Yes, it's Brimming with Absurdity, Over-the-Top Hospitality and Psychobabble. However, I Honestly Adore Meghan's Holiday Special.
No concerned with the season, it's perpetually fair game for scrutiny on the Meghan Markle's televisual offering, With Love, Meghan. Reviewers, both professional and armchair, have rarely been so united as when gleefully ripping the lifestyle show's earlier episodes to shreds. The prevailing view seemed to be a more egregious regal scandal had seldom occurred than the now-infamous snack re-labeling incident.
Currently, as a festive rebel, she makes a comeback with a new offering with a "Christmas Special" (or a yuletide episode). However on this occasion, the dynamic has changed. The standard components viewers are accustomed to – vague self-help platitudes, extreme hosting – remain, but framed of a yuletide episode, it all clicks into place. The pieces have fallen into place; it's a perfect snow storm.
Now, Meghan is like the quirky relative at the typical holiday get-together – providing unasked-for guidance, 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 quite a personality, but her presence is familiar and strangely comforting. And she seems pleased; she's not doing the slightest hurt.
She understands her each tiny facial movement, utterance and glance will be picked apart and judged, but manages to seem unburdened and remarkably at ease.
It could be this is the only time in history where that clichéd phrase – "Ignore them, they're just jealous" – could actually be true. Because, let's face it, everything in Meghan's Holiday Celebration is lovely. Admittedly, it's all cringily ultra-extra, nonsense and over the top – but isn't that precisely what Christmas is for? And the advice she gives might be ridiculous, but the example she sets genuinely looks impeccably styled.
Anything she turns her beautifully manicured, diamond-adorned hand to, she pulls off with flair. Her culinary efforts looks tasty, the holiday arrangement she creates is breathtaking, her presents are nearly too beautiful to tear into. Nothing is ordinary or ugly – even the way she ties her apron is creative and fashionable. She doesn't bung a meal in the microwave, it "has a moment", and she folds gift paper like an origami guru. She also seems to be completely savoring herself from start to finish. How could any skeptical viewer not be won over, filled with seasonal cheer and left with a intense desire for personalized Christmas crackers or a vegetable display where greens is arranged in the shape of a Christmas ring?
Meghan used to pretend for a living, naturally, but nonetheless, after the intensity of attention she has endured ever since she became involved with Prince Harry, a theoretical combination of Meryl Streep and Judi Dench would have difficulty behaving this naturally. Her refusal to modify or even tone down her routine, even though it being so persistently, globally mocked, is oddly heartening. In our unpredictable world, here is something we can rely on: Meghan will be like this, whatever happens. We will forever know our position with her.
If you're not yet convinced by her brand, a reminder that will surely come as a reassurance: you are not obligated to. There isn't the draft these days, and should it be reinstated, it would be improbable to include viewing With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration. If, on the other hand, you willingly check it out and are overcome with jealousy about her idyllic Christmas, there is hope either. Be you a royal or a data administrator, hardly any child completely grasps the dedication and labor their parent puts in in the holiday season. So you can find comfort 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 handcrafted holiday countdown, in place of a sweet treat.