Hollywood is not wrong that moisture loss is bad for bread, it’s not the primary reason to avoid refrigerating bread. The science: Refrigeration speeds up the starches’ return to a more organized crystalline structure (also known as retrogradation), which means it hardens (i.e. stales) far faster.
Unrefrigerated bread does typically get moldy faster. The trade-off is longevity over texture, and many consumers are more concerned with stretching their bread (and their metaphorical bread) as far as possible, especially these days.
To which we say, fair. And also: freeze! Becky wrote a helpful guide to storing bread in that other section of your favorite appliance. She says the freezer “serves as a kind of pause button, meaning fresh bread you move into cold storage can come out almost as good as the day you put it in.”
Serious Eats also covered the issue to the same conclusion a while ago: https://www.seriouseats.com/does-refrigeration-really-ruin-bread
Frozen bread is magical. Microwaving it for a short time is all it takes to go from frozen to perfect. It’s honestly amazing. No need to put the bread in the fridge at all - just freeze the whole loaf and defrost slices when you need them.
This is the way.
My only issue with frozen bread is that I always forget it is in the freezer and it ends up being there for months until I am unsure if it is okay to eat it