed toward securing a new life for herself and her husband.
Following the events that ended “Yellowstone,” Beth and Rip, along with their adopted son Carter, move to Texas to start over. It is a classic American story of settling somewhere unfamiliar, staking a claim, and trying to build something of your own despite hardship and hostility.
And there is no shortage of hardship. At one point, their cattle contract foot-and-mouth disease, threatening the ranch’s survival and forcing Rip into the brutal necessity of rounding up and shooting an entire doomed herd. Beth laments the toll it takes on him: “That man has lost more than he’d ever admit,” she says, adding, “He devoted his life to the Yellowstone. This was supposed to be his time, his ranch.” There is an important and subtly conveyed lesson here, that life is not fair, and no one is owed a reward merely because he has suffered nobly.
Among the most welcome additions to Sheridan’s world is Ed Harris as Everett McKinney, a gregarious, salt-of-the-earth veterinarian. But Sheridan does not write twee HGTV television that is set in the countryside. Problems are not confined to veterinary and agricultural woes; sooner or later, we expect our dose of extortion, corruption, and murder. In contrast to the power Rip and Beth held by association on “Yellowstone,” here in Texas they are newcomers, pitted against the established and crooked Jackson family, led by the ruthless matriarch Beulah Jackson, whose deep pockets seem to reach everywhere from the state cattle industry to the police force.
Though Sheridan is thankfully reluctant to sermonize about politics, his work remains beguiling fodder for conservatives. In this sense, he is the conservative answer to Darren Star. Where Star built fantasies around cosmopolitan women in couture navigating careers, brunch dates, and fleeting romances, Sheridan gives us ranchers, oil workers, and cowboys who grow thick beards, wake up at 3:30 AM, work with their hands, and have no use for LinkedIn or ChatGPT.
Of course, most of us are more comfortable admiring this life from afar. There is a running joke among watch enthusiasts that most people who buy “tool watches” — Rolex Submariners built for diving or Daytonas built for race car drivers timing laps — only ever use them as aesthetic props in office jobs. Many city truck owners rarely haul anything more demanding than groceries or their kids’ hockey equipment. How many Yeti cooler owners have been backcountry camping? Some would call such people posers. But we buy these things because they offer us a connection to worlds we lack the courage, will, or circumstances to enter. Sheridan’s heroes are compelling because they inhabit such lives.
As Beth and Rip fight to establish new roots, a parallel storyline follows Carter (Finn Little), who, for someone raised by Beth and Rip, ought to have more common sense than to cut school in pursuit of a shortcut to cowboying while strutting around after a pretty young blonde. But then again, he is a teenage boy, and in any skirmish between brains and pubescent hormones, the former has little hope.
There is palpable hardship in Carter’s circumstances. With his adoptive parents too busy fighting for the ranch to tend to his teenage angst, he develops a budding friendship with Dwight White (Ray McKinnon), a downtrodden cowboy of questionable judgment who keeps an African leopard on his property. But Dwight offers Carter a job and proffers some much needed counsel. “Growing up fast is highly overrated,” he tells him. Carter may be eager to leapfrog adolescence and become the man he imagines himself to be, but, Dwight warns, “You don’t realize how young you are until you’re old and realize it’s too late.”
Sheridan’s wrangler epics are like “Game of Thrones” with cattle and cowboys. They are action fantasies about the sorts of characters we aspire to be, or at least aspire to have in our lives: loyal, brave, stubborn men of action. If you haven’t yet seen “Yellowstone,” I would recommend watching the first three seasons for Costner’s aura alone. But “Dutton Ranch,” streaming new episodes on Prime through July, can be enjoyed in isolation. Sheridan’s great strength is crafting myths of large personalities against larger landscapes, all in pursuit of the American dream of carving out a life through grit and sacrifice. At its best, “Dutton Ranch” understands why that dream still has power for those of us watching from the comfort of our living rooms, far from the hard and unglamorous work that makes it possible.
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Harry Khachatrian (<a href="https://x.com/harry1t6">@Harry1T6</a>) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner. He is a software engineer, holds a master’s degree from the University of Toronto, and writes about wine at <a href="https://www.betweenbottles.com/">BetweenBottles.com</a>.

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Taylor Sheridan Saddles Up For Another Ride Through The American Myth

