A very honest recap of 'With Love, Meghan.'

When you accidentally go full Nara Smith.

So, as a rule, I want to embrace the radical act of not shitting on women on the internet. ‘But that’s the whole internet!’ I hear you say.

I know.

But when With Love, Meghan dropped on Netflix, I thought… you know what? This woman has copped enough outrage for a lifetime. Even if she is guilty of whatever it is we’re accusing her of (rudeness? Ambition? A lack of respect towards a morally corrupt institution?), we can probably give her a break. She’s been cross-examined like a criminal, when there’s a probable criminal still in the Royal Family, lying low because thank fuck Meghan renamed her jam brand. Genuinely thank fuck.

So. This recap is not about Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex. This is about honey. This is about candle vessels. This is about a very familiar, very specific type of friend.

Ahem.

We open on Meghan Markle in a bee suit, and I’ve said it once and I’ve said it again: rich people have too many hobbies. Honestly, it must be stressful to have the kind of wealth (and time) that grants you access to any activity you could possibly want to participate in. Boating. Skiing. Bee-keeping. And let’s be real, if any of us had lots of money, we’d probably end up attempting to make our own honey, too. But surely you get bored quickly. Why harvest (??) bees until they ejaculate (??) a sticky substance, when you could just sit on Instagram and buy a jar of it from a celebrity. (Not Meghan, though. Her honey isn’t ready yet. Which… just a thought from someone who knows nothing about business… if you’re launching a Netflix series that’s essentially an ad for your honey, should you not have your honey available for sale? No?)

Luckily Meghan has retired from beekeeping, and she’s now in a rustic kitchen explaining how when you have guests, it’s very important to make them feel special. To create ‘moments’. To let them know you were thinking of them. It feels a little intense, but okay.

She’s making her own bath salts for her friend Daniel who is coming to stay. He will soak in the bath, she announces. And then he will go to sleep and wake up to her curated bedside blooms. This is all genuinely lovely, but a couple of questions:

• any advice for those of us who don’t have a guest cottage? And/or a spare house to film in?

• what if I… hmm, how do I put this politely… cannot be fucked?

But shut up because there’s snacks. Daniel might get hungry when he arrives at an unspecified time to do an unspecified thing for an unspecified reason, so she puts a dried corn cob in the microwave to make popcorn. I’ll admit, I’m impressed. But again, only a rich person would have the time to a) identify/locate a dried corn cob, b) season their own popcorn with salt, c) add truffle oil, and d) put it into a bag and add a handwritten label. Side note - I believe with every fibre of my being that Meghan has done a calligraphy course. Which. Too many hobbies, etc.

She then puts peanut butter pretzels into a bag and labels them too, explaining that it’s important to label the snacks you give your friends in case they have allergies. I mean, sure. But this is why I don’t really provide personalised snacks to my friends when they visit, which they don’t, because we don’t have a spare bed/room/cottage, because there’s a cost of living crisis.

Meghan, I say this with kindness. As someone who waited at the Opera House for hours to meet you when you came to Australia, and thought you seemed wonderful in the 0.53 seconds we spent together:

This. Is. Not. The. Vibe.

We. Are. Not. Bee. Keeping. And. Making. Our. Own. Bath. Salts.

We. Are. Trying. To. Survive. When. A. Can. Of. Coke. Costs. Like. $6.

But Daniel’s here now, and Meghan has plans. They’re going to be making spaghetti in a skillet. One thing about Americans on reality TV is that they run out of things to say very quickly, so they just start repeating words. “Skillet spaghetti,” they repeat more than once, to point out the alliteration. This, I suppose, is meant to establish their friendship to the audience, but really, it fills time while I consider why Meghan is wearing a white shirt with floaty sleeves to cook tomato pasta.

The other strategy for sharing Daniel and Meghan’s friendship is to simply have them tell us about it. Meghan, who has already told us she met Daniel when he was doing her makeup for Suits, asks him, “what was our first job together?” and Daniel - instead of asking “hmm u ok hun” - is like “Suits”?????

Nonetheless, this is fine. The pasta looks delightful and I will be attempting it and burning it as a matter of urgency.

After they’ve eaten their ambiguous meal at an undisclosed time, Meghan explains they’re going to be making candles. It’s at this point that I realise the vibe of this show is what would happen if Keeping Up With The Kardashians and Nara Smith’s TikTok had a baby. And I don’t hate it.

After getting the beeswax from the bee farm (??) Meghan outlines the very precise science behind candle-making. Something to do with temperatures. Something to do with dipping. Something to do with don’t fuck it up Daniel.

The entire thing seems stressful and at one point Meghan says, “this is so exciting” and is it though?? Is it really? Or have you just poured wax into a vessel you conveniently had sitting on your shelf, and now you and Daniel have to wait 3-4 hours for it to harden?

Look. I’ve had an epiphany. We all have the friend who insists we stay at their house, and then plans a busy itinerary of activities that includes touring their beehive and helping them start a candle business. The problem is that halfway through the day, you’ve got a headache and a sore tummy because you haven’t been able to follow your instincts about when to drink water and when to go to the toilet because now you’re making a honey lemon cake you don’t want. It’s too much, Meghan. You have simply gone to too much trouble. And Daniel needs a minute to scroll on his phone or let out a fart.

But Meghan has baked a cake and Daniel has to help decorate it. “Shall we just put some supermarket frosting on the top and call it a day?” Daniel says with his eyes, but absolutely not. Berries will be picked from the garden. Individual leaves will be placed like this. A swirl of jam will be piped inside a swirl of buttercream and then we will leave it to cool while we check on our candles.

“Jesus Christ,” you can hear Daniel mutter under his breath. “I thought she forgot about the fucking candles.”

This entire show is giving off the energy of the sleepover that never ends, with the friend who your mum says bosses you around too much.

We RETURN to the cake, where there’s now a detail to do with honey, and again, we’re repeating words. “Honey, honey,” they say. Meghan. You need to let Daniel go home.

Finally, the two of them eat their dessert (??) and drink their tea (which, to clarify once more, you can buy from Meghan’s brand, just not now. It’ll be available later, when everyone’s forgotten about it. Genius marketing. No notes.)

I’ve started to watch episode two, which opened with an unnamed man asking Meghan the question the world has been desperate to know: “what is your favourite preserve?”

Things I’m looking forward to include:

• a glimpse of Harry (I saw it on TikTok hehe)

• more product placement. Which should be awkward, given there is a limited range of (currently non-existent) products

• Meghan continuing to hold her friend’s hostage for content purposes

Honestly, it’s so fun. There’s no yelling! No one even shouted at a war-time president to wear a suit!

Your excessive hobbies aren’t hurting anyone, Meghan, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. But if you invite me for a sleepover, with all due respect, I shan’t be coming. It is my worst nightmare for a friend to make me personalised bath salts. Because when that friend then asks you if you’re interested in seeing their bee colony, or watching them practice their calligraphy, how on earth do you say no?