As Ever Part V . Two stunt lemons - With Love , Meghan

[BasiliskStare]

For all who love Brand Management , glamorous lifestyles , and Bingo

Previous thread here www.mumsnet.com/talk/the_royal_family/5283793-as-ever4-as-usual?page=40&reply=142596997 ( link with thanks to my lovely devoted friend StickyStickySticky who just loves to see me succeed )

Seconded!
Well done that MNer 👏 🍾

Reciprocate???
🙄 recuperate!

Now she is making a Strepsils cake.

If you thought With Love, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex’s new lifestyle show, would be a smug, syrupy endurance watch, and that you would rather fry your eyeballs than sit through it, I have news for you. It is so much worse than that

From the times link up thread. Wow

I’m actually quite enjoying the pretentious wankery of it all 😅

now that I don't get

Well done - were the children in it at all?

I've watched 2 random clips from different episodes to get a feel for it.

She does look lovely. The house is lovely. California is lovely. The sunny freshness of everything is lovely.

I'd would like to live there so it should be a good advert.

The problem is it's a 25 minute advert and we're know we're being sold a fiction because we know the person selling is not what they are pretending to be.

And the content beyond the fresh cali vibe is dated and repetitive. In both the random clips I saw she added garden sprigs to elevate 1) packets of popcorn 2) a wrapped gift.
Once you share that 'idea ' you can't keep just replicating it.
And all the 'ideas ' are so dated. We've all been putting peonies in jam jars, and using string to tie up biscuits and, using little brown labels for gift tags since 2003.

It really is an awful combination of sad, cringey dated embarrassing fake nonsense.

I think a lot of people will put it on,
watch one or two episodes and switch it off. It’s impossible to keep watching.

i wish Ruby Wax could go interview her, that would be good Tv.

Shifty

100/100 @AtIusvue for resilience and staying power and the very witty commentary. 👏

I thought I might watch some of the clips, but don't think I could even stomach a 2 minute segment based on the reviews..

Apologies for all my typos today, my mind is elsewhere. I did go to Netflix but I couldn't be bothered to click so I'm back watching Traitors and following @AtIusvue's stirling work actually watching it.

I'm surprised by Marina Hyde being quite that caustic, she was much nicer about the preview on The Rest is Entertainment.

1. Massive thanks to @Atlusvue for her services to this thread.
2. I'm here because I can't face reading the actual news right now, so thanks (I guess?) to Meg for that.
3. Not having watched it, and sure I never will, I'm pretty confident that California itself did a lot of heavy lifting in this series. The sun, scenery, landscapes etc. What would the vibe have been if this had been filmed in a studio, I wonder? Or in Blackpool?
4. Seems that I'm confirmed in my opinion that this is all an elevation of Meghan, not food/flowers/crafting/hosting. Sounds like a bunch of people invited over to tell Meghan how wonderful she is?
5. The Soho House/Ludlow House visit in NYC last night, with accompanying historic tweets from those barely pubescent girls is HORRIFIC. There's cheap, and then there's this.
6. The leaking of the As Ever website's sales page is unbelievable. Literally nobody is going to spend $25 on that stuff. Nobody. This is going to sink without a trace, which leaves Meghan scrabbling around for the "heritage element" of this "woman founded" business she's intending to leave to her daughter (but not her son).

If it feels inauthentic (which I've no doubt it does), it's because it IS inauthentic. This is not who Meghan Markle is. She wasn't this until she decided to pivot out of the last thing she told everyone she was, and no amount of her telling people she's returning to her roots is going to change that. She's been this person for 5 minutes. I mean, yes she's been this person in the same way that we've all been people who cook and eat and live in houses and see friends. But there is no deeper nexus. Before this she was all the other things she tried to be: philanthropist, activist, feminist, podcaster, member of the RF, Suits actress, wife to whatever his name was, Toronto resident for 8 years, valley girl for however many years before that, Economist-reading intellectual, blogger, etc etc etc. This "Montecito Paragon of Taste and Thoughtfulness" is just her latest costume.

She's making a big deal of it (a) because she can, someone has given her the Netflix platform (b) she wants it badly because she thinks the pinnacle of Cali life is within reach (it's not, far from it) (c) she needs it to work (d) she's at a stage in her life where she needs to settle into something. But I don't see how it will work. Like everything she does, it's style over substance and her stint with the RF gave her such a huge chance with Netflix and Spotify that she's forgotten how hard it is going to be to make people part with their money when that platform is gone.

