Riches To Rags / Live-Action TV

Riches to Rags in Live-Action television series

• 2 Broke Girls: Caroline Channing is the daughter of a Bernie Madoff Expy. She used to live in a mansion, have fancy clothes, and owned a horse. At the start of the series, she has no money and is left homeless after her father is convicted for his crimes. But she still has a horse.
• Arrested Development: The Bluths go this way in the series' first episode. Mitch Hurwitz even pitched the show as "a riches-to-rags family".
• Arrowverse:
  • Tommy Merlyn is thrown when his father, Malcolm, cuts him off, thinking it's the best way to get Tommy to grow up, forcing Tommy (who loves a rich playboy life) to adapt.
  • Oliver Queen, also a billionaire, loses his wealth and his family's company, thanks to Slade Wilson's revenge.
  • Ray Palmer starts out as a well-known tech billionaire. He ends up leaving Palmer Tech to join the Legends, putting Felicity in charge of the company. She ends up spending more time focusing on Team Arrow and nearly runs the company into the ground. The board votes her out. When Ray comes back in Season 3, he's no longer the golden boy and is forced to work for a second-rate start-up, whose boss is about half his age and couldn't care less about Ray's inventions, if they're not phone apps.
• Ashita, Mama ga Inai: Piami's family was very wealthy until her father's company went bankrupt.
• The Big House is a short-lived sitcom starring Kevin Hart. The main character is a rich kid from Malibu who has to move in with his working-class relatives in Philadelphia after his father is arrested for embezzlement.
• In Bones, Hodgins is hacked by Pelant and is forced to choose between saving his family fortune or saving a school for girls in the Middle East from a UAV strike. He chooses to save the school. Later on, Angela manages to find most of his money. He asks her to give it away to charity since he's already used to his new lifestyle and doesn't want to change it. It ends up getting zigzagged later when he patents an invention and gets kind of rich again. Nothing really changes though, just as before.
• Buffyverse:
  • Cordelia when her father is busted for tax evasion.
  • Angelus never had trouble maintaining a nice pad, expensive clothes, or box theater seats. ("I just ate the people who had 'em.") Once cursed and jilted by Darla, he spent years as a homeless bum living on rats.
• Lord Charley from Charley's Grants was once quite wealthy, but financial difficulties mean his only hope of reclaiming what he once had is through ill-gotten arts grants.
• Doctor Who: In "Planet of the Dead", Lady Christina claims that she stole the Cup of Athelstan because her father invested the family fortune in the Icelandic banks and lost everything. The Doctor doesn't buy it, pointing out that, if she's just after money, she would have robbed a bank.
  • It's hinted that after being defeated by the Doctor and Rose in "The End Of The World", Lady Cassandra ends up losing most of her fortune in order to maintain her expensive life support and getting a psychograft machine. Because of this she has a huge grudge against the Doctor and Rose in "New Earth", having to rely on her last servant, Chip just to make it by stealing medicine. It makes the plot point about her using the psychograft in order to possess Rose's body all the more hilarious since Rose comes from a much more humble background when compared to her. She does it anyway in order to get revenge on Rose and live on in a pure human body. Although despite being disgusted about it at first, she changes her mind quickly after checking out the merchandise, so it isn't a complete loss for the lady, who keeps her haughty behavior.
• Downton Abbey: There's an unusual version of this with Sybil, who is forced to give up her privileged life as a noble's daughter when she marries Branson, the former chauffeur. However, she actually welcomes the change, as she is a Rebellious Lady who disliked the lifestyle of fashion, gossip, paying calls, and being waited on hand-and-foot. She also had previous experience working as a nurse during the war and learning how to cook from the servants. And it helps that Branson gets a job as a journalist, she happily returns to being a nurse and her father gives her a little money, meaning it's not so much riches to 'rags' as Not-Rich-But-Just-Comfortable-Enough-To-Get-By. But her happiness about taking up a normal life definitely gives an interesting twist to this trope.
  Mary: But you don't regret it?
  Sybil: No, never.
• Firefly: The Tam siblings, River and Simon, were the heirs of an extremely wealthy family, with flashbacks showing them playing in a mansion as their father watched from near a hearth. When River was forcibly indoctrinated into an Alliance Super-Soldier experiment, Simon blew his personal fortune in his bids to rescue her. When he finally succeeded in rescuing River, the Alliance locked him out of the Tams' bank accounts as he and his sister became fugitives, eventually settling as crew members of the dingy Serenity.
• Game of Thrones: By the end of the War of the Five Kings, the gold mines of the Westerlands had run dry three years prior. The Lannisters had gone through a lot of effort in order to keep that secret, mostly by taking a tremendous amount of loans from the Iron Bank and depending on their new partners the Tyrells to foot half the bill for their own Royal wedding.
• The 2021 Christmas special of Ghosts (UK) reveals Grande Dame Fanny’s backstory to be this. Her formerly-wealthy family’s insurmountable debt resulted in marrying her off to the Button family.
• Hannah Montana: The final season revolves around Miley's double life becoming a problem and her ultimately deciding to retire from superstardom for good, but not before revealing her secret identity to the world.
• The Highlander episode "Unusual Suspects" mainly dealt with Duncan trying to solve the "murder" of his friend, Hugh Fitzcairn (being an Immortal, Fitz wasn't really dead). Fitz was wealthy in this episode and was in the middle of planning to relocate and start a new life by investing heavily in the American stock market. After his "murder" was solved it was his mortal wife in this episode, Juliette, Duncan informs him that the US stock market crashed, leaving him broke.