Amazon Prime

Taylor Sheridan

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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Since it premiered in 2019, HBO’s gritty teen drama “Euphoria” has angered both sides of the aisle for being either exploitative and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/apr/29/euphoria-season-3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">anti-feminist</a> or debauched and hedonistic. The show “appears to be overtly, intentionally, marketing extremely graphic adult content — sex, violence, profanity and drug use — to teens and preteens,” the Parents Television Council <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2629891/if-euphoria-is-meant-to-caution-teens-why-is-it-so-juvenile/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">warned</a> years ago. The anti-drug campaign DARE later <a href="https://www.today.com/popculture/tv/zendaya-responds-dres-claim-euphoria-glamorizes-drug-use-rcna15374" target="_blank" rel="noopener">weighed in</a> with a similar message.
In one episode alone, “Euphoria” infamously featured nearly 30 penises. I’ve <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2629891/if-euphoria-is-meant-to-caution-teens-why-is-it-so-juvenile/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">criticized</a> the <a href="https://spectator.com/article/is-euphoria-too-bleak-to-be-good/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">show</a> for its gratuitous content over the years. But after inundating its viewers with bloodied faces and dick pics and heroin needles, the show’s third and final season takes the only unexpected turn left: It’s all about the Bible.
This season, everybody is talking about the Old Testament. Nate, the jock with violent anger issues-turned real estate developer, quotes it in a courtroom: “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” Pimp and drug kingpin Alamo references the good book, saying he wants a Norman Rockwell, barefoot-and-pregnant-wife kind of lifestyle. “It’s biblical,” he says. Even our drug-addicted heroine, Rue, has a religious awakening while staring at a Joshua tree engulfed in flames like the burning bush.
There’s no doubt about it: An ancient religious text is driving the plot. But driving it where, exactly?
(Proceed with caution; spoilers abound).
Season 3 picks up five years after its predecessor, meaning the high school students are all in their early twenties. Indebted to her dealer, Rue is now a drug mule funneling balloons of fentanyl across the southern border inside her own body. One leaking balloon could kill her, and we watch as she checks, lubes up, gags on, and gulps down whole balloons to pay off her debts. Don’t do drugs, kids.
Meanwhile, she’s still meeting with her sponsor, Ali. She may be working as a drug mule, but she herself is getting clean. And thanks to his encouragement, she decides to get religious.
On her way back from a run in Mexico, Rue stays with a Christian homesteading family in Texas, and she can’t stop thinking about how happy they seemed.
“Religious people are happier,” Ali agrees. “That’s a fact.” (<a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/01/31/are-religious-people-happier-healthier-our-new-global-study-explores-this-question/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">It is</a>)
Rue raises the objection that she’s attracted to women; Ali, hoping to keep her curious about religion, says, “You could spend all day picking apart these books …. You either have faith, or you don’t have faith. Otherwise, you can argue about this sh*t forever.”
So Rue decides, then and there, to believe. Whether it works out for her is up to interpretation.
The show’s finale, which aired on Sunday, may have left viewers with more questions than answers. And some are infuriated with what they see as the show’s right-wing, MAGA turn.
“euphoria finale was good for the most part but i’m kind of floored by how wildly republican that last scene was,” one person <a href="https://x.com/legotrillermoth/status/2061300412242616590" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>.
“simply have to laugh at one of EUPHORIA&#8217;s big closing beats being an abandonment and rejection of Islam,” said <a href="https://x.com/roxana_hadadi/status/2061328497340293337" target="_blank" rel="noopener">another</a>.
“So did Euphoria just end on the point that Christianity, specifically the fundamentalist conservative kind, is the answer lol,” another <a href="https://x.com/jenny2x4/status/2061680427551920516" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wondered</a>.
Even before the finale, this season was overflowing with religious and conservative themes.
Nate ultimately dies from a rattlesnake bite, but more fundamentally, his death is caused by bureaucracy. He gets on the wrong side of some Armenian mobsters when he can’t pay back their loans after his construction project stalls. The reason? An endangered white fritillary flower was found on the site.
All he can do is hope the environmental impact study comes swiftly. He tries to propose working around the flowers, but Nate’s fate is sealed in a Los Angeles County courtroom with two words: “Motion denied.”
This season also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/onlyfans-creators-melt-down-after-euphoria-shows-what-it-really-looks-like" target="_blank" rel="noopener">angered</a> OnlyFans models who thought it made them look degenerate. One creator on the website <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@tmz/video/7629147910449433869" target="_blank" rel="noopener">suggested</a> that scenes of Nate’s fiancée, Cassie, dressed up as a sexy dog are simply reflective of Hollywood drama — and beneath the dignity of a real OnlyFans star.
But they weren’t the only ones upset. Commentator Megyn Kelly latched onto a clip in which Cassie, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sydney-sweeney-trolls-critics-with-racy-euphoria-finale-photos" target="_blank" rel="noopener">played by Sydney Sweeney</a>, dresses up as a sexy baby, calling it “sick.” But the characters in the show find it sick too, which is why Cassie stops creating that kind of “content” — at least temporarily.
It’s hard to watch this season and not take away that bureaucracy is actively evil, OnlyFans is depraved, and the Bible is worth reading. After cracking open Rue’s copy, one character gushes, “It’s kind of incredible actually, like you think it’d be boring, but there’s a lot of violence and sex.” Cassie stares in disbelief. “So there’s a new Bible?”
On top of all this, the show’s final moments are a searing indictment of everyone involved in the fentanyl crisis. After Alamo discovers that Rue has been working with the Drug Enforcement Administration, he gives her Percocet laced with fentanyl. She dies, as was heavily foreshadowed in the penultimate episode, before she has the chance to reunite with her family and friends and make a new life for herself. When Ali finds her lifeless body on his couch, Rue’s name becomes just the latest entry in the leather-bound book where he remembers all the young people he has tried, and failed, to help get clean.
“I used to believe that the world would be a better place if people could empathize with addiction,” he tells a support group. But empathy can also extend to a dealer selling drugs to feed his children. “Maybe the real disease,” Ali suggests, “is that people no longer know the difference between right and wrong. I don’t care what your struggles may be. You poison kids for money, you’re evil. It’s plain and simple.”
Show creator Sam Levinson reportedly originally had a different ending planned. But after the death of Angus Cloud, who played the lovable drug dealer Fez in the first two seasons, Levinson changed his mind. He, a former drug addict himself, helped get Cloud to rehab <a href="https://ew.com/tv/euphoria-sam-levinson-staged-intervention-rehab-for-angus-cloud-before-death/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">twice</a> before his overdose in 2023 at the age of 25. “Once he passed away, I had to reconceive of the script,” Levinson told the New York Times, “and I thought, you can’t tell a story about addiction today without the very real consequences. Most people don’t get a second chance.”
But that doesn’t mean Rue doesn’t find redemption; in her final moments, she imagines embracing her father, her mother, and Fez. Her death may be sudden and anticlimactic, which is why it’s riling up some fans, but it’s not unlike what happens to thousands of others who die of fentanyl every year.
“Fentanyl can just take you out in an instant,” Levinson said. “It wasn’t like when I was growing up; you could literally take pills off the street and you might have a bad trip or something, but you’d be fine. This is something that hits close to home for a lot of people in this country. So it felt like the responsible thing to do.”
Though Ali admits that Rue’s death has shaken his faith and he doesn’t know what to believe, what follows is an immensely entertaining cowboy Western-style shoot-out between Ali and Alamo, who gets what he deserves. It is Ali, not Rue, who visits the El Paso homestead on Jerusalem Road — wearing a Zion National Park hat. The show ends with a single word — &#8220;Amen&#8221; — and a shot of an American flag billowing in the prairie breeze.
You can read the ending as a stirring call to faith or as a nihilistic shrug; Rue never made it back, and Cassie is doubling down on her OnlyFans career. But as Cassie’s sister Lexi notes, the Bible is kind of the story of a lot of people dying while the living choose to keep moving forward. Levinson has also rejected the latter <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/god-of-euphoria-sam-levinson" target="_blank" rel="noopener">interpretation</a>, telling Tablet, “There’s plenty of nihilism in the world. I see ‘Euphoria’ largely as a rejection of it.”
After seven years, &#8220;Euphoria&#8221; is finally done flummoxing its fans and haters. We may continue to debate the finale for years to come, but it&#8217;s clear that the show isn&#8217;t glamorizing a lifestyle of limitless sex and drugs. And despite its many tragedies, it ends with a moment of hope.
“You know what I would find surprising?&#8221; the character Maddy says. &#8220;A little grace in this world.”
And surprise us, &#8220;Euphoria&#8221; has.

