Vee

It's been mentioned, but:

On a shallow note, Harry looks very good. And he's being remarkably candid in the special about the symbiotic relationship with the UK press and the royals. I'm too young to know if anyone else from inside (Fergie, Diana) ever was on record, and Diana was not born into it like him.

I'm sure he got some preferential treatment, but FV is the reason Peter is on the show and was frontburner for years on end. But this nonsense about how Ramsey or Wright or whoever schemed against Tristan Rogers or hacked him or what not is ludicrous. Wes Ramsey shouldn't be on GH, but these people aren't out here playing like dumb kids on Twitter.

This is pretty gutwrenching in the middle portion - Meghan talking about being suