Not all stories are rosy. The beti is often the victim, and popular media has finally stopped sanitizing that. In Trial by Fire (Netflix), the father’s grief over losing his daughter in the Uphaar tragedy is a raw, violent scream. In Darlings (Netflix), the mother-daughter duo takes center stage, but the implied father-figure (the corrupt cop) represents the external patriarchal rot. However, the most shocking depiction came from the Malayalam film The Great Indian Kitchen (which went viral on OTT), where the father sits silently while the system destroys his daughter. His silence is complicity. Entertainment is now asking: Is a passive father worse than an aggressive one?