zendaya_5

Hollywood’s Most Sinful Show Ends With A Moral

Matt Brown, 42, the eldest brother of the &#8220;Alaskan Bush People&#8221; family, was found dead over the weekend in a Washington state river.
His brother Bear, 38, confirmed the loss in an emotional video on Saturday, sharing that the youngest brother, 33-year-old Noah, helped pull Matt out of the water and identified the body as his older brother. 
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&#8220;I would&#8217;ve never suspected he would&#8217;ve hurt himself,&#8221; Bear said in the video. &#8220;It does look as though the injury is self-inflicted.&#8221; The family is still waiting on the coroner&#8217;s report to confirm the cause of death.
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Matt&#8217;s body was discovered after a search that lasted several days.
Last week, the Okanogan County Sheriff&#8217;s Office <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1422965179869181&amp;set=a.227153996116978">posted</a> a press release that detailed a 911 call describing a man sitting in the shallow water of the Okanogan River. When the caller turned away, he heard a noise, and after turning back around, he saw that the man was face down in the water, drifting down the current. First responders were unable to locate the man, though a firearm was recovered where he was last seen.
In another <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DZBxxxVAuzD/?hl=en">post</a>, Bear shared a tribute on behalf of the whole family: &#8220;It is with broken hearts that we share the loss of our beloved son, brother, uncle, and friend, Matthew Brown. To millions of viewers, Matt was known as one of the original stars of Alaskan Bush People.&#8221;
&#8220;When we think of Matt, we will remember the young man who loved the wilderness, could navigate rough waters, draw for hours, lose himself in learning, make us laugh unexpectedly, and dream bigger than most people ever dared. He was imperfect. He was human. He was deeply loved. And he will be missed beyond words.&#8221;
The Discovery Channel&#8217;s “Alaskan Bush People,” which ran from 2014 to 2022, featured the Brown family and their unique lives off the grid in remote Alaska. 
Matt had reportedly grown estranged from the family in recent years and struggled with drug and alcohol addiction. <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DY0WjdBJnhc/?hl=en">According to Bear</a>, he &#8220;didn’t want anything to do with the family.&#8221;
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a free hotline for individuals in crisis or distress or for those looking to help someone else. It is available 24/7 by dialing 988.

Aerial photograph of alaskan river

‘Alaskan Bush People’ Star Found Dead In A River

Alaska

Death

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
Even if you&#8217;ve never seen &#8220;The Boys,&#8221; you’ve probably come across the face of Anthony Starr as Homelander, an evil parody of Superman. He gave us one last meme this past week as Amazon’s superhero series reached its conclusion after five seasons. In the climactic confrontation between the antihero Billy Butcher and Homelander, Homelander is stripped of his powers, exposed as a fraud on live television, and forced to grovel on his knees for his life — a plea that is not granted.
After his gruesome demise, is righteous order restored to the land? No. In a subsequent scene, the antihero Billy Butcher is murdered by another cynical comrade who once fought side by side with Billy in their rebellion. Fans of the show complained about its unsatisfactory ending, but this sense of emptiness and the nagging feeling of despair that linger even after the story has ended are actually the most appropriate feelings for the postmodern ideology on which this series was built.
&#8220;The Boys&#8221; is a textbook “deconstruct the superhero myth” trope, and it is far from being new or edgy. Arguably, the original and greatest of superhero-deconstruction stories was Alan Moore’s &#8220;Watchmen&#8221; comic book series, which debuted in 1986. In that same year, Frank Miller’s &#8220;The Dark Knight Returns&#8221; portrayed Superman as a dopey stooge for an evil President Ronald Reagan. The original source material for &#8220;The Boys&#8221; series was a comic book series that debuted in 2006.
All of these stories are motivated by the same core ethos of postmodern thought: the suspicion of power. Power corrupts, institutions lie, and every grand story you’ve been told about what’s “good and evil” is just propaganda written by the “oppressor” — this has been the “anti-story” of pop-culture postmodernism over the past 40 years. In this anti-story, there are no true virtuous heroes. The new “hero” is the anti-hero who exposes the lies, rages against the machine, and takes down the powerful.
The pitch is seductive because it isn&#8217;t entirely wrong. Power can, and often does, corrupt. Institutions regularly betray our trust. The heroes you once thought were Superman — whether it was a teacher, parent, pastor, or politician — can have moral failures. There really are Homelanders out there.
But here&#8217;s where &#8220;The Boys,&#8221; and the worldview it dramatizes, runs out of road.
What do you do after you expose Homelander? Now what? 
Who leads the rebuilding efforts after the ruin? Who flies into the burning building tomorrow? Who do the kids on the playground want to be when they grow up? The show has no answer because the worldview underneath it has no answer. 
Long before postmodernism moved into the pop culture mainstream, C.S. Lewis understood that the ideologies of deconstruction — whether Marxist, postmodern, or what many might call “wokism” today — ultimately fail. Lewis argued that we can only know a crooked line because we’ve seen a straight line, and being stuck trying to “see through” everything forever without ever seeing to something better was only a form of blindness. 
Deconstruction, treated as the only noble act, can never have a satisfactory ending. Why? Because it only knows that it should be against something; it is always in rebellion, always trying to expose and tear down. If you believe hierarchies are inherently oppressive, your rebellion never ends. There can never be an end like J.R.R. Tolkien’s &#8220;The Return of the King,&#8221; where a just and righteous king restores order to the land. You never get that original &#8220;Star Wars&#8221; trilogy moment when darkness is dispelled and the light redeems a fallen republic. 
The award-winning writer David Foster Wallace was well acquainted with the “patricidal” nature of the postmodern anti-story. He called living in this state of perpetual cynicism and deconstruction being stuck as a “third-world rebel.” The “third-world rebel” is permanently in opposition, permanently tearing down, and permanently incapable of building.
We’ve been stuck in this cultural anti-story for 40 years, and it is why so many people in our cultural moment feel exhausted without being able to name why. They&#8217;ve been handed an anti-story to live in that has only a critical mode. It can spot the lie in every institution, the power play behind every story, the manipulation in every appeal to virtue — and then it stands there in the rubble with nothing to offer. No next steps to a positive reconstruction. No vision of the good worth aspiring toward.
The good news is that something has begun to shift in our culture. People are tired of the endless cynicism and the perpetual rebellion sold to them as “progress.” Hopefully, &#8220;The Boys&#8221; finale is the last we see of the “deconstruct the superhero myth” genre for a long time. We’re ready for positive reconstruction and cultural renewal. 
But to get there, we have to be willing to take the risk of hope and faith again. We need to recover and retell stories of virtuous heroes, sacrificial saviors, and ordinary men and women who walk the path of light. We need more than just a Homelander to rail against; we need a Superman to aspire to.
***
Paul Anleitner is a cultural theologian whose work focuses on the role of culture and story in our quest for meaning. He is the author of “Based on a True Story: Vibe Shifts, the End of Deconstruction, and the Reboot of Meaning.”

