With Love, Meghan on Netflix

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A short review of the 8 episodes in case you want to get caught up without watching it yourself.

(Episodes 1-4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImKOAd-PEo8

(Episodes 5-8) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI1P6MCK1QM

Why in the world would anyone need a two part summary of a cooking show? But I clicked through and it looks like that creator just makes anti MM videos so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

The show is still in the top ten this weekend. That’s a lot of cumulative eyeballs.

It isn't a cooking show. There is very little cooking happening, other than a couple guest chefs. It is about hosting and making gifts and treats and Meghan showing her lifestyle and how she lives her life. She shows you how to blow up a balloon, put fruit on a tray in a shape, put little shovels in bags for kids, put water and tea in a jar, etc,

And she is trying to erase her father as apparently now she wants the world to believe she was raised in poverty by her mother. Except she previously detailed her quite UMC life with her father and documented her mother's absence during long parts of her childhood.

She is so much like Hilaria Baldwin. Kind of funny they both got TV shows at the same time. They should become friends but would probably see each other as competition.

The reality is UMC ladies in the South are the ones who know how to host a party, and old money East Coast types from the north are similarly equipped to play “hostess.”

No clue why anyone would look to a middle class girl from California for tips. Sure, she married a royal—but she wasn’t raised by people versed in such stuff. It’s all very fake.

Plus, the timing is really bad. The world is on fire and I don’t know anyone IRL who has the time to focus on hostessing.

I thought these two were going to be great humanitarian-philanthropists? I guess that doesn’t pay enough.

[Anonymous]

I think people are zooming in on the Mindy episode because it's the worst one. I also suspect the reason it's bad is because Netflix sort of forced it. Mindy has a show premiering on Netflix the same time as this one -- Running Point with Kate Hudson which Mindy co-wrote and co-produced. I do think Mindy and Meghan kind of know each other (they did meet when Mindy appeared on Meghan's podcast) and might be kind of celebrity acquaintances, but unlike most of the other guests on the show, they clearly are not actually friends and barely know each other.

Mindy also seems to have virtually no interest in the project of the show (unlike most of the other guests). In the Mindy episode, she doesn't do any crafts with Meghan -- they show Meghan making the crafts ahead of time on her own and then just showing them to Mindy. And Mindy has virtually no interest in any of the cooking/hosting activities they do. She makes a couple haphazard kids sandwiches and arranges some banana slices on a plate, after being cajoled into it.

What Mindy wants to do is drink and gossip about Meghan's life. Every scene is basically Mindy standing around drinking a Bellini and then commenting on Meghan's appearance, childhood, or general deal. You can tell Mindy follows tabloid gossip about Meghan and the way Mindy talks about Meghan reflects this. The whole "you know I'm Sussex now" moment is part of one of those conversations, with Mindy talking about how weird it is that "Meghan Markle" has been to Jack in the Box, in the third person.

Anyway, they are both weird in that episode and I think it's because they barely know each other and both did it out of contractually obligations to Netflix. The other episodes are so much better because the guests actually seem excited to be cooking or discussing floral arrangements or making candles or whatever. And they interact with Meghan in a much more normal way, because either they have an actual friendship that predates the show (and in most cases her marriage) or because they have a shared interest/passion for whatever they are doing.

Anyway, I've written too much on this, I know. I'm not even particularly into Meghan and haven't watched the whole show or read this whole thread. I just think it's funny that a lot of the posts are zeroing in on her interactions with Mindy because when I watched it, it was just very obvious that episode was a weird outlier that they were probably both kind of forced into because Netflix wanted the synergy of having Meghan and Mindy in same space as they promoted both of their programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A short review of the 8 episodes in case you want to get caught up without watching it yourself.

(Episodes 1-4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImKOAd-PEo8

(Episodes 5-8) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI1P6MCK1QM

Why in the world would anyone need a two part summary of a cooking show? But I clicked through and it looks like that creator just makes anti MM videos so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

The show is still in the top ten this weekend. That’s a lot of cumulative eyeballs.