• iCarly (2021): Carly's new best friend Harper is this. Her family used to be wealthy, but ended up losing everything. She's working a minimum wage job at Skybucks coffee shop while trying to pursue a career in fashion.
• The Love Boat: A few times:
  • Julie is surprised to find the young Greek youth she once sponsored, Gregori (Lorenzo Lamas) is now a rich tycoon. He spends the episode wooing her with Julie tempted to quit the ship. Before she can, Gregori breaks it to her that a bad business deal has wiped out his entire conglomerate virtually overnight. Julie finds him later with his sole remaining asset of a small fishing boat. To her surprise, Gregori is in good spirits, admitting that he was never comfortable being so rich and is looking forward to the challenge of starting over again.
  • At least one episode has a wife going on a wild shopping spree which freaks out her husband as this cruise was to break it to her they're now broke.
  • Subverted in one episode. A couple take a trip with the man gloating on them having won a fortune in a sweepstake. The money soon goes to his head as he turns into an arrogant figure who ignores his wife. He's rocked when a telegram informs him there was a mistake and they didn't win. Humbled, he admits to his wife how terrible he was and that she's the most important thing in his life. At which point, she reveals she sent the telegram to teach him a lesson so they are still rich but the man able to handle it better.
• Mad Men: This happens to Pete Campbell's family. The Campbells were Blue Bloods who used to own half of Upper Manhattan, until Pete's father squandered their fortune. Which is why Pete has to work at Sterling Cooper, and marry Trudy, whose family is Nouveau Riche, but much wealthier.
• On The Middle, Axel is annoyed at girlfriend Lexi always paying for everything, including a posh meal. At the meal, Lexi receives a birthday card from her parents where her dad says that when he hit 21, his parents cut him off and it turned him into a better person. He does the same and Lexi is rocked but Axel takes up "teaching" her how to handle life as a poor person.
• Narcos:
  • During the height of his power, Escobar's organization is bringing in $70 million a day, making him one of the richest men in the world. By the end, however, he is hiding in decrepit safe houses with a single henchman for company.
  • Rafa, Don Neto, and Miguel Angel create the biggest drug trafficking organization in the world, but by the end of the series all have lost everything and are imprisoned.
• Newhart: Stephanie Vanderkellen is cut off from her family after refusing to marry a much older man, and takes a job at the Stratford Inn. While her family eventually accepts her back, she still keeps the job at the Stratford to allow a sense of independence.
• Odd Mom Out:
  • Played with when a Ponzi scheme costs several of the ultra-rich in Manhattan millions. Keeping with the show's sarcastic tone, many of these people are still incredibly wealthy but consider falling into a slightly lower tax bracket to be the same as poverty. For example, one man goes to a grief counselor for his yacht while a woman seriously compares having to decide which property to sell off to Sophie's Choice. It's mentioned that hospitals in New York are now filled with people suffering burns and cuts from having to make their own meals for the first time.
  • Played straight with main character Jill's mother-in-law who invested nearly everything in this fund and now has to live with Jill and her family (and clearly no idea how to handle a life without servants).
• Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace: Yuyan goes from being Noble Consort Jia to being stripped of her title and made a commoner.
• In Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Morgan spends her first season and a half as a spacy gal who always relies on her rich parents and freely spends money. Sabrina and Roxie are annoyed when Morgan goes on a shopping spree rather than pay her share of the rent but Morgan assures her she'll do so with her monthly allowance. When a thick envelope comes in, Morgan laughs that her father is saving time and just giving her cash. But when she opens it, she finds a mountain of bills and receipts inside. There's also a note from her dad saying he's sick and tired of Morgan spending without consequence and is cutting her off. Needless to say, Sabrina has to resort to some magical "humble pie" to get Morgan to realize she needs to get a job and actually take care of herself at last.
• Schitt's Creek focuses on an ultra-rich family ruined by a bad deal and a cheating accountant. They lose almost everything and have to move to the small town they bought years ago as a joke and handle being without the wealth they're used to.
  • While the rest of the family adapt (mostly) to the status, as late as the sixth season, Alexis still can't grasp how, say, a regular airplane flight is not a first-class experience:
    Stevie: Why are you wearing high heels on a plane?
    Alexis: Oh, I'm not wearing them on the plane, they'll bring me slippers.
    Stevie: When's the last time you flew coach?
    Alexis: Huh?
• Silvana Sin Lana is a telenovela about an upper-class woman named Silvana who is forced to move to the suburbs with her mother and daughters after her husband gets into trouble with the law and runs off.
• The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: London in an episode where her father makes a bad investment. As typical of show, she gains it back at the end of the episode.
• That '70s Show: While she never goes completely broke, Jackie is forced to give up her spoiled princess lifestyle when her father is imprisoned for embezzlement and his accounts are frozen. With her mother traveling the world, Jackie ends up living with Donna.
• On True Blood, when vampires reveal themselves to the world, they fail to prepare for one huge reaction: The IRS to go after them for decades of unreported income and unpaid taxes. It's revealed that Sophie-Ann has lost much of her fortune because of this and is driven to sell the V drug to keep up her lavish lifestyle.
• This is the plot of The Upper Crusts; thanks to Lord Seacroft Sr. gambling away his family's fortune, the rest of the Seacroft family are forced to move out of their mansion and into a council house.

---