Antony Starr (Homelander)

The Anti-Hero Era May Have Finally Gone Too Far

Amazon

Comics

Superheroes

Comedian and HBO host Bill Maher ripped into Democrats he said were too chicken to appear on his program, telling guest will.i.am that many in the party avoid any show unless they know beforehand they&#8217;ll be met with admiration rather than scrutiny.
The Black-Eyed Peas frontman asked Maher who, of all the people he hadn&#8217;t been able to sit down with, he&#8217;d most like to interview — and Maher explained that he&#8217;d found it far more difficult to book Democrats for his show lately.
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💥NEW: <a href="https://t.co/vbvHjsGjXV">https://t.co/vbvHjsGjXV</a>: “Who haven’t you interviewed that you want to interview?”
Bill Maher: “Ironically, mostly Democrats — because they’re such p*ssies they won’t come on the show … Democrats are p*ssies about going anywhere that they’re not already pre-adored.” <a href="https://t.co/IDcyRN3obT">pic.twitter.com/IDcyRN3obT</a>
— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) <a href="https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/2056323059775045648?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 18, 2026</a></blockquote>
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Maher began with a story about a guest from earlier that evening — a Republican congresswoman — and said that if he&#8217;d only read what was said about her in the media, he would have believed that she was stupid or &#8220;a hot head.&#8221;
&#8220;She&#8217;s not any of those things,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We don&#8217;t agree on many issues, but you know what? I always say it, everybody&#8217;s a monster till you talk to them.&#8221;
The rapper interjected then, asking, &#8220;Who haven&#8217;t you interviewed that you want to interview?&#8221;
&#8220;Mostly — ironically, mostly Democrats — because they’re such p*ssies they won’t come on the show. Like the Clintons. After — I mean, you know — Kamala. I voted for you,&#8221; Maher replied.
&#8220;Really? You haven&#8217;t interviewed them yet?&#8221; will.i.am said, clearly taken aback by the revelation.
&#8220;I would love to,&#8221; Maher said. &#8220;They — you know — Democrats are p*ssies about like going anywhere that they’re not already pre-adored. Not all of them, but some of them — Kamala Harris, I mean, I always say to my woke friends, &#8216;We voted for the same person, you&#8217;re just why she lost, okay? You&#8217;re a little too precious.'&#8221;

Bill Maher

‘They’re Such P*ssies’: Bill Maher Says He Can’t Find Democrats To Come On His Show Anymore

'They're Such P*ssies': Bill Maher Says He Can't Find Democrats To Come On His Show Anymore

