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With Love, Meghan<\/em><\/a> opens with a scene that could be familiar to many people who worked with her, from palace aides<\/a> to Spotify producers<\/a>: the Duchess of Sussex, with the best of intentions, has entered an area she\u2019s unfamiliar with and requires expertise to navigate. She proceeds with gusto, closely overseeing a skilled employee. She expresses personal concerns about the potential pitfalls of the project. When the endeavor is complete, she touts the positive impact, with her husband Prince Harry<\/strong><\/a>\u2019s support. In this case, beekeeping<\/a>\u2014and With Love<\/em> itself\u2014are the newest iteration of Meghan Sussex<\/a>.<\/strong> (Not Markle anymore, we learn.)<\/p>\n Meghan has kept a colony for about a year, because the Montecito property<\/a> where she lives with Harry and their two children previously had no bees on it. Meghan employs a professional to maintain the hive because it scares her when the bees come out, and also because she is not an apiarist. Still, Meghan basks in the result. \u201cI\u2019ve got good vibes,\u201d she says of the 70,000 bees being sent out to pollinate the flora of California, thanks to her. \u201cGood vibes for good hives.\u201d<\/p>\n If there\u2019s one thing Meghan seems to want you to take away from her new Netflix series, it\u2019s that this is 70,000% her: meticulously basic, rigid but comfy, extravagantly earnest, happily married. She is proudly square,<\/a> saying things like \u201cWorking hard or hardly working?\u201d and \u201cLove is in the details, gang\u201d to the camera. She says she has never heard an outfit referred to as a \u201clewk.\u201d Meghan is adamantly pro-joy and anti-perfection, words that are repeated across the eight episodes. Her time in the monarchy\u2014notwithstanding her title as Duchess of Sussex\u2014is obliquely referred to only as the \u201cduring\u201d in the \u201cbefore, during, and after\u201d of Meghan\u2019s life.<\/p>\n To watch With Love<\/em> is to microdose quotidian revelations. Meghan pairs Zara with Loro Piana and once worked at a donut store! Harry likes super-salty food and the smell of sauteing onions! The non-narrative chat between Meghan and her guests is mostly nostalgic (\u201cWhat did you eat growing up?\u201d), or the sort of conversation you might have in line for an aura photo at a Goop conference (\u201cNature is so grounding\u201d). Everyone is grateful to be there; Mindy Kaling<\/strong> talks about clocking what number was on the label of the famous American Riviera Orchard jam<\/a> she received to see how she ranked among friends (Meghan is mortified she didn\u2019t think of how that might be interpreted), and chef Roy Choi<\/strong><\/a> says, \u201cI was blown away that I was even asked to do the show\u2014that you even know who the hell I was.\u201d (Meghan runs to hug him!) In the case of Alice Waters,<\/strong> Meghan is the gusher; she turns to the camera and whispers, \u201cAlice Waters!\u201d in front of the woman. \u201cYou are going to change my life\u2014you already have,\u201d Meghan tells Waters. \u201cI feel like you\u2019re watching me fall in love. It\u2019s very, very awkward.\u201d (What a show that would be.)<\/p>\n The fact that fresh peas look best when they\u2019re presented on the half-pod is given two separate segments in the four-hour season. Much hay is made of adding flowers\u2014to crudit\u00e9s, to ice cubes, to frittata, to toast, to donuts, to hummus, to cookies, to salad, to sun tea and honey, to the seemingly hundreds of vases around the set of the show. Meghan told People<\/em><\/a> she decided to film at a house near the Sussexes\u2019 mansion rather than the family home because, \u201cI wanted to protect that safe haven. We\u2019re a close-knit family, and I love those moments\u2014putting Lili down for a nap, having lunch together, having sacred time together at the end of the day. Our kitchen is where Mama just cooks for the family, and with a crew of 80-plus people, that\u2019s a lot of people to have in your house!\u201d Meghan is evidently fine with bringing cameras and what Netflix surely hopes will be millions of eyes to the larger safe haven of Montecito, which is mentioned by name many times during the show and filmed so beautifully that Meghan\u2019s guest and makeup artist Daniel Martin<\/strong> says, \u201cI feel like this is all fake.\u201d<\/p>\n For a show that is ostensibly built on the expertise of homemaking, Meghan doesn\u2019t seem to know intermediate-level terminology, like that the spiky floral arrangement tool is called a frog or what \u201ccrumb\u201d is in breadmaking. That lack of advanced knowledge in Meghan\u2019s fussy homeyness make the show feel more authentic than her last high-profile solo venture, the podcast Archetypes.<\/em><\/p>\n With Love<\/em> also seems to be deliberately pushing back on the staff \u201cbullying\u201d<\/a> narrative that has plagued Meghan since she was a working royal. The fourth wall is repeatedly broken and the camera turned to capture the crew as Meghan encourages them to consume something she just made. \u201cThe only thing better than eating food is making food for someone and watching them eat it with delight!\u201d she says in episode six, beaming as director Michael Steed<\/strong> takes off his headset and chews a breakfast sandwich under Meghan\u2019s expectant gaze.<\/p>\n In the first episode (\u201cHello, Honey!\u201d), Meghan explicitly ties With Love<\/em> to an earlier independent project: her pre-Harry lifestyle website The Tig, which featured recipes like \u201cCrostini Five Ways\u201d<\/a> and a guide to Manhattan\u2019s Lower East Side that included a recommendation for floral-dress chain Reformation<\/a>. Lainey Gossip\u2019s Elaine Liu<\/strong> previously told VF<\/em> that Markle\u2019s forthcoming lifestyle brand As Ever<\/a> (n\u00e9e\/RIP American Riviera Orchard<\/a>)\u2014which was to be pegged to With Love<\/em> and is also produced in partnership with Netflix<\/a>\u2014\u201cis giving 2014. It\u2019s not giving 2024. Fame arrests you at the moment it arrives. And I wonder if that is your health-and-wellness-lifestyle version of that, where she had to suspend The Tig and quit it the moment that she became Harry\u2019s girlfriend, then fianc\u00e9e, and then his wife. [It] is maybe picking up from where The Tig left off.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n