Enrique and Meghan, from rebels with a cause to Netflix puppets

BarcelonaWhen the Sussexes decided to flee to the spirit of Buckingham, public opinion was sharply divided. There was no common ground between those in favor of the runaway marriage and those in favor of the rest of Windsor. Both inside and outside the United Kingdom, the weight of both sides was very evenly matched, something that never usually happens because the British royal family always plays with a significant advantage. But the susexito –as the farewell of Enric and Meghan Markle was then called– had been very erosive for the royal family in terms of public opinion. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex had suddenly created so many opponents of the Windsors that there were even people who thought it was the biggest crisis in the British monarchy since King Edward VIII abdicated for love, married Wallis Simpson and he went away to live in Paris.

Harry and Meghan garnered so much popular support by announcing they couldn't stand palace life that some believed the British royal family would never recover from the miseries the couple would explain once they left. Although somewhat exaggerated, those fears actually had some basis at the time, since the Sussexes had made the right decision at the right time and had all the winds in their sails. They had managed to play the victim, lead the narrative, become bearers of truth against the dark conspiracies of the palace, and, above all, they had reaped the full benefit of appearing to be a modern family, infinitely more aspirational than the rest of the Windsors combined. January 18 marked five years since that moment, and of all that popular capital the Sussexes had, they have nothing left. Or practically nothing.

A farce

A sample of their decline has been given by the last project they have signed, Cone love, Meghan, in which she appears alone but is clearly the work of both of them. This eight-part Netflix series shows how the retired actress invites people over and organizes activities. eco-friendly, child-friendly, health-friendly, dog-friendly and, above all, avorrifriendly. So much so that twelve days after its premiere, the pseudo-documentary has received nothing but negative reviews on every possible platform where a format can be criticized. Parodies on networks like TikTok, destructive tweets, and extremely low ratings from both professional and amateur critics have turned this series into a global laughingstock. Amidst all this negative effervescence, the furious reviews published by the series stand out. TheTelegraph –"The format is this: Meghan invites people to her fake house and they tell her how incredible she is. And so it goes for eight episodes"– and Variety –"It was made with a lot of love, meaning love as the greatest love a person can have for themselves."– Two among many others equally powerful.

But without going into the details of the content, which would only spoil the weekend, it's worth highlighting some things about the format that make no sense when compared to his real life. The first is that it's a blatant scam to present the format as a documentary when in reality, not even the house where it's filmed is his... Even the docureality María Teresa Campos and her daughters used the journalist's house. And Campos wasn't exactly from the era of reality TV. It's clear that in a format of this type, the content is controlled to modulate the image projected of you, but trying to seduce someone when you don't even have the minimum generosity to use your house as a background is disrespectful to the viewer, who will easily feel cheated.

The second misery worth highlighting about Markle's show is its overflowing snobbishness. She and Enric, who left the royal family because they were people who adored a simple life far from the trappings of the palace, now turn out to have their own beehives in the garden to be able to add honey to their recipes, which, on top of that, they have to collect with a beekeeper who comes to them. home To do so. It has also been widely reported that while making dog treats, he specifies on camera that he makes them with filtered water. These exaggerations suggest he's seeking market positioning. healthy obsessive that turns her into Gwyneth Paltrow's heiress. It's a shame it's not possible to take the Guinness record away from Hollywood's Oscar-winning darling. All of this is believable about her. Not about Markle. Besides, this personal branding that someone has devised for the Duchess is ten years late to the market. The thickness of Instagram, currently, loves the smash burgers much more than the flower petals she puts everywhere.

'Tradwife'

Thirdly, it's worth mentioning that the feminist, anti-racist, combative, and critical Meghan who couldn't fit into the palace corset has completely disappeared. If this is a documentary about her life, we must note that she has either abandoned all her struggles—since they are not mentioned at all—or she had only invoked them previously through fake activism. In her show, she is seen only in the role of an upmarket housewife who makes every effort to become a perfect hostess to her visitors. tradwife textbook but dressed like a rich Californian. It's hard to believe that this Meghan can continue to be aspirational for the target who idolized her when she burned the ships with Buckingham.

Finally, there is also an overacting in her positionally sought echo version of the Desperate Housewives from Beverly Hills. Cooking with gold jewelry that can be seen from London, she betrays the desire to be appreciated as a celebrity first division to position herself as an ideal candidate to announce –on her newly launched Instagram account– any luxury item that is proposed to her in a short time. This is also evidenced by the very deliberate phrase she says to Mindy Kaling when she goes to visit her your houseThe actress and comedian is being criticized for referring to her as Meghan Markle when her current "family name is Sussex." If she had told us this five years ago, we would have called it a poison campaign.

Generate rejection as a claim

The product really doesn't work conceptually because Sussex is blatantly pursuing an impossible market positioning. They want to look like a lot of VIPs and much of the people simultaneously, and to do so, they have created a product that makes no sense. They want to be characters premium to sell the brand's products that—oh, surprise!—Markle has just launched at a premium, and at the same time, they want to be straightforward and accessible to show how snotty and insufferable their royal family members are. Unfortunately, they may not achieve either of these goals, and their only option may be to continue making ridiculous televised shows.

However, the series includes enough details that make people feel both infuriated and embarrassed to make plenty of people watch it and then hate it, a very common phenomenon these days when you're paid per view and it doesn't matter whether they watch you out of affection or hatred, because the important thing is that they watch the content. In fact, some of these hateful things they do seem done on purpose. You can't make a series where cooking plays such a prominent role and cook spaghetti as badly as she does. It can't be a coincidence. Someone with good judgment, seeing that this would be a... egoxou Insufferable, he must have asked him to include elements of edginess so that viewers would at least support him when they criticized him. He can't possibly normalize making ice cubes with water other than tap water so they're clear and putting petals inside them, not knowing that this is an insult to the working classes who watch Netflix.

Markle was one of the 100 most influential people in the world according to the magazine Time in 2018 and also in 2021. After watching the series, this fact seems implausible. But it's easy to understand the reason for his decline. The distance between the Meghan of then and the Meghan of today has only one reason: the unbreakable will to live without working. It's better not to talk about Enric, because he sells so little now that he barely appears in the series. After becoming two clowns International pop stars who have only demonstrated their talent by becoming the focus of sterile debates have accepted a new check from Netflix, and there will be a second season. In fact, dancing to the dream of the platform that finances their lives is the only thing they've ended up being good for. On the platform, they'll already be making brainstorming to see how they can make the next installment of the series worse so we'll keep talking about it. They know it's the only way anyone will even look at it. Hoping someone will buy it out of affection for them is a completely lost battle right now.