I love all veg so I have too much choice. However, I will be using this advice for fruit. When I make my rainbow fruit plate each morning, I will stop choosing pears. I don't like them. High five, Megsie!

🍿🍃🌷

Don’t mind me guys, Im just hear eating my mint and edible flowers sprinkled popcorn and enjoying your commentaries

@AtIusvue You can do this . I feel like I should be reaching through the screen and handing you a bottle of water for drinking and pouring over your head.

Anyway just to add to the flower arranging. So M likes to put her flowers in opaque containers because if they are in a clear glass one after a couple of days the water goes all cloudy. and she doesn't want to know what's going on in there "And who's got time to change the water in the vase every day, right?) Well , I'd venture to suggest someone who's got time to arrange their children's breakfast like a rainbow - but enough of that.

I did actually -say "no, no, no" at this . So 1. If you have the money to buy a prince's ransom in cut flowers and throw them away every 2 or 3 days - have at it. Your money , your choice. 2. You will know what's going on in there because your flowers will wilt more quickly because flowers don't like standing in stagnant water (even if you haven't brought some back from the market which look like they are going over already - ) BUT see point 1. 3. If you are going to broadcast your hints and tips on displaying flowers at least tell people they can extend the life of their flowers by regular water changing and snipping off the ends for a clean cut before going back in the vase.

As well as being an ardent table lamp user my mother used to go to flower arranging lessons and is CiC of flower arranging at the golf club. I have by osmosis learned a bit of this stuff.

And breathe. 😂🌹🌺

also add in all of her previous BFFs Priddy, Mulroney, Cundy, Mackintosh, Nelthorpe-Crowne .... these she "just" ghosted whereas dozens of colleagues and staff came in for more pro-active bullying treatment over many years - harrassing, belittling, reducing to tears - some hounded out of jobs and others requiring professional intervention to alleviate the mental distress inflicted on them in their workplace by Meghan Markle.

I tried the link and it's gone now. Instead, I clicked on Cookie Preferences. My favourite are chocolate chip but they must be a UK speciality because the choices from As Ever are things like About Your Privacy and Our Privacy Promise.

I've not read all the comments since this morning but I'm watching the first episode. I genuinely went into it with as open a mind as I could.

I haven't really enjoyed it. With everything, Meghan says something along the lines of "This is my first time doing this" or similar. And it makes me wonder why I'm watching what is essentially an instructional show but with someone who's only trying these things for the first time. The interviews with the guy weren't that interesting because I just don't know who he is, so why is a picture of him with his nan something I should see? And she keeps saying it's not her house and carrying things out or in the door. I'd almost rather they didn't keep focusing on that fact because it makes the whole thing feel fake. She's going to the cupboard to get an ingredient but... it's not your kitchen so I'm reminded that the ingredients have all been planted by a crew member. Lacks authenticity.

I also hate the mix of music and how there is constantly a backing track. Maybe that's an American show thing, but I can't think of another similar show I've watched where there is constantly music. There isn't any in-depth-ness to anything, really, and where they show longer segments like pasta cooking, I just fast forwarded because I wasn't bothered about that bit.

I don't know. I'm clearly not her target audience (we don't even have a guest room!) but the whole thing has left me underwhelmed and disliking how it's been put together.

And I thought it was very fake when she asked the make up guy "What was our first job together?" when surely it's not hard to remember? Especially as it was her biggest (only?) acting role to date. Just put me off.

Agree - those comparisons are off.

It's more like the Brooklyn Beckham, Pippa Middleton derision. When people set themselves up to ridicule by something they've done which they can't quite pull off.

🤮🤮

The sale page of the website is likely to be a test page that was accidentally made visible. I’m sure the pancake mix will be no more than 8USD. For 25USD I’d be expecting three kilograms of the stuff.

Happy affordable pancake day everyone!

Some was the page with goods for sale made visible because

A. They are incompetent
B. A member of staff has gone rogue

?

It isn't top 10 on the Netflix chart, maybe tonight will pick the viewing figures up?

I am imagining some poor young kid with Level 1 certificate in Microsoft Office trying to run the website with Meghan screeching at them to make it live, no not yet , now now , no not now !