comedian

Democrats

Politics

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
Ladies love the 1995 and 2005 film versions of &#8220;Pride and Prejudice.&#8221; Their timelessness has inspired a dedicated base of fans who prize the romantic, heartfelt relationships that have the time to build through character development and genuine affection. 
Both beloved films had very little kissing and zero sex scenes, as pro-life activist Lila Rose recently <a href="https://x.com/LilaGraceRose/status/2042280067758494013">noted,</a> yet they managed to become wildly popular. The 2005 &#8220;Pride &amp; Prejudice&#8220; starring Keira Knightley was a box office success, grossing $121.6 million over a $28 million budget. The 1995 &#8220;Pride and Prejudice&#8221; BBC miniseries starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle drew in about 10-11 million views per episode, selling 12,000 VHS copies within the first two hours of its release. 
But Hollywood’s latest attempts to take on 19th-century romance have repeatedly resulted in historically inaccurate, hypersexualized cinema that fails to hold up against the established classics.
The smutty Jane Austen knock-off show &#8220;Bridgerton&#8221; brags an expensive budget of $7 million per episode, but the sparkle of the show seems to be dwindling. Though the viewer numbers are still high, season 4 streams <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2026/02/11/bridgerton-season-4-viewership-drops-the-lincoln-lawyer-spikes-in-new-report/">dropped</a> 12% from season 3 as the repetitive “will-they-won’t-they have sex” plot becomes predictable to audiences.
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<div id="attachment_1096799" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1096799" class="size-medium wp-image-1096799" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/BRIDGERTON_406_Unit_11438R-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/BRIDGERTON_406_Unit_11438R-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/BRIDGERTON_406_Unit_11438R-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/BRIDGERTON_406_Unit_11438R-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/BRIDGERTON_406_Unit_11438R.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Liam Daniel/Netflix</div>
In &#8220;Bridgerton,&#8221; the highlight of the season is often a dramatic sex scene for the main lovers, reinforcing in women’s minds that satisfying and steamy sex is the reward one should be looking for in a relationship. According to the show, a good love story is all about physicality and satisfying lust. But in faithful Jane Austen adaptations, physical touch is rare. 
Romance is Darcy offering his hand as Elizabeth gets into the carriage, palms meeting during a dance, and, ultimately, the good character of Darcy slowly being revealed, leading to a mutual declaration of love after recognizing one another&#8217;s character flaws. Physical chemistry means little without the quick-witted interactions, brutal honesty, and the realization that Darcy is willing to go to great lengths to protect Elizabeth (and her family’s) reputation, even after she rejects him. 
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Mr. Darcy&#8217;s hand flex after holding Elizabeth&#8217;s hand 🥰<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PrideandPrejudice?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PrideandPrejudice</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/JaneAusten?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#JaneAusten</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/romance?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#romance</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/film?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#film</a> <a href="https://t.co/XJfdGi4Vse">https://t.co/XJfdGi4Vse</a> <a href="https://t.co/7FirXtmTqb">pic.twitter.com/7FirXtmTqb</a>
— Anonymous Galore / AG 🌺 (@AnonymousGalore) <a href="https://twitter.com/AnonymousGalore/status/1815717963175272450?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 23, 2024</a></blockquote>
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The works of Jane Austen demonstrate a much deeper sort of love than what is seen on screens today, which is why those renditions have a longevity few modern series will have. While the wave of Austen adaptations produced in the &#8217;90s and &#8217;00s evoked the maturation of characters and realistic proprieties of the day, today’s pieces such as &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hollywood-promised-a-love-story-what-it-delivered-was-something-else">Wuthering Heights</a>&#8221; or &#8220;Bridgerton&#8221; and its many copycats, prioritize graphic sex scenes and flashy costumes over story quality and true romance.
All of Jane Austen’s heroines have their own flaws, but there is character growth, usually brought about by the love interest of the heroine. Darcy highlights Elizabeth’s wrongful assumptions about him, and Elizabeth reprimands Darcy for his arrogance and pride. Austen understood that real love meant a willingness to call out one another’s misgivings and hold relationships to a higher standard. In the best relationships, both parties are bettered by each other. 
In &#8220;Pride and Prejudice,&#8221; Austen illustrates not only what good character in a man can look like, but also the type of love interest to avoid. Elizabeth’s younger sister Lydia causes a scandal when she runs away with the deceitful Wickham, thinking marriage will soon follow. How many young women today let themselves follow a man with the promise of a “one day” that is never to come?
Running off with a man you aren’t married to isn’t the scandal it was in the 1800s, but Austen seems to tell her readers they can hope for better than Wickham. A man may be charming, handsome, and flirtatious, but that’s not what makes him worthy. A worthy man recognizes his flaws, seeks to redeem broken situations, and protects the dignity and heart of the woman he loves. 
In an age where loneliness is on the rise and women are feeling disenchanted by dating and marriage, it’s time to evaluate what expectations are being promoted within our culture that may be leading them to feel unfulfilled or heartbroken. 
A &#8220;Bridgerton&#8221;-style relationship based on lust will not lead modern women to satisfying romantic relationships. Women need men with good character; they need men like those written by Jane Austen. The more we show healthy relationships in media, the better we are as a culture. Perhaps there’s a chance for life to imitate art?
***
Ali Holcomb is the communications adviser at Advancing American Freedom Foundation. Julia Jensen is the communications assistant at Advancing American Freedom Foundation.

