Yes, it's Packed with Gibberish, Over-the-Top Hospitality and Psychobabble. Yet I Truly Adore Meghan's Holiday Special.
No considering the season, it's constantly hunting season for commentary on the Meghan Markle's televisual offering, With Love, Meghan. Reviewers, expert and amateur alike, have seldom found such common ground as when eagerly tearing the program's initial installments apart. The prevailing view held that a greater royal outrage had never been witnessed than the much-discussed pretzel-bagging incident.
Currently, like a merry renegade master, she has returned once again with a "Festive Special" (or a holiday episode). Yet now, the dynamic has changed. The usual elements we've come to expect – psychobabble word salads, intense hospitality – persist, but within the context of a yuletide episode, it all clicks into place. The pieces have fallen into place; it's a perfect snow storm.
By this point, Meghan is like the quirky relative at the typical holiday get-together – providing random tips, and delivering the odd random outburst. ("I love spinach!" … "A tradition has to have a beginning." … "A tree is part of my memory and love of the holiday season.") She's an interesting figure, but her presence is familiar and strangely comforting. And she seems happy enough; she's inflicting any harm.
She understands her every micro expression, utterance and glance will be picked apart and judged, but nonetheless looks relaxed and serenely untroubled.
Maybe this is the first occasion in history where that old chestnut – "Ignore them, they're just jealous" – might be true. Since, let's face it, everything in Meghan's Holiday Celebration truly is charming. Yes, it's all awkwardly over-the-top, foolishness and extravagant – but doesn't that represent exactly what Yuletide is for? And the talk she's talking might be laughable, but the example she sets genuinely looks shop-bought.
Anything she attempts, she executes with panache. Her recipes looks scrumptious, the wreath she makes is breathtaking, her gifts are almost too pretty to open. Not a single thing is ordinary or ugly – even the way she fastens her apron is stylish and elegant. She doesn't bung a dish in the oven, it "goes for a spin", and she creases wrapping paper like an paper-folding expert. She also seems to be thoroughly enjoying herself from start to finish. How could any skeptical viewer not be won over, overcome by festive joy and left with a powerful yearning for crafted festive snaps or a crudites platter where greens is positioned in the likeness of a Christmas ring?
Meghan was once an actress for a living, of course, but nonetheless, after the level of attention she has faced from the moment she met Prince Harry, the love child of acting royalty would have difficulty behaving this authentically. Her unwillingness to alter or even moderate her persona, despite it being so relentlessly, widely parodied, is weirdly comforting. In our unpredictable world, here is something we can count on: Meghan will be like this, whatever happens. We will always know our position with her.
If you're still not buying her message, a point that will certainly come as a reassurance: you don't have to. We don't have the draft anymore, and were it to return, it would be improbable to include viewing With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration. If, on the other hand, you choose to watch and are overcome with longing about her flawless Christmas, all is not lost either. Whether you're a duchess or a data administrator, no kid fully understands the effort and hard work their mother does in the holiday season. So you can console yourself by imagining Archie and Lilibet's faces when they open a beautifully scripted letter that says, 'I love you because you are brave,' from a DIY festive calendar, in place of a sweet treat.
