In With Love, Meghan, the latest product of Prince Harry and Meghan’s multiyear deal with Netflix, the Duchess of Sussex is attempting to prove that she’s the next great homemaker, following in the footsteps of Ina Garten and Martha Stewart. After years of watching Meghan as an actress on Suits, then watching with elation, quickly followed by fury, as her royal career crashed and burned through no fault of her own, I was almost looking forward to Meghan’s appearing on my TV screen to teach me how to do things like make scented beeswax candles, arrange ornate bouquets of flowers, and cook a number of things from homemade dog biscuits to raspberry preserves with berries (from a private garden in Montecito, California, of course). Unfortunately, Meghan’s best Food Network impression has premiered to mostly harsh criticism, including disdain over one viral clip of her saying to Mindy Kaling that she’s no longer Meghan Markle—“you know I’m Sussex now?” In the face of such aspersions, I find myself forced to defend Meghan: Maybe this career pivot might not be the most successful one, but that’s not her fault! She had the perfect job—sitting pretty and useless as a member of the royal family—and it was taken away from her thanks to the forces of bullying and racism. Now we all have to suffer the consequences: eight hours of Meghan getting crafty and donning Loro Piana to pick rosemary, feed chickens, and dine with her well-to-do pals. To be fair, I don’t entirely hate the dulcet-toned, farm-to-table vibes of With Love, Meghan. The show is filmed down the street from the actual Sussex home, on a multimillion-dollar rental estate in Montecito complete with two kitchens separated by a large, luscious backyard garden, and a mind-boggling view of the Los Padres National Forest, to boot. In the rental home, Meghan invites a mix of guests—longtime friends and notable figures from Kaling to Delfina Figueras, the wife of the most famous polo player in the world, Nacho Figueras—for a restorative afternoon of good eats and crafts, showing them how to make everything from party balloon arches to salt-baked branzino. Then there are the episodes when professional chefs enter the kitchen to show Meghan a thing or two. Roy Choi teaches Meghan how to cook some Korean fried chicken and various types of kimchi, Chef Ramon Velazquez instructs her how to make chicken tinga and ceviche, and Chez Panisse’s Alice Waters walks Meghan through a salad and a tomato quiche. Still, the main idea is that even an amateur can easily host well. Meghan’s mantra is: “We’re not in the pursuit of perfection. We’re in the pursuit of joy.” The food looks good, and I’m sure it is! For the most part, it’s relatively simple one-pan pasta dishes, frittatas, crudité platters (take a drink every time she makes or mentions crudité and prepare to have your stomach pumped), and ways to cutesy up fruits, simple sandwiches, charcuterie, and more. Overall, the show is calming and aesthetically pleasing, but it’s also completely eye-rolling. Meghan insists on making microwave popcorn with a dried cob of corn in a brown paper bag instead of, you know, microwave popcorn. Shortly after, because, apparently, we’ve used all our energy making bath salts and not-so-easy easy popcorn, Meghan dumps some Trader Joe’s peanut butter pretzels (the brand name is covered, but I’d know that blue-and-white packaging anywhere) straight from the bag into another plastic bag, only one adorned with a handwritten label. In a later episode, she notes that dehydrating fruit slices is a great way to fancy up a meal or cocktail, but when I expected her to roast them low in the oven for hours, she used a dehydrator. This is great advice for everyone I know with a dehydrator, which means it is great advice for no one that I know. Underlying all this fantasy is wealth. These “simple” hosting tricks are achievable only for someone who has a certain amount of money, time, or both. Everything is presented as artisanal, as boutique, as “shoppy shop” as you could imagine it, staged perfectly in various aesthetically pleasing wire bale glass jars. Even the essential oils for the candlemaking are pre-decanted into dark amber glass dropper bottles. Seriously, production has to have spent hundreds of dollars on just glass containers for things! Most of the meals are made in a perfectly Pinterest-worthy Le Creuset skillet (off-white, to keep in styling with the neutrals), although Meghan has the nerve to use a zip-close bag to pipe cake frosting instead of a piping bag. (Girl, at this point you might as well have rung up Wilton and gotten some piping bags too!) The show is supposedly based on the idea of eating fresh, eating healthy, and living “off the land.” But I think it’s safe to assume that Meghan is “living off the land” of quick trips to Erewhon and acres of California-elite living. This rental estate’s bountiful backyard garden, lush with berries and fresh herbs, surely masks the cost of regular trips to the farmers market needed to maintain such a flow of beautiful local produce. I have never felt more isolated from someone on-screen than in the last episode, when Meghan shows off to Waters her bounty of eggs, produced by Meghan’s own chickens. That’s at least $20 worth of eggs with deep-orange yolks she’s marveling at! Still, the real luxury present here is time. When you are a mother of two young children without a real job, and you can afford full-time child care and help, of course you have time to make rainbows out of fruit for your kids in the morning, to press dried flowers into everything, and to make crepes because they “feel more special than a pancake” (says who?). With Love, Meghan’s originally scheduled mid-January debut was postponed due to the Los Angeles wildfires, likely due to fears that the show would come across as out of touch. I wouldn’t say now, under a fresh Trump presidency, soaring costs of living, and the looming economic devastation of tariffs, is much better. Again, though, this isn’t really all Meghan’s fault. The sad truth is, she was lined up for the ideal job as someone who seems genuinely nice but has just the right amount of charisma to make speeches, give money, and shake hands with leaders of nations. That’s basically all a royal does these days, right? But instead, she was bullied out of it by a racist media and a cowardly royal family who refused to stand up for their newest family member. Ever since Meghan and Harry laid down their scepters and abstained from performing royal duties, the couple has struggled to find their footing. Overnight, a new question formed for them: What is their job now? After all, it doesn’t seem as if royals are trained to have many marketable skills beyond performing largely symbolic acts for their country, whether through glorified military stunts or serving face as nationalist figureheads. We could’ve gotten Meghan kissing babies and hosting stately parties all day; now, instead, we get Meghan Markle cooking in a kitchen that likely cost a year’s rent to build, attempting to be Nara Smith for the non-TikTok crowd. (To make matters worse, Meghan is also launching her new lifestyle product line As Ever this spring—I’m sure that extension of her brand will be just as grounded and sensible as With Love, Meghan, although I will fully admit to coveting her honey.) The most beloved lifestyle hosts have always communicated relatability or, even if absurdly wealthy, at least some level of aspirational attainability. Meghan, though, struggles uniquely in that department—an honest shame for someone who seems to be lovely, and whose home I would genuinely feel lucky to visit. But, frankly, as a literal duchess and a spiritual princess, she’s never going to be the believable voice of “You can do it too!” We may be in the pursuit of “joy,” but my best times with Meghan have been in watching her become the next great royal as I ate store-bought foods on my cheap couch. The next time the bloodthirsty British media decides to mount a racially motivated hate campaign against an innocent woman, please, for the love of all that’s good, think of the rest of us first.