GettyImages-56013323

What ‘Bridgerton’ Gets Wrong That ‘Pride And Prejudice’ Got Perfectly Right

Hollywood

Movies

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
It has long been a truth universally acknowledged that a scholarly, studious, or socially awkward young woman must be transformed before she can woo suitors into asking her to prom. From Olivia Newton-John’s Sandy in “Grease” to the late-’90s teen classic “She’s All That,” the glasses must be tossed aside in lieu of contacts. The hair must come down. The sensible shoes must be replaced with six-inch, red-bottomed stilettos. Only then may she be presented to the world as beautiful, desirable, and worthy of male attention.
This familiar glow-up trope is cleverly resisted in the BBC’s adaptation (available for streaming on Amazon Prime) of Janice Hadlow’s “The Other Bennet Sister,” an imagined parallel life for Jane Austen’s most overlooked Bennet daughter, Mary. The series is not an imitation of Austen, nor does it presume to tell us what Austen really intended for her most solemn and least celebrated sister. Rather, it imagines how Mary might have found her own way through the unforgiving constraints of Regency society after a lifetime of being treated as the family disappointment. As a lover of Austen’s novels, I suspect she herself would have enjoyed it; I don’t think there can be a higher compliment.
In Austen’s original novel, Mary Bennet is remembered as little more than the pious and pedantic middle sister who meanders feebly at the piano and lacks the beauty or wit of her sisters. The BBC’s adaptation begins with that familiar figure but asks what sort of inner life might exist beneath the awkwardness.
Portrayed charmingly by Ella Bruccoleri, Mary is curious, earnest, bookish, and she is content to spend her leisure consuming tomes of nonfiction: geology, history, and whatever other volumes might shield her from a world in which she has never quite belonged. Eventually, she moves to London to live with her aunt, Mrs. Gardiner, played by Indira Varma, with precisely the sort of benevolent wisdom Austen gives her in the novel. There, Mary works as a governess and begins, at last, to grow beyond the cramped emotional confines of her trying mother’s nest.
Even Penelope Featherington, in her season of “Bridgerton,” had her hair redone in flattering curls and traded her pastel dresses for a more alluring and seductive silhouette before Colin Bridgerton finally gave her the time of day. “The Other Bennet Sister” takes a gentler and more interesting route.
A pivotal moment comes when Mrs. Gardiner takes Mary to the haberdashery and encourages her to design her own dress. Mary, having slowly mustered some confidence, channels all her wallflower eccentricity into a design she dreams up herself, blissfully indifferent to the fashions contouring society gatherings. The point is not that she will turn every head at the next masquerade ball. It is that the dress is distinctly hers, and she is not shy about it. Mrs. Gardiner does not drag Mary from her mother’s influence merely to place her in the orbit of a future husband. She gives her the freedom to develop taste, preference, and judgment of her own.
It is here that the series triumphs. Romance still matters — this is still the Jane Austen Cinematic Universe — but it is not pursued as a means to an end. Before Mary can be loved properly, she must first accept that happiness is not a privilege reserved for conventionally comelier girls. “Our happiness is in our own hands,” Mr. Collins, strongly cast here as Ryan Sampson, tells her in a poignant scene, and Mary takes the lesson to heart.
Only once she begins to believe this do suitors of substance begin to recognize her. Midway through the series, she encounters William Ryder, played by Laurie Davidson, a kind of Regency bohemian who introduces her to the idea of indulging her impulses. He is charming, unconventional, and exactly the sort of figure who might tempt a woman like Mary into mistaking libertinism for liberation. But it is ardent romantic Tom Hayward, played with endearing conviction by Dónal Finn, who truly appreciates Mary as she is.
That balance is what makes the adaptation work. Mary is not transformed into a spectacled facsimile of Elizabeth Bennet. Nor is she grafted onto some feminist iconoclast, misunderstood only because the world was too cruel to appreciate her brilliance. She remains awkward, self-serious, and frequently absurd.
In that sense, “The Other Bennet Sister” succeeds because it does not flatter its heroine by pretending she was perfect all along. It insists that imperfection is not the same thing as unworthiness. Mary Bennet does not need a makeover. She needs room to make her own choices, occasionally err, and be loved without becoming someone else.
It is not the conventional conceit of Jane Austen’s novels, but if the author of “Persuasion” and “Pride and Prejudice” were around today, I believe she would approve. The series speaks to contemporary anxieties about self-worth and reinvention while remaining close enough to Austen’s moral universe to feel like a contemporary continuation. In a culture fixated on superficial perfection — from gratuitous Botox injections to whatever deranged absurdities “LooksMaxing” entails — “The Other Bennet Sister” offers the more compelling proposition that perhaps Mary Bennet was never the “other” sister; she was only waiting for someone to look at her long enough to notice.
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Harry Khachatrian (<a href="https://x.com/harry1t6">@Harry1T6</a>) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner. He is a software engineer, holds a master’s degree from the University of Toronto, and writes about wine at <a href="https://www.betweenbottles.com/">BetweenBottles.com</a>.

