Season Two of ‘With Love, Meghan’ is More of the Same

The chances are you’ve already formed your opinion on With Love, Meghan, the Netflix lifestyle show hosted by Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex. You don’t have to have seen either of the two seasons available on the platform to have Strong Feelings on the actress turned royal whose mere existence inspires a fury of reactions. Many of those responses have been predictably nasty and rooted in a cycle of misogyny and racism that has fuelled years’ worth of think-pieces and rent-a-gobs. We know what’s gone on here, and I don’t need to relitigate it.

But what of the show itself? Reviews were largely scathing for the first season, and it often felt like criticism of a perfectly bland and nondescript series was being conflated with hatred for a woman who has been thrown to the wolves over and over again for almost a decade now. When I covered Season One for TheWrap, I felt oddly sheepish in discussing it because I was keenly aware that any negativity about crafting and cooking would be turned into anti-Meghan clickbait by the usual suspects. If this show were hosted by anyone else, calling it a bland and identity-less diversion for background viewing would be as controversial as noting that the sun sets in the evening. Season Two is really more of the same, albeit with a notable improvement in the guest list, but it does feel worth talking about because it feels indicative of how the Sussex Brand is still struggling to find an identity as a celebrity entity outside of the Royal family. So, put your pitchforks and clickbait away.

Let’s start with the positives. Meghan seems more comfortable in these episodes than in those of the first season. She’s at her best when surrounded by good guests who are skilled in their chosen fields and get to take a step back from being the main host. In the first episode, she brings along a friend as well as chefs David Chang and Christina Tosi, and she lets the legendary figures behind Momofuku and Milk Bar be the experts for the culinary segments. She lets more extroverted personalities, such as Tan France and Chrissy Teigen, shine as they try out crafts and recipes. There are some cute ideas here, like homemade s’mores with some unusual marshmallow flavours, and a sumptuous-looking seafood paella courtesy of Jose Andreas.

Most of the stuff on display here is reasonably accessible. You can make your own shower steamers and rosewater spray easily enough with supplies from Hobbycraft or Amazon, although Meghan is using her own flowers and homegrown products, of course. Some of the things happening here are first-time experiences for Meghan too, which presents something of a double-edged sword.

Is she an expert domestic goddess or a newbie just hanging out in someone else’s mansion and having fun with vegetable-printed aprons for her kids? This was a major criticism of Season One: how much of this stuff feels organic to Meghan’s interests and skills. Pre-Harry, she had a successful lifestyle blog, The Tig, so it’s not a shock to see her drawn to things like home cooking or crafting. But that website was also an act of curation, with Meghan sharing other people’s recipes, experiences, and recommendations. It’s different to see her as the head expert, especially when she seems lacking in basic areas like knife skills. If the show was a little more ramshackle with Meghan and her pals trying out new stuff with a teacher at the helm, perhaps it’d feel looser and more fun. Certainly, Meghan seems more at ease when someone like Samin Nosrat or David Chang is doing the heavy lifting.

There’s a curious melancholy quality to With Love, Meghan that becomes increasingly tough to ignore across the second season. In the first season, Meghan and ‘fellow toddler mom’ Mindy Kaling worked on ideas for a children’s party, the end results of which were shown off like a display in a ghost town. The backdrop to it all is a rented house since, understandably, Meghan didn’t want cameras to intrude upon her family’s private space, but it only adds to the oddly impersonal nature of what we’re seeing. Meghan seems like a very sweet and considerate woman and I don’t doubt that acts of giving are a big part of her life. That’s long been reported about her, well before she met a former soldier with daddy issues. As a piece of entertainment, though, seeing her move items from one piece of plastic packaging to another as she fights to say the most uncontroversial buzzwords possible cannot help but prove frustrating.

Frankly, it makes me frustrated for Meghan. Clearly, being part of the royals screwed her up. She talked about dealing with suicidal ideation while pregnant and that still wasn’t enough for the British media to stop treating her like Public Enemy Number One. Everything she says or does (or doesn’t) is spun into outrage fuel. She has received an astonishing number of threats against the lives of herself and her children. Wouldn’t all of that make you super-nervous about cracking a joke at your own expense or not being utterly practiced and pristine in front of the camera? Such context helps make With Love, Meghan more understandable in its orchestrated blandness, but it doesn’t make it any more enjoyable to watch.

Such is the conundrum of the Sussexes in their current form. They don’t seem to know how to be celebrities. The give and take of fame is frustrating and usually deeply unfair, and a lot of that struggle for autonomy is why Meghan and Harry walked away from the Windsors. Now, they’ve jumped into a different industry where they have to offer more than the undoubtedly intriguing narrative of walking away from frontline royal life. Harry’s already sold his story in the form of a wildly successful memoir and the pair told their stories in a very curated manner for a Netflix docuseries. Now, they’ve got to sell something else. Their Netflix deal offered little in the way of substance that the mainstream craved. Their Spotify deal crumbled after one podcast and faced heavy criticism that the pair had little to offer. They seem eager to keep as much of themselves private as possible, but don’t have much else to say. So, why should we stick around?

The inessential nature of With Love, Meghan is a decent diversion, the ideal of laundry-folding TV that Netflix seems eager to make its default mode for original content. Outside of the Markle of it all, it’s just a cute Pinterest slideshow with California vibes. Will it ever simply be viewed as such? Probably not. The future of Meghan as a lifestyle guru will be dependent on her finding her groove and embracing a distinctly non-royal approach to celebrity, the one she had before she got married. Only then can everyone have the freedom to talk about this stuff as being as fizzy and nonsensical as it truly is.

Season two of With Love, Meghan is available to watch now on Netflix.