Does everybody love Meghan back?
After I watched the first episode of With Love, Meghan, filmed in a cottage overlooking seemingly endless gardens of fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers, I went to sleep dreaming of orange flowers in a sea of green. Like one of the gardens in Keukenhof in The Netherlands. I woke up with a smile.
It was a feel-good episode because of the colors swirling on the kitchen table, the garden, inside the refrigerator, on top of the cake. Meghan Markle — oops, Sussex — is the only one in neutrals in the scenario, probably to foil all the color around her — which I love. The first episode, in which Meghan’s friend Daniel Martin comes to visit, also makes one’s mouth water for the layered frosted honey cake Meghan (at least on TV) bakes from scratch. She prepares a guest basket filled with home-grown pasalubongs for Danie, displayed in translucent jars with dainty ribbons around them. She makes candles from beeswax. She also gets a perk from coffee, indulges in bacon and sips champagne, so she’s human. She doesn’t abstain from life’s indulgences. How could anyone be so perfect, so perfectly human?
According to Netflix, With Love, Meghan “blends practical how-tos and candid conversation with friends, new and old. Meghan shares personal tips and tricks, embracing playfulness over perfection, and highlights how easy it can be to create beauty, even in the unexpected. She and her guests roll up their sleeves in the kitchen, the garden, and beyond, and invite you to do the same.”
In the eight-part Netflix series, Meghan invites viewers into her world, offering a peek at her beloved recipes and providing some private glimpses of life with Prince Harry and their kids, Archie and Lilibet. The series is shot in Montecito, California, in a home that probably evokes an English cottage and garden. No, she stresses, the house is not hers.
The first episode begins with honey — with Meghan and a beekeeper harvesting that golden liquid from honeycombs with bees swirling at one point. I am glad I didn’t dream of the bees, just the garden.
The second episode is another stunning piece of work, visually at least. She creates, again from scratch, a fruit rainbow, which makes Pinoys like me drool over the arches of blueberries, raspberries and kiwi fruits that cost a fortune in Manila. Meghan has them everywhere. Oh, California living!
The lady sure can wield knives, chopping up fruits and vegetables for her various concoctions with the virtuosity of a cello player, from onions to strawberries.
It is also in the second episode that she harvests a lot of raised eyebrows for the way she corrected her guest Mindy Kaling for referring to her as “Meghan Markle.”
“I don’t think anyone in the world knows that Meghan Markle has eaten Jack in the Box and loves it,” Mindy quips.
Meghan retorts with her voice raised a fraction of a decibel, though she is smiling widely: “It’s so funny, too, that you keep saying Meghan Markle. You know I’m Sussex now.”
Meghan explains to Mindy that it felt “meaningful” to share the Sussex name with her children.
But that didn’t sit well with many viewers who knew the extent of how Meghan tried her best to distance herself from the royal family, stepping back from royal duties and giving candid interviews about how they (not everybody but “they” is accurate) weren’t particularly nice to her. In other words, daigdig ng api siya. One observer called it “victimology Olympics.”
***
I haven’t finished Season One, but I liked the tips the show abounds in, like the endless greens in the garden. I like how visually appealing the four episodes I’ve watched were, how effortless Meghan made food preparation and frying chicken look.
How beautiful her fairytale world is. But perhaps, “fairytale” is the operative word. It isn’t real. I do remember that in cooking class, my teachers instructed us not to wear rings especially while kneading dough (in the fourth episode, Meghan makes focaccia). Her diamond engagement ring (reportedly from a non-blood diamond from Botswana) glitters amidst the flour and the flowers. Her hair is also down most of the time, which I know is a no-no when cooking or baking or preparing crudité, lest a strand of the royal mane find its way into the crudité. If anything, I would credit Meghan for making crudité a household word.
Meghan looks very natural going about the kitchen barefoot, but having a sweater slung over one’s shoulders while cooking means one’s cashmere will absorb all the smells. Meghan pounds garlic, after all, for her pasta dishes and later blends garlic for a kimchi dressing she makes in Episode 3.
So, those details make me know that perfection has a floor director. Meghan may be a domestic diva — that knife prowess and the ease in which she manages traffic in food prep make me think she is not faking it — but the world she projects is so honey sweet and gooey it just might be a tad hard to swallow.
***
With Love, Meghan made the Netflix global Top 10, but received numerous scathing reviews in Britain and America, with a Rotten Tomatoes critics score of 36 percent, according to Newsweek.
Yet, watching her flawlessly navigate the world before the cameras — it hit me right away why Prince Harry, who from the start used “smitten” and “love of my life” to describe what he feels for the Suits actress, fell for Meghan and married her. Aside from the physical attraction and the Botswana connection they have, she is a platform on which both of them can take centerstage, away from the shadow of his brother, Prince William, and his wife, Catherine. Meghan, an accomplished actress, afforded Harry an identity he so longed to possess, independent of his brother. His book Spare shows it takes acceptance to remain the spare to the heir, acceptance of a life in the shadow of someone. Harry perhaps wasn’t prepared to accept the life of a spare — amidst the glare.
But the manner in which they bolted from the family, and the way they seem to seek the limelight they supposedly shunned in Britain, is making a multitude, not just Brits but Americans (thought to be more sympathetic) note the dichotomy between what they say and do.
Still and all, I enjoyed the first four episodes of the first season of With Love, Meghan, and look forward to watching the next four.
The episode I watched most recently had a demo on how to prepare lavender-soaked cold towels chilled in the fridge and proffered to guests coming in from the sunny outdoors. Perfect for the Philippines. Maybe tonight I will dream of lavender fields! *
- Latest
