Dust off your rose gold Le Creuset: With Love, Meghan—Netflix’s most-watched culinary show, I checked—is back. What have we all been doing without Meghan Markle’s homemaking influence in the 25-week gap between seasons? (Well, Lil Nas X got arrested and Taylor got engaged, for two things.)
Season 2 of With Love is a familiar vinaigrette of flower-sprinkling and celebrity-friending, of lobster-boiling and persimmon sourdough-ing and the vanilla-beaning of turmeric marshmallows. Our host, Meghan, is the butcher, the baker, and the scented-candlestick maker, dabbling in domestic DIY, braising, bouquet-assembling, and lavender latte-ing her lifestyle brand into the public consciousness. Along for the ride this season are Chrissy Teigen and her tattoos, a blink-and-you’ll-miss it John Legend, and Tan France smothered in Greek yogurt (a fantasy realized for some, I’m sure).
The internet still hates it, but with less of the vim that the cold-plunge shock of Season 1 inspired, now that we’ve acclimated to Markle’s waters. (It’s hard to know if I’m adding to the din of detractors by even commenting on the show, but here we are.) Meghan’s approach seems simple—“There are easy ways to show up lovingly”—which doesn’t seem like a bad sentiment, does it? Making things a bit nicer while the world burns just means… things are a bit nicer.
Sure, I see how this is cloying for some, sticking to the roof of your mouth and coating your tongue. There’s something a bit naff about her dependency on the matchy-matchy, a little too smudgy-pastels when I want vivid strokes. But With Love, Meghan offers easy watching, not hate-watching. It’s pumiced enough to have no snags, no irks. I don’t know why people are so riled.
Obviously, being married to a prince of England—however estranged—is a factor: The Sussexes’ $100 million deal with Netflix has seen them trauma-doc their departure from royal duty. But with With Love, Meghan, Season 2, there’s no royal gossip. There’s no sense of vengeance. There’s no “Beyoncé’s texted.” Meghan just seems fairly—dare I say it?—normal.
The decision to further de-emphasize her personal life in Season 2 might be appropriate, but the show ends up lacking narrative salt, fat, acid, and heat—even with Samin Nosrat as a special guest. The season is a polished, unmessy outing from a woman whose life is inexorably intertwined with a family that lacquers over their messes with aplomb.