It isn't a cooking show. There is very little cooking happening, other than a couple guest chefs. It is about hosting and making gifts and treats and Meghan showing her lifestyle and how she lives her life. She shows you how to blow up a balloon, put fruit on a tray in a shape, put little shovels in bags for kids, put water and tea in a jar, etc,

And she is trying to erase her father as apparently now she wants the world to believe she was raised in poverty by her mother. Except she previously detailed her quite UMC life with her father and documented her mother's absence during long parts of her childhood.

She is so much like Hilaria Baldwin. Kind of funny they both got TV shows at the same time. They should become friends but would probably see each other as competition.

The reality is UMC ladies in the South are the ones who know how to host a party, and old money East Coast types from the north are similarly equipped to play “hostess.”

No clue why anyone would look to a middle class girl from California for tips. Sure, she married a royal—but she wasn’t raised by people versed in such stuff. It’s all very fake.

Plus, the timing is really bad. The world is on fire and I don’t know anyone IRL who has the time to focus on hostessing.

I thought these two were going to be great humanitarian-philanthropists? I guess that doesn’t pay enough.

I think the target audience is people like Meghan. People who didn't grow up being trained into hostessing duties by their Southern or WASPy families, but people who grew up middle class, had parents who didn't care much about hosting or cooking or decorating, but now want to create a different kind of life for their own families. Many, many women are like this. My sister is like this. We had an upbringing probably not that different from Meghan's. We certainly were not schooled in setting a table or being gracious hosts. But my sister is really into this stuff, follows blogs and shows about it, was a Martha Stewart obsessive, and puts a lot of effort into decorating her house, hosting her kids' parties, etc. I have lots of friends from college and grad school like this too.

And to be clear, Martha wasn't raised to be a great hostess either. Watch her documentary. Her family was kind of messed up growing up, she isn't from some upper crust New England family. But she was pretty and smart, got into modeling at a young age which made her more financially independent, and wound up working on Wall Street. That enabled her to marry a guy with money, which enabled her to enter into that world as a caterer, and her empire grew from there. She did learn a lot about cooking from her mom but the world and image Martha projects into the world is one she created as an adult, not one she was born into. And that's one reason I think she was so invested in teaching other people how to do it -- because she taught herself and knew these were skills you could learn and didn't have to be inaccessible to regard middle class people. Learning how to arrange flowers or frost a cake really nicely or present appetizers on a tray in an appealing way is not rocket science.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Didn't she present herself as a feminist? This is some retrograde domestic goddess nonsense. Just silly.

I am fine with it from a feminist standpoint until she used a passive aggressive baby voice to correct Mindy Kaling about her last name. I can't believe nobody else has commented on the tone. It's how Paris Hilton used to talk in her 20s.

It’s sort of amazing to me that people don’t see and hear the fake fake fake in Meghan’s public-facing personality.

She seemed very tense and mad correcting Mindy, with a brittle tone mixed with the syrupy voice she can’t pull off. She speaks as if she’s dissolving into joyous tee-hees! behind a hand cupped over her mouth to block the gentle, sweet moment of laughter….at every sentence. It’s just bizarre. Who doesn’t see that?

She does do this. It's part of the whole vibe of having a secret that only she and Harry know about. There's just so much posing and fakeness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They probably have enough money to pay the bills without working - if they had not chosen to live in a VHCOL area in a huge mansion. They could easily have selected a less expensive home in a less expensive area and never worked again.

This describes a lot of people who post on DCUM, though. The financial forum is filled with people who are like "we are just scraping by on 400k a year, btw we live in a 5 bedroom new build in Bethesda and send our kids to private schools but anything else is unacceptable, oh no pity us." Like this is the DCUM brand.

