With Love, Megan: Holiday Celebration Review – Take Anti-Nausea Pills, They’re Back! | television

IIn the top corner of the screen, when With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration opens, there is an age rating: “U – No material that is likely to cause offense or harm.” This may be true in the traditional sense. But I would advise any British viewer, who is not an actor and/or not married to the Duchess of Sussex, to take as many antiemetics as is medically recommended, and then get into crash mode.

We open with Megan literally driving past a Christmas tree farm. “Once a year you have to do the tree thing!” Then you decorate it, which she loves because it allows you to “sum up your family story!” She likes to put up jewelry “until it finds its light.” Once you’ve done that, it’s time to fill out your 24-pocket Advent calendar – no, not chocolate, you fat English year, but ‘little gestures’ and ‘little results’ for your children. “I write notes that say ‘I love you because you’re so good!’ and ‘I love you because you’re so brave!'” Do the kids leave notes in return, I wonder? “Should we give up hope of Fredo being here sometimes?”

“Little moments create the energy you want for the holidays,” and you can achieve that by hand-painting cookies. There are a lot of things that are “raised” – the main one being wrapping gifts with wax seals, although I think attaching them with a hot glue gun…right? There are many things that are considered “likable” or “totally lovable,” and this I find difficult.

Meghan has the usual group of guests. Someone who meets her on her turf, some described as friends, a couple of celebrities she’s been worshiping since birth or something. I can’t be expected to listen to everything.

anyway. The person who will meet her on the same regurgitated lawn is restaurateur Will Guidara. She makes it Casio e pepe goggiAccuracy And “reindeer food” to take home to his wife, who Megan tells us “loves nostalgic sweets.” I hope she likes it when it looks like real animal droppings, because that’s what she’ll get.

She and Will make crackers and compete to outdo each other. Megan says the holidays are about “connection.” He sees this and teases her by not remembering what he had at the best dinner parties but “remembering that I left with my heart full.” A few weak punches from Megan, then he delivers the final blow to her: “What’s really going to connect it,” he says as she sticks one of the damned cookies together, “is the love we feel for the person we’re making it for.” Sir. well played.

Friends are Lindsay and Kelly. The three of them have known each other for years. Pictures of them as teenagers and in their twenties appear as evidence. They eat star cinnamon pastries, quiche cups and baked pears, drink “bubbles” with pomegranate syrup, and make Christmas wreaths. “I’m curious to see how different they all look!” Which is weird to say, but I haven’t stopped thinking about it since then, says Megan.

Naomi Osaka, tennis player and Meghan’s first celebrity, looks like a cool soak after a sweltering sauna. I’ve never seen anyone more desperate to get home. She spends most holidays not relaxing but “chasing my daughter.” “But it fills the soul,” Megan says, closing her eyes. Naomi looks at her with polite amazement. She paints a very bad dish and leaves. I pledge my eternal loyalty to her.

The second celebrity is Tom Colicchio, the chef on Top Chef, but who cares because he makes his family’s traditional festive beets, olives, fennel, pickles, anchovy salad and salt cod, which should come but H! Or as we used to know him, Prince Harry. Balder than ever but still charmingly relaxed and calm. He hates beets, olives, fennel, pickles, anchovies and fish, which makes you proud to be British. Then, Megan also made her mom’s chicken dish, even though it’s so spicy it makes her sweat. Come home, Harry. Just go home.

And that, thank God, is the end. I feel insulted and hurt at the same time, but in the spirit of good faith I will add a star to my review in gratitude for the fact that we are at least safe now until next year. God bless us all.