The Other Bennet Sister New York Premiere

The Jane Austen Twist Taking Aim At Modern Beauty Culture

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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Laura Ingalls Wilder fans, myself included, have awaited Netflix’s new version of her iconic &#8220;Little House on the Prairie&#8221; story with both trepidation and tempered excitement. When the show airs on July 9, will it be a close adaptation to the novel? Will it incorporate more of the history of the real Ingalls family? Will it resemble the 50-year-old series directed by and starring Michael Landon? 
As a scholar of both Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, I’ve placed my cautious hopes on fidelity to the books with inclusions of details from real life that Wilder chose to leave out of her novels. Netflix’s teaser for its new version of “Little House on the Prairie,” released Monday, provides enough tantalizing scenes to make both fans of the books and fans of the original series wonder about the show’s direction and overall vision. It’s an intriguing bite, promising some fidelity to the novel but also completely new story lines. Despite my personal preference for faithful book adaptations, I’m willing to give it a chance.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Here is your first official look at Little House on the Prairie.
Meet the Ingalls family as they discover what “home” really means. Little House on the Prairie, based on the beloved books, premieres July 9, only on Netflix. <a href="https://t.co/epUjaJL3RG">pic.twitter.com/epUjaJL3RG</a>
— Netflix (@netflix) <a href="https://twitter.com/netflix/status/2043705772215865730?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 13, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Appropriately enough, Laura’s voiceover begins with the same phrase that opens &#8220;Little House in the Big Woods,&#8221; the first novel in the autobiographical fiction Little House series, written by Laura Ingalls Wilder in 1932: &#8220;Once upon a time&#8230;&#8221; Beginning the novel and now the new series with these words evokes a fairy tale quality, which the video sequence and the music behind the words support. So far, so good. Laura’s voiceover offers a preview of the new series that is an apt summary of the book:
<blockquote>Once upon a time, Ma and Pa and Mary and Laura left the Big Woods of Wisconsin and moved to the prairie, where a new life was waiting for them. Every day and every night was an adventure. And even though they were all alone, and very small against the sky and the stars, they were happy because they were a family – and they were together.</blockquote>
The video sequence depicts the Ingalls family leaving the Big Woods by wagon, majestic scenes of a prairie with a river cutting through it, and a town teeming with people where the Ingalls girls, wearing straw hats, step out of their covered wagon and into the dusty streets. Laura exchanges glances with another child, perhaps meant to be from the Osage tribe, and Mary shares a longing look with a teenaged boy. Other scenes feature Laura and Pa running through a cornfield, Pa and Ma rolling a log, probably to build their cabin, and Pa joyfully swinging Ma around inside the completed “little house.” The emotional roller coaster continues as Pa looks at a distraught Ma with tears in his eyes and the girls giggle while wearing flower crowns. The final scenes show the Ingalls family around a campfire against the backdrop of an enormous Kansas sky filled with stars while Pa plays his fiddle. All in all, more positives than negatives.
The teaser is a complete package, introducing the characters, the story background, the location, and important themes of adventure, isolation (despite the town scene), family togetherness, and love. The music is fast-paced and vaguely 19th-century in tone, while the scenes form a rapid montage of both iconic and tantalizing images proclaiming that this version of “Little House on the Prairie” is something altogether new, neither a “by the book” rendition nor a reboot of the classic series that premiered in 1974 and lasted for 12 years.
Predictably, fans of both the books and the classic series have raised calls of alarm over the Netflix trailer and details that have leaked out. On the “Little House on the Prairie” Facebook group page, members declare their undying loyalty to the original series, expressing doubt that departing from Michael Landon’s story lines will benefit the new show. 
Some posts declare it scandalous that the Olesons don’t appear to be part of the Netflix series. Never mind that the Oleson family is not introduced in the &#8220;Little House on the Prairie&#8221; novel, only in the following book, &#8220;On the Banks of Plum Creek,&#8221; where they own the town mercantile. A “Little House” show without Harriet, Nels, Nellie, and Willie is beyond imagination for Landon “Little House” loyalists, as is a town that is not Walnut Grove, Minnesota. But the original television series sowed the seeds of its fans&#8217; confusion regarding the location and storyline of the Netflix version of “Little House on the Prairie.” It used the title Wilder employed for her book about the Ingalls’ pioneer days in Kansas, but centered the story on Wilder’s book about the family’s years along Plum Creek in southwest Minnesota, near the town of Walnut Grove.
Laura fans (many of whom happily call themselves “bonnetheads”) are hoping for a rendition of the story that runs much closer to the Little House books or the real lives of the Ingalls family than that offered by Michael Landon. However, the Netflix trailer appears to reveal a different intent. There are some bothersome inconsistencies with the novel. Netflix Mary’s hair is definitely not blonde. The girls should be wearing cloth bonnets, not straw hats. Their ages are all wrong, and where is Baby Carrie?
Both sets of Laura fans have missed the pivotal moment in cultural literacy that the Netflix series represents.  The “Little House” story and characters have become so iconic since their first appearance in 1932 that the details of how the story is told can be changed without altering the characterization, the overarching story, and, most importantly, its themes or lessons. 
The themes of all three “Little House on the Prairie” versions are the same: simple, family-focused pleasures and adventures in a new land of opportunity that will require hard work and perseverance from its new residents. In a speech to the Detroit Book Fair in 1937, Laura Ingalls Wilder explained her motivation for writing the Little House series. “I wanted the children now to understand more about the beginning of things, to know what is behind the things they see — what it is that made America as they know it.”
Based on the just-released teaser, Netflix’s version of “Little House on the Prairie” seems poised to tell Wilder’s story, though the strands it weaves together might not be the same ones used by Michael Landon in the original television series or by Wilder herself. Even for a purist like myself, Netflix’s new way of telling an old story might be just right.
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Dedra McDonald Birzer is director and editor-in-chief at the South Dakota Historical Society Press and a lecturer in history at Hillsdale College. She serves on the executive boards of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Pageant Society and the Middle West Review. She is currently writing an intellectual biography of Rose Wilder Lane.

Little House on the Prairie

A Beloved Pioneer Story Returns, But Early Clues Suggest A Different Direction

Books

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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The buzzy new Apple TV series “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” didn&#8217;t seem poised to be appreciated by conservatives. The show’s premise of a single mom making money on OnlyFans felt icky, leading me to tune in out of morbid curiosity more than expecting any kind of solid entertainment. The near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score from critics did nothing to alter my preconceived notions; if anything, it made me even more skeptical. We all know how mainstream media critics think.
So imagine my surprise when I found myself not only rooting for Margo (played brilliantly by Oscar and Emmy nominee Elle Fanning), but also agreeing with her on major social issues such as abortion and the transformative power of motherhood. I kept thinking, “Wait, this is Apple TV?”
The series follows a first-year college student who becomes pregnant after having an affair with her married professor. I knew based on the show’s synopsis that she would not choose abortion, but what I could not anticipate was how little she even considered it.
The cheating professor immediately offers to “support” Margo after she informs him about the pregnancy, hurrying to suggest that she go to Planned Parenthood, not “some cheap clinic.” Margo looks on in confusion, then accuses him: “Sounds like you’ve made my decision.” 
The awkward professor quickly backtracks with platitudes about it being her body and her choice while still making it clear what his preference is. 
“Terminating a life, that’s something to think about,” Margo tells the professor. 
In the same episode, Margo gets an ultrasound and hears her baby’s heartbeat as tears run down her face. She gazes in wonder at the printed ultrasound photo.
Margo’s mother, Shyanne (Michelle Pfeiffer), is similarly unhappy about Margo’s decision to have the baby, despite also being a single mother after having a one-night stand. “You kept me,” Margo points out, to which her mom really has no good response.
When Shyanne asks if Margo loves the professor, she says she doesn’t. But she also decides, “For whatever reason, I want this baby. I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
Predictably, Margo gets pushback from her roommates, with the most vocal among them haughtily complaining that Margo was “supposedly a feminist” and asking “what message is she sending?” by keeping the baby. That same roommate turns out to be a villain later on when she abruptly moves out, leaving Margo with a heavier burden of rent. 
Margo debates internally but decides pretty quickly that she’s going through with the pregnancy despite having zero support from her mother, her friends, or the child’s father. And yet, she is undoubtedly the protagonist of this story and arguably the most sane among them.
Only three episodes out of eight have been released so far, and the series has only begun dabbling in the OnlyFans territory, which is broached after Margo loses her job due to not having reliable childcare. There’s still a chance this show could go off the rails and become a subtle advertisement for online prostitution in the face of financial hardship. 
But even if it does, “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” has done something that few modern shows have attempted in a long time. Instead of glorifying abortion and careerism, it’s showing a young woman who chose motherhood even when her entire support network told her it would ruin her life.
The series depicts the messy, uncomfortable side of single parenthood; Margo’s son Bodhi is colicky and constantly crying, he won’t latch, and she’s forced to drop out of school after he’s born. For some reason, she’s dropping $200-plus on diapers every week. 
But despite all this, the young mother still looks at her son lovingly and calls him “beautiful.” Throughout the first three episodes, she never once questions if she made the right choice when she decided not to end his life in the womb.
It’s refreshing to see this perspective coming out of Hollywood. Maybe the world really is healing after all.