And the thing is, it doesn't appear Meghan made this show under duress or something. You can tell she likes doing this stuff and wanted to make a show that she thought people would like. I do think she's kind of pretentious and she certainly enjoys the royal title and pretention, but this doesn't feel like someone desperately hustling for money to afford their lavish lifestyle. It feels like she genuinely wants to create a lifestyle brand and actually feels passionate about stuff like making farm-fresh preserves and setting a table in a pretty way. And there is a market for that, and she's clearly targeting that market. She comes off like an ambitious business person who is working to create a product that is successful, which is extremely American and usually very lauded in our culture. So it's weird to me how many people are mad about it, regardless of whether this show or her brand are for you, when she's no different from your average Shark Tank contestant, just better resourced and connected because she was already a successful actor and then married a British prince. Shrug. She doesn't seem to resent having to work -- she appears to enjoy it.

The problem I have is that she doesn’t actually know what work is. It is the Blake lively problem. They think they want to do all these things, start these companies, create beautiful things, produce, tell stories, but really what they want to do is sit around and have dozens of staff who worked their asses off to get them ideas present really polished PowerPoints to them and have them pick something and sign off on it. It’s actually not work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think people are zooming in on the Mindy episode because it's the worst one. I also suspect the reason it's bad is because Netflix sort of forced it. Mindy has a show premiering on Netflix the same time as this one -- Running Point with Kate Hudson which Mindy co-wrote and co-produced. I do think Mindy and Meghan kind of know each other (they did meet when Mindy appeared on Meghan's podcast) and might be kind of celebrity acquaintances, but unlike most of the other guests on the show, they clearly are not actually friends and barely know each other.

Mindy also seems to have virtually no interest in the project of the show (unlike most of the other guests). In the Mindy episode, she doesn't do any crafts with Meghan -- they show Meghan making the crafts ahead of time on her own and then just showing them to Mindy. And Mindy has virtually no interest in any of the cooking/hosting activities they do. She makes a couple haphazard kids sandwiches and arranges some banana slices on a plate, after being cajoled into it.

What Mindy wants to do is drink and gossip about Meghan's life. Every scene is basically Mindy standing around drinking a Bellini and then commenting on Meghan's appearance, childhood, or general deal. You can tell Mindy follows tabloid gossip about Meghan and the way Mindy talks about Meghan reflects this. The whole "you know I'm Sussex now" moment is part of one of those conversations, with Mindy talking about how weird it is that "Meghan Markle" has been to Jack in the Box, in the third person.

Anyway, they are both weird in that episode and I think it's because they barely know each other and both did it out of contractually obligations to Netflix. The other episodes are so much better because the guests actually seem excited to be cooking or discussing floral arrangements or making candles or whatever. And they interact with Meghan in a much more normal way, because either they have an actual friendship that predates the show (and in most cases her marriage) or because they have a shared interest/passion for whatever they are doing.

Anyway, I've written too much on this, I know. I'm not even particularly into Meghan and haven't watched the whole show or read this whole thread. I just think it's funny that a lot of the posts are zeroing in on her interactions with Mindy because when I watched it, it was just very obvious that episode was a weird outlier that they were probably both kind of forced into because Netflix wanted the synergy of having Meghan and Mindy in same space as they promoted both of their programs.

What is fascinating about this is that if you follow mindy at all, you know she actually loves to post cooking content on her Instagram. She truly loves to cook and try new recipes and share that with people, kind of like Jennifer Garner, in a really relatable way.

How they did not capitalize on that in this episode is truly baffling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people are zooming in on the Mindy episode because it's the worst one. I also suspect the reason it's bad is because Netflix sort of forced it. Mindy has a show premiering on Netflix the same time as this one -- Running Point with Kate Hudson which Mindy co-wrote and co-produced. I do think Mindy and Meghan kind of know each other (they did meet when Mindy appeared on Meghan's podcast) and might be kind of celebrity acquaintances, but unlike most of the other guests on the show, they clearly are not actually friends and barely know each other.

Mindy also seems to have virtually no interest in the project of the show (unlike most of the other guests). In the Mindy episode, she doesn't do any crafts with Meghan -- they show Meghan making the crafts ahead of time on her own and then just showing them to Mindy. And Mindy has virtually no interest in any of the cooking/hosting activities they do. She makes a couple haphazard kids sandwiches and arranges some banana slices on a plate, after being cajoled into it.

