Admittedly, it's Packed with Absurdity, Extreme Hosting and Psychobabble. However, I Honestly Love Meghan's Festive Episode.
No matter the season, it's constantly hunting season for criticism on the Meghan Markle's TV show, With Love, Meghan. Commentators, expert and amateur alike, have rarely been so united as when gleefully ripping the series' initial installments to pieces. The prevailing view held that a greater royal outrage had hardly ever taken place than the notorious pretzel re-packaging incident.
Now, like a merry renegade master, she has returned once again with a "Holiday Celebration" (or a Christmas special). Yet now, it's different. The familiar ingredients audiences anticipate – vague self-help platitudes, overzealous entertaining – persist, but set of a yuletide episode, it all clicks into place. The pieces have fallen together; it's a flawless festive blizzard.
By this point, Meghan has become the oddball family member at the typical holiday get-together – offering unsolicited, unnecessary advice, and supplying the periodic peculiar declaration. ("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 oddly reassuring. And she looks pleased; she's not doing any harm.
She understands her each tiny facial movement, utterance and look will be picked apart and judged, but manages to seem unburdened and serenely untroubled.
Perhaps this is the only time in history where that clichéd phrase – "Pay no mind, it's only envy" – could actually be true. Since, let's face it, each element in Meghan's Holiday Celebration honestly feels charming. Admittedly, it's all awkwardly over-the-top, nonsense and over the top – but doesn't that represent exactly what the holiday season is all about? And the words she speaks might be ridiculous, but the example she sets genuinely looks beautifully curated.
Anything she attempts, she executes with panache. Her cooking looks delicious, the holiday arrangement she crafts is breathtaking, her presents are almost too pretty to open. Nothing is ordinary or aesthetically displeasing – even the way she secures her kitchen garment is artful and chic. She doesn't throw a meal in the oven, it "has a moment", and she folds gift paper like an origami guru. She also seems to be genuinely relishing herself throughout. How could any cynical observer not be charmed, filled with seasonal cheer and left with a intense desire for crafted festive snaps or a crudites platter where greens is positioned in the shape of a festive circle?
Meghan had a career in acting for a living, obviously, but nonetheless, after the intensity of examination she has weathered ever since she became involved with Prince Harry, a theoretical combination of Meryl Streep and Judi Dench would have difficulty behaving this authentically. Her decision to alter or even moderate her routine, even though it being so relentlessly, globally mocked, is weirdly comforting. In our uncertain world, here is one thing we can count on: Meghan will be like this, no matter what. We will always know what to expect with her.
If you're not yet convinced by what she's selling, a point that will surely come as a reassurance: you aren't required to. The UK has abolished national service anymore, and if there were, it would be doubtful to include watching With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration. If, on the other hand, you willingly check it out and are overcome with jealousy about her flawless Christmas, you can take solace either. Whether you're a duchess or a data administrator, few children completely grasps the time and energy their parent expends in the holiday season. So you can find comfort by imagining her children's faces when they open a calligraphy note that says, 'I love you because you are brave,' from a homemade Advent calendar, in place of a chocolate.