Margos_Got_Money_Troubles_Photo_010201

Series Goes Off Script When A Professor Suggests Abortion

Abortion

Culture

Motherhood

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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In the golden age of early 2000s sitcoms, &#8220;Malcolm in the Middle&#8221; stood out like a middle finger in polite society. It was because of its messy, working-class, irreverent humor that it did so well with audiences.
Hal and Lois, the show’s chaotic married couple, were not enlightened parents dispensing wisdom to their well-behaved children. They were exhausted, flawed people barely clinging on in a house of four feral boys: Malcolm, Reese, Dewey, and Francis.
The show didn’t take itself too seriously. It mocked political correctness, it questioned both politeness and authority. It showed that actions do, in fact, have consequences. And, importantly, it bucked the idea that anyone — child, adult, or otherwise — deserved kid-glove treatment.
Everyone and everything was fair game. In &#8220;Malcolm in the Middle,&#8221; there were no sacred cows.
And yet, watching Hulu’s 2026 &#8220;Malcolm in the Middle&#8221; reboot, you’d <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/malcolm-in-the-middle-reboot-hit-with-backlash-over-woke-changes">never know</a> this was once the case. Unfortunately, like other failed Disney shows that have come before, the new &#8220;Malcolm in the Middle&#8221; is a Trojan horse for contemporary progressive ideology.
In the first episode of the four-episode revival, it managed to shoehorn in both gay and transgender characters. The most notable being Malcolm’s youngest sister, Kelly, a sullen teenager who happens to be “non-binary” and uses “they/them” pronouns.
Kelly’s inclusion was inspired by the show’s creator and his wife’s own family, where they proudly claim to have “three queer kids,” believing this is a feature of a normal American family. They couldn’t be more wrong, of course.
But, the tragedy of this development is twofold. First, Kelly is not a character. She is evidently a vehicle used by the writers to virtue signal and lecture audiences. But, more importantly, in the original series, Lois continually fantasized about having a daughter after having (eventually) five sons.
Turning the long-awaited daughter into a pronoun lesson truly flattens her existence into propaganda. And there is something truly grotesque about taking a main character’s greatest wish and turning it into a malformed 2026 talking point.
One whole episode in the OG show is dedicated to Lois imagining her life with girls instead of her unruly boys. In the end, she realizes she loves her sons, and girls would just be a different flavor of chaos. But, her desire persists. 
And it is this dynamic that makes Lois’s final pregnancy in the 2006 finale of the show so exciting. It is her last chance to have a girl. And as viewers, we are left to ponder how this pregnancy turned out — if Lois was gifted yet another little boy or if she was finally given her dream of a little girl.
Well, we get that answer in the reboot. And it comes in the form of teenage Kelly, who inevitably delivers a sombre speech during the reboot’s final episode, where she describes feeling “wrong” since she was a child. In a bizarre turn of events, the response from her family is more or less one of acceptance. This simply isn’t &#8220;Malcolm in the Middle.&#8221;
The non-binary sibling isn&#8217;t comic relief or a catalyst for family dysfunction like it would have been in the original show. This character is simply a vehicle for representation, complete with Hal awkwardly practicing pronouns and the family acknowledging the revelation with solemn nods.
Lois, the same woman who once quite literally wrestled her sons into submission, apparently accepts &#8220;they/them&#8221; pronouns, rather than dragging her child back to reality? Where&#8217;s the screaming? The grounding? The classic Lois line that cuts through the bull?
The original &#8220;Malcolm in the Middle&#8221; thrived on mockery. It took shots at everything: the education system, corporate drones, life in middle America, even its own characters&#8217; flaws. People retroactively view the show as progressive because it wasn’t &#8220;homophobic,&#8221; but it never treated sexuality or identity as sacred ground either.
It constantly poked fun at both ends of the spectrum, mocking pretension wherever it appeared, like Malcolm’s intellectual superiority and posturing, while simultaneously poking fun at dysfunction, such as Hal’s midlife crises or Lois’s ego.
It would have absolutely taken great delight in poking fun at an absurd social contagion such as “non-binary” identity.
&#8220;Malcolm in the Middle&#8221; wasn’t really a show for learning a tidy lesson because real life in that household was too chaotic and messy for after-school preaching.
And all of this is one of the biggest reasons why Disney’s reboot factory leaves so much to be desired. Frankensteining a franchise is a tenet of modern media. But in reanimating the corpses of beloved 2000s intellectual property always results in the same disappointing, lifeless snoozefest, complete with 2026 moralizing.
These corpses could never compete with the originals because they fundamentally lack the ability to laugh at themselves that marked so much of early 2000s entertainment. Today, instead of telling realistic stories, shows must tick boxes when it comes to diversity, sexuality, and representation.
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Sydney Watson (<a href="https://x.com/SydneyLWatson">@SydneyLWatson</a>) is a YouTuber and political commentator.

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