What Mindy wants to do is drink and gossip about Meghan's life. Every scene is basically Mindy standing around drinking a Bellini and then commenting on Meghan's appearance, childhood, or general deal. You can tell Mindy follows tabloid gossip about Meghan and the way Mindy talks about Meghan reflects this. The whole "you know I'm Sussex now" moment is part of one of those conversations, with Mindy talking about how weird it is that "Meghan Markle" has been to Jack in the Box, in the third person.

Anyway, they are both weird in that episode and I think it's because they barely know each other and both did it out of contractually obligations to Netflix. The other episodes are so much better because the guests actually seem excited to be cooking or discussing floral arrangements or making candles or whatever. And they interact with Meghan in a much more normal way, because either they have an actual friendship that predates the show (and in most cases her marriage) or because they have a shared interest/passion for whatever they are doing.

Anyway, I've written too much on this, I know. I'm not even particularly into Meghan and haven't watched the whole show or read this whole thread. I just think it's funny that a lot of the posts are zeroing in on her interactions with Mindy because when I watched it, it was just very obvious that episode was a weird outlier that they were probably both kind of forced into because Netflix wanted the synergy of having Meghan and Mindy in same space as they promoted both of their programs.

What is fascinating about this is that if you follow mindy at all, you know she actually loves to post cooking content on her Instagram. She truly loves to cook and try new recipes and share that with people, kind of like Jennifer Garner, in a really relatable way.

How they did not capitalize on that in this episode is truly baffling.

PP here. Does she actually cook in the videos? I don't follow her. With Meghan she acted like she doesn't cook or bake at all, like anything like that is just beyond her and she just pays people to do it. At one point Meghan gives her a "yogurt parfait" that's just assembled -- it's yogurt, some preserves, and then like typical yogurt toppings like berries and some coconut. It looks pretty but it is not complicated or fancy other than being served in fancy glass. And Mindy says something like "omg if you weren't giving this too me, I'd hate you for it." The idea was it was too perfect, too fancy, and Mindy would resent Meghan for the effort or something? It's weird.

She did the same thing when they were literally just making a fruit plate. Meghan has already assembled most of it before Mindy came. All they did together was cut up bananas and put them on the plate. And Mindy is like "no, you do it first, I'll mess it up!" It is extremely weird, like you can't cut up a banana? What?

If Mindy cooks, she was working hard to pretend to be someone who doesn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Didn't she present herself as a feminist? This is some retrograde domestic goddess nonsense. Just silly.

I am fine with it from a feminist standpoint until she used a passive aggressive baby voice to correct Mindy Kaling about her last name. I can't believe nobody else has commented on the tone. It's how Paris Hilton used to talk in her 20s.

It’s sort of amazing to me that people don’t see and hear the fake fake fake in Meghan’s public-facing personality.

She seemed very tense and mad correcting Mindy, with a brittle tone mixed with the syrupy voice she can’t pull off. She speaks as if she’s dissolving into joyous tee-hees! behind a hand cupped over her mouth to block the gentle, sweet moment of laughter….at every sentence. It’s just bizarre. Who doesn’t see that?

She does do this. It's part of the whole vibe of having a secret that only she and Harry know about. There's just so much posing and fakeness.

Haha it’s amazing to me too that people can’t see how fake she is. But not everyone has the same judgement. I will say though, her correcting Mindy bolsters the recent bullying allegations against her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Hilaria’s show isn’t in the Max top ten tho - too bad for her.

With Love, Meghan has already dropped out of the top ten on Netflix.

They're pretty close on IMDB - 2.8/10 for Meghan, 2.7/10 for Hilaria Baldwin.

That's pretty hilarious to me as all of us could have told the producers a year ago that neither of these women is particularly likeable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I put it on while doing art yesterday and was pleasantly surprised.

It is chill with emphasis on creating good food and experiences for people you love. I might even try some modest version of the suggestions for creating personalized gifts for guests to let them know I value them.

