Drama
Virgin River
This show has become a sensation on Netflix—and it’s cleaner than some. But before you walk into this small town, know that not everything is fit for families.
Every year, Preston flies from New York to Montana for a birthday trip to see his brother, Paul, and to enjoy some fly fishing. And every year, he calls his wife, Stacy, to tell her how beautiful it is and how she and the kids should join him.
Every year, Stacy reminds Preston that New York is how Preston earns his money. It’s where his grandkids are. And besides all that, his daughters and granddaughters are all city folk who’d spend the whole time out there complaining that Uncle Paul’s cabin doesn’t have an indoor bathroom.
No, Preston couldn’t get his family out there for 30 years.
And then he and Paul died.
It was a plane crash, the authorities said, caused by a surprise storm that caught the brothers off guard. And they need Stacy to fly out to identify the bodies.
And so Preston finally gets his wish. His family comes to the place he begged them to experience. And all it cost him was his life.
Stacy looks around Paul’s homestead, and she finds a journal Preston had spent those decades writing in. It’s half how-to survival guide, half a collection of his thoughts—writings about the places he discovered in rural Montana with which he fell in love.
And as Stacy reads the entries, she decides her future. She’ll trade Madison Square Garden for the Madison River.
“How can I say goodbye when there’s still more to know?” Stacy says to her eldest, Abigail. “I’m gonna take this book, and I’m gonna visit every place he wrote about … I’m gonna do what he begged me to do for 30 years. I’m gonna finally see this place.”
Paramount+’s The Madison is a part-drama, part-comedy take on the sheltered New Yorker stereotype.
The drama, of course, comes from Preston’s sudden death and Stacy’s difficulty in coming to terms with his passing. She goes through waves of grief and anger alike—sometimes directed at those around her who she believes aren’t showing the proper amount of reverence for the man she married. But several of these moments of somber reflection are well-crafted, sure to bring a tear to a viewer’s eye.
The comedy of the series comes at the expense of Stacy’s children and grandchildren, who come across as upper-class snobs. They’ve been in the concrete jungle so long they aren’t kidding when they say they don’t remember the last time they saw a sunset.
They’re foils to Kurt Russell’s Preston, who simply cannot get enough of the beautiful Montana landscape. But regardless of how much they come to appreciate it, Stacy is adamant that they’re going to learn how to live in it—all supposedly in honor of her now-late husband, who we’ll continue to see in later episodes through flashback memories.
Still, while The Madison comes with touching moments on marriage and grief, so too does it bring some problems that its audience will need to consider.
The most common content concern is heavy crude language, including the f- and s-words and misuses of God’s name. Some sexual banter shows up, too—and when one of the women gets stung in the rear by hornets who’ve made the outhouse their new home, we see her naked rear and hear plenty of comments on the rest of her anatomy, too.
In other words, The Madison is something like rural Montana—beautiful in parts, but dangerous in others.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
When Stacy learns of her husband’s death, she uproots her family to Montana to identify the body and explore the land he loved so much.
There’s a passing reference to sex. Preston talks about getting his wife into a tent in order to have sex with her. When Preston talks of a place having “virgin waters” for fishing, Stacy jokes, “Oh, now there’s virgins involved?” In a flashback, Stacy takes a bath, though nothing critical can be seen.
We watch Preston and Paul’s plane as it careens towards the ground. Later, Stacy identifies the bodies, though we only see her looking into the unzipped body bags. A robber punches a woman in the face and steals her bags—and the resulting injury requires stitches. People discuss a women’s center offering “reproductive care,” often a euphemism for abortion.
People drink wine and liquor.
We hear the f-word nine times and the s-word eight times. We also hear “d–n” and “h—.” God’s name is used in vain seven times, including one instance paired with “d–n.” Jesus’ name is likewise used in vain five times.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He’s also an avid cook. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
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