Here’s a surprise: Season 2 of “With Love, Meghan,” Meghan Markle’s lifestyle show, did not crack the Netflix Top 10 after its premiere last week.
I admit to being part of the problem. Season 1 was such an apoplectic-fit-inducing experience — Meghan, sweetheart, you did not invent the frittata, no one likes dried flowers as a garnish and don’t come at moms who put “sugary snacks” in birthday party gift bags while handing a bunch of 5-year-olds some pointy-ass miniature gardening tools instead — that I could barely watch the first two episodes of Season 2.
Arranging flowers and making unnecessarily fancified s’mores with professional chefs David Chang and Christina Tosi? Forcing Chrissy Teigen to not only use a NASA-level kitchen scale to produce homemade Cheez-Its but also identify and pluck her children’s birth flowers to make dried-flower jewelry? Hard pass. (And no, I cannot name my children’s birth flowers.)
The wealth disparity in this country is pernicious and obvious enough without having to watch Markle measure flour in a $498 Eileen Fisher baby-blue sweater as she sells a brand of super-futzy homemaking — of course we all want to make our own rose water! — that no actual mother, with or without a job outside the home, could ever sustain.
Even if we had the time or seven different types of rolling pins, who has that much counter space? Or a freaking craft barn? Does she know about California’s housing shortage?
Many are predicting that “With Love, Meghan” will not get a third season, though a Christmas special is on the books. And, as with anything involving Markle, there has been a lot of hate thrown around, particularly from the British press. I take no pleasure in hating “With Love, Meghan” — Markle is a local gal who inarguably got a very bum deal in her early married life, and I honestly want her to succeed. But maybe she would be better off returning to her previous profession: acting.
Her Netflix deal may have been downgraded to “first look,” but it’s a big entertainment company; surely there is something she could do. Here are a few suggestions.
- Call Ryan Murphy. He knows what it’s like to have a slow start with the streamer, and I can’t imagine he would turn down the chance to have the Duchess of Sussex appear in one of his many franchises. I would definitely watch Markle face off with Niecy Nash should “Grotesquerie” get a Season 2. Horror is chic right now.
- Call Shonda Rhimes. Markle would fit right into “Bridgerton” — hell, she could double-up as a consultant.
- See which Harlan Cobens are left. There’s a new adaptation of one of his novels on Netflix pretty much every month. And they’re limited series, so Markle wouldn’t have to commit for more than a year.
- Commission a darkly satiric chronicle of a lifestyle show that continually goes off the rails — a high-profile guest turns out to be fatally allergic to lavender; the crew gets sick from tasting a frittata made with (unpasteurized) eggs straight from the henhouse; friendly banter between the host and a former game show colleague turns into a brawl as old resentments and scandals surface. (You know what? I’m copyrighting this one.)
- Follow the path of least resistance and commission a mystery series. “Murder in Montecito,” say, in which a winsome young woman recently married into a powerful family tries to break into a wealthy and prestigious community only to be ensnared in a web of deadly secrets.
- Grab Olivia Colman, make her the Texan matriarch of a political dynasty and do a thinly disguised, fictionalized version of actual events. It seems a shame Markle can’t exploit, er, leverage the kind of “I’m suddenly royalty and it’s not that great” tales that helped launch the careers of Claire Danes and Anne Hathaway and keep the Hallmark Channel in business. Just think about how mad the British press would get about that.