Ditto. I will have a few visitors this summer and I might try some of those special touches. Traditionally I don’t do fancy/extraneous things but I’m coming around to the idea of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A short review of the 8 episodes in case you want to get caught up without watching it yourself.

(Episodes 1-4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImKOAd-PEo8

(Episodes 5-8) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI1P6MCK1QM

Why in the world would anyone need a two part summary of a cooking show? But I clicked through and it looks like that creator just makes anti MM videos so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

The show is still in the top ten this weekend. That’s a lot of cumulative eyeballs.

It isn't a cooking show. There is very little cooking happening, other than a couple guest chefs. It is about hosting and making gifts and treats and Meghan showing her lifestyle and how she lives her life. She shows you how to blow up a balloon, put fruit on a tray in a shape, put little shovels in bags for kids, put water and tea in a jar, etc,

And she is trying to erase her father as apparently now she wants the world to believe she was raised in poverty by her mother. Except she previously detailed her quite UMC life with her father and documented her mother's absence during long parts of her childhood.

She is so much like Hilaria Baldwin. Kind of funny they both got TV shows at the same time. They should become friends but would probably see each other as competition.

The reality is UMC ladies in the South are the ones who know how to host a party, and old money East Coast types from the north are similarly equipped to play “hostess.”

No clue why anyone would look to a middle class girl from California for tips. Sure, she married a royal—but she wasn’t raised by people versed in such stuff. It’s all very fake.

Plus, the timing is really bad. The world is on fire and I don’t know anyone IRL who has the time to focus on hostessing.

I thought these two were going to be great humanitarian-philanthropists? I guess that doesn’t pay enough.

Because being humanitarians means they can't shill jams.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people are zooming in on the Mindy episode because it's the worst one. I also suspect the reason it's bad is because Netflix sort of forced it. Mindy has a show premiering on Netflix the same time as this one -- Running Point with Kate Hudson which Mindy co-wrote and co-produced. I do think Mindy and Meghan kind of know each other (they did meet when Mindy appeared on Meghan's podcast) and might be kind of celebrity acquaintances, but unlike most of the other guests on the show, they clearly are not actually friends and barely know each other.

Mindy also seems to have virtually no interest in the project of the show (unlike most of the other guests). In the Mindy episode, she doesn't do any crafts with Meghan -- they show Meghan making the crafts ahead of time on her own and then just showing them to Mindy. And Mindy has virtually no interest in any of the cooking/hosting activities they do. She makes a couple haphazard kids sandwiches and arranges some banana slices on a plate, after being cajoled into it.

What Mindy wants to do is drink and gossip about Meghan's life. Every scene is basically Mindy standing around drinking a Bellini and then commenting on Meghan's appearance, childhood, or general deal. You can tell Mindy follows tabloid gossip about Meghan and the way Mindy talks about Meghan reflects this. The whole "you know I'm Sussex now" moment is part of one of those conversations, with Mindy talking about how weird it is that "Meghan Markle" has been to Jack in the Box, in the third person.

Anyway, they are both weird in that episode and I think it's because they barely know each other and both did it out of contractually obligations to Netflix. The other episodes are so much better because the guests actually seem excited to be cooking or discussing floral arrangements or making candles or whatever. And they interact with Meghan in a much more normal way, because either they have an actual friendship that predates the show (and in most cases her marriage) or because they have a shared interest/passion for whatever they are doing.

Anyway, I've written too much on this, I know. I'm not even particularly into Meghan and haven't watched the whole show or read this whole thread. I just think it's funny that a lot of the posts are zeroing in on her interactions with Mindy because when I watched it, it was just very obvious that episode was a weird outlier that they were probably both kind of forced into because Netflix wanted the synergy of having Meghan and Mindy in same space as they promoted both of their programs.

What is fascinating about this is that if you follow mindy at all, you know she actually loves to post cooking content on her Instagram. She truly loves to cook and try new recipes and share that with people, kind of like Jennifer Garner, in a really relatable way.

How they did not capitalize on that in this episode is truly baffling.

