The Brett Cooper Show
Why Apple Shelved This Show After Charlie Kirk's Death | Episode 136
17 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What was the initial reception of the Netflix show 'Adolescence'?
All right, so do you guys remember that Netflix show, Adolescence, that basically everyone on the left was praising last year for being so incredibly revolutionary? It was about a young boy who was radicalized by all the things that he was watching online that he was driven to murder his classmate.
And basically, the moral of this entire TV show was that if your kid watches content like Andrew Tate, then this is how he will end up. Conservatives are evil. Men are bad. The manosphere content is the worst thing that could ever happen to the world. It is the most dangerous ideology that our society faces. That was the message of this TV show.
show adolescents, and the left in Hollywood, I mean, guys, last year, they were tripping over themselves, talking about the show, talking about how important it was, and it won eight Emmy Awards, eight.
And I guarantee that would have not been the case if they had talked about, say, the radicalization of porn, the politicized LGBTQ community, but we will get to that, because obviously this is political, and obviously it is slanted.
Now, fast forward to fall of 2025, and Hollywood's next great hit was going to be an Apple TV original series about a suburban mom who infiltrates online hate groups in an effort to stop domestic extremists before they act. Then, obviously, in September, Charlie Kirk was shot. And within days, interestingly, Apple quietly decided to shelve the show for the time being.
And immediately, this broke open tons of speculation online due to how anticipated this show was and rumors over why the show specifically was shelved ran rampant. And based on what we know, the most plausible reason for why is because it would have exposed Hollywood for being completely delusional and totally off base. And number two, because it would have obviously been incredibly distasteful.
Somebody commented at the time back in September and said they canceled it without admitting it because it focused exclusively on right-wing terrorism right after a leftist terrorist assassinated Charlie Kirk. Hope this helps.
Somebody else said, Apple, is it true that you wanted to base the villain on a Charlie Kirk type and that you birthed the show because Kirk was assassinated due to his villainization by liberals and liberal media? And the person said, LMAO, that's how you know it was just pure liberal propaganda. Yeah, like wouldn't
right then in September be the right time to release a show about the dangers of extremism, the dangers of domestic terrorism, or is there something that you're not telling us? Now for some people, they didn't care about any of this. They actually saw Apple shelving the show as them being scared of conservatives.
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Chapter 2: How did Charlie Kirk's assassination impact Hollywood's narrative?
We're on the verge of serious violence. I've been watching him for a year and a half. He's recruiting for something. I don't know what it is, but it's massive.
This guy isn't just planning violence. He's out to make a statement. All right, so I'm going to pause the trailer right there because I think you guys get the gist of the story. It is a mother, a seemingly normal suburban mom, but by night she infiltrates extremist groups to try to stop these attacks from happening. And you might have
noticed throughout the trailer that it seems like all of the villains are one type of person, one gender, one race. It is certainly slanted in this way. And so from the jump, before the show was even shelved, people noticed a very clear slant. Somebody commented and said, to be fair, this is the most work straight white male actors have had in a decade.
Another person said, it looks like somebody made a parody of 2020 Hollywood. And then another person said, by day, she's the high-powered head of HR with a loving stay-at-home husband and beautiful biracial children. By night, she fights an unseen war against misinformation and bigotry, fact-checking social media and moderating over 109 subreddits.
Chapter 3: Why did Apple decide to shelve 'The Savant'?
She is the Karen. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Very accurate. Like, if you look at the comments under the trailer, almost all of them are making some joke about this woman being a fictitious, exaggerated, dark version of a Karen. Like, this is Karen, final boss.
Anyway, the day after Apple announced that the show was gonna be shelved, again, in a very lukewarm way, not offering any kind of reasons why, Jessica Chastain, who is the creator, the executive producer, the star, she made it very clear, abundantly clear, that she did not agree with Apple TV's decision. And in fact, she went so far as to make a post. saying so.
She said, I want to say how much I value my partnership with Apple. They have been incredible collaborators and I deeply respect their team. That said, I wanted to reach out and let you know that we are not aligned on the decision to pause the release of The Savant. All right, now this next part of the tweet is really important because this gives us allegedly some insight into the show.
So she says, in the last five years since we've been making the show, we've seen an unfortunate amount of violence in the United States. She's giving all of these as examples. These incidents, though far from encompassing the full range of violence witnessed in the United States, illustrate a broader mindset that crosses the political spectrum and must be confronted.
It's bipartisan, is what she's saying. I've never shied away from difficult subjects, and while I wish that the show was not so relevant, unfortunately it is. The Savant is about the heroes who work every day to stop violence before it happens, and honoring their courage feels more urgent than ever.
While I respect Apple's decision to pause the release for now, I remain hopeful that the show will reach audiences soon. Until then, I'm wishing safety and strength for everyone, and I will let you know if and when The Savant is released." So again, she released this the day after Apple shelved the show.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the show's focus on extremism?
And so initially, I read that. I thought, okay, well, this is interesting. Maybe this was about all extremism in the United States and not just a hit piece on white straight men or conservative males. But my feelings of that nature did not last for long because a journalist who did see the show, who got a preview before it was supposed to be released to audiences,
made it clear in an article that it was, in fact, a hit piece on straight white men. And in this most important paragraph, the author writes, having watched the eight episode series for review, which was set to be under embargo until September 25th, it's clear that The Savant is precisely the type of show America needs right now.
It looks at a sector of mostly white male individuals who believe that America belongs to them. Fueled by hate, bigotry, xenophobia, and misogyny, they talk cruelly and candidly online about enacting harm and violence towards individuals or others who they feel are unworthy of being in their country.
Nowhere in the show does it mention Donald Trump's name, and other than depicting white nationalists in a negative light, The Savant is a straightforward, non-controversial character study and a well-paced thriller about one woman trying to stop domestic terrorism. I mean, that paragraph is just one big contradiction. It's so straightforward.
They don't even mention Donald Trump, even though we are making a caricature of all of his supporters, even though we are cherry-picking one specific type of extremism that we don't like. It's totally straightforward. It's not political at all. It's gonna be great. It's not controversial in the slightest. I mean, you are seeing the kind of made up reality that these people live in.
Interestingly, this entire show and this character that Jessica Chastain is playing, it was based on an article from 2018, Any True Story, which was also very anti-white man. So this is the article that the entire show stems from. It reads, is it possible to stop a mass shooting before it happens?
You've never heard of her, but somewhere in America, a top-secret investigator known as the Savant is infiltrating online hate groups to take down the most violent men in the country. Cosmopolitan, okay, goes undercover as she races to get ahead of the next large-scale attack. Great, hard-hitting journalism.
And they write, an elite investigator who tracks angry men, online, angry men, she's known to some in her field as the Savant because of her uncanny ability to suss out when exactly hate speech will morph into violent action. And then the article goes on to discuss the internet savant's most pressing interest, the specific cohort that she looks at.
But lately, Kay's focus has been pulled towards the alt-right, a younger, more misogynistic version of the white supremacist movement that's converting a new generation on message boards and social media. She is tracking the men who hate women, and they're so dangerous that most of her family and friends don't even know what she does.
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