PP here. Does she actually cook in the videos? I don't follow her. With Meghan she acted like she doesn't cook or bake at all, like anything like that is just beyond her and she just pays people to do it. At one point Meghan gives her a "yogurt parfait" that's just assembled -- it's yogurt, some preserves, and then like typical yogurt toppings like berries and some coconut. It looks pretty but it is not complicated or fancy other than being served in fancy glass. And Mindy says something like "omg if you weren't giving this too me, I'd hate you for it." The idea was it was too perfect, too fancy, and Mindy would resent Meghan for the effort or something? It's weird.

She did the same thing when they were literally just making a fruit plate. Meghan has already assembled most of it before Mindy came. All they did together was cut up bananas and put them on the plate. And Mindy is like "no, you do it first, I'll mess it up!" It is extremely weird, like you can't cut up a banana? What?

If Mindy cooks, she was working hard to pretend to be someone who doesn't.

+1. I can’t recall exactly, but there were definitely a couple of Mindy jokes that indicated she rarely enters the kitchen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They probably have enough money to pay the bills without working - if they had not chosen to live in a VHCOL area in a huge mansion. They could easily have selected a less expensive home in a less expensive area and never worked again.

This describes a lot of people who post on DCUM, though. The financial forum is filled with people who are like "we are just scraping by on 400k a year, btw we live in a 5 bedroom new build in Bethesda and send our kids to private schools but anything else is unacceptable, oh no pity us." Like this is the DCUM brand.

And the thing is, it doesn't appear Meghan made this show under duress or something. You can tell she likes doing this stuff and wanted to make a show that she thought people would like. I do think she's kind of pretentious and she certainly enjoys the royal title and pretention, but this doesn't feel like someone desperately hustling for money to afford their lavish lifestyle. It feels like she genuinely wants to create a lifestyle brand and actually feels passionate about stuff like making farm-fresh preserves and setting a table in a pretty way. And there is a market for that, and she's clearly targeting that market. She comes off like an ambitious business person who is working to create a product that is successful, which is extremely American and usually very lauded in our culture. So it's weird to me how many people are mad about it, regardless of whether this show or her brand are for you, when she's no different from your average Shark Tank contestant, just better resourced and connected because she was already a successful actor and then married a British prince. Shrug. She doesn't seem to resent having to work -- she appears to enjoy it.

The problem I have is that she doesn’t actually know what work is. It is the Blake lively problem. They think they want to do all these things, start these companies, create beautiful things, produce, tell stories, but really what they want to do is sit around and have dozens of staff who worked their asses off to get them ideas present really polished PowerPoints to them and have them pick something and sign off on it. It’s actually not work.

Disagree. Part of her problem in the UK was that she’s very hardworking and a go-getter whereas that is *not* the ethos in palace circles, where you have to act oh-so-casual and cool and get things done through the back channel. I think she got frustrated and that made her treat her staff badly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people are zooming in on the Mindy episode because it's the worst one. I also suspect the reason it's bad is because Netflix sort of forced it. Mindy has a show premiering on Netflix the same time as this one -- Running Point with Kate Hudson which Mindy co-wrote and co-produced. I do think Mindy and Meghan kind of know each other (they did meet when Mindy appeared on Meghan's podcast) and might be kind of celebrity acquaintances, but unlike most of the other guests on the show, they clearly are not actually friends and barely know each other.

Mindy also seems to have virtually no interest in the project of the show (unlike most of the other guests). In the Mindy episode, she doesn't do any crafts with Meghan -- they show Meghan making the crafts ahead of time on her own and then just showing them to Mindy. And Mindy has virtually no interest in any of the cooking/hosting activities they do. She makes a couple haphazard kids sandwiches and arranges some banana slices on a plate, after being cajoled into it.

What Mindy wants to do is drink and gossip about Meghan's life. Every scene is basically Mindy standing around drinking a Bellini and then commenting on Meghan's appearance, childhood, or general deal. You can tell Mindy follows tabloid gossip about Meghan and the way Mindy talks about Meghan reflects this. The whole "you know I'm Sussex now" moment is part of one of those conversations, with Mindy talking about how weird it is that "Meghan Markle" has been to Jack in the Box, in the third person.

Anyway, they are both weird in that episode and I think it's because they barely know each other and both did it out of contractually obligations to Netflix. The other episodes are so much better because the guests actually seem excited to be cooking or discussing floral arrangements or making candles or whatever. And they interact with Meghan in a much more normal way, because either they have an actual friendship that predates the show (and in most cases her marriage) or because they have a shared interest/passion for whatever they are doing.

Anyway, I've written too much on this, I know. I'm not even particularly into Meghan and haven't watched the whole show or read this whole thread. I just think it's funny that a lot of the posts are zeroing in on her interactions with Mindy because when I watched it, it was just very obvious that episode was a weird outlier that they were probably both kind of forced into because Netflix wanted the synergy of having Meghan and Mindy in same space as they promoted both of their programs.

What is fascinating about this is that if you follow mindy at all, you know she actually loves to post cooking content on her Instagram. She truly loves to cook and try new recipes and share that with people, kind of like Jennifer Garner, in a really relatable way.

How they did not capitalize on that in this episode is truly baffling.

PP here. Does she actually cook in the videos? I don't follow her. With Meghan she acted like she doesn't cook or bake at all, like anything like that is just beyond her and she just pays people to do it. At one point Meghan gives her a "yogurt parfait" that's just assembled -- it's yogurt, some preserves, and then like typical yogurt toppings like berries and some coconut. It looks pretty but it is not complicated or fancy other than being served in fancy glass. And Mindy says something like "omg if you weren't giving this too me, I'd hate you for it." The idea was it was too perfect, too fancy, and Mindy would resent Meghan for the effort or something? It's weird.

She did the same thing when they were literally just making a fruit plate. Meghan has already assembled most of it before Mindy came. All they did together was cut up bananas and put them on the plate. And Mindy is like "no, you do it first, I'll mess it up!" It is extremely weird, like you can't cut up a banana? What?

If Mindy cooks, she was working hard to pretend to be someone who doesn't.

Oh interesting. Mindy actually does cook but her whole thing is if I can make this anyone can. So she is not trying to come off as an expert, more a busy mom trying to share her moms/ family dishes with her kids vs Meghan who is teaching through the show. Mindy also does not do presentations or anything which is clearly big with Meghan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A short review of the 8 episodes in case you want to get caught up without watching it yourself.

(Episodes 1-4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImKOAd-PEo8

(Episodes 5-8) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI1P6MCK1QM

Why in the world would anyone need a two part summary of a cooking show? But I clicked through and it looks like that creator just makes anti MM videos so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

The show is still in the top ten this weekend. That’s a lot of cumulative eyeballs.

It isn't a cooking show. There is very little cooking happening, other than a couple guest chefs. It is about hosting and making gifts and treats and Meghan showing her lifestyle and how she lives her life. She shows you how to blow up a balloon, put fruit on a tray in a shape, put little shovels in bags for kids, put water and tea in a jar, etc,

And she is trying to erase her father as apparently now she wants the world to believe she was raised in poverty by her mother. Except she previously detailed her quite UMC life with her father and documented her mother's absence during long parts of her childhood.

She is so much like Hilaria Baldwin. Kind of funny they both got TV shows at the same time. They should become friends but would probably see each other as competition.

The reality is UMC ladies in the South are the ones who know how to host a party, and old money East Coast types from the north are similarly equipped to play “hostess.”

No clue why anyone would look to a middle class girl from California for tips. Sure, she married a royal—but she wasn’t raised by people versed in such stuff. It’s all very fake.

Plus, the timing is really bad. The world is on fire and I don’t know anyone IRL who has the time to focus on hostessing.

I thought these two were going to be great humanitarian-philanthropists? I guess that doesn’t pay enough.

Yeah… no. This is not true.

I don’t care about Cali, but she had some reasonable and not “old-money” tips. I actually loved the fruit rainbow and will do it for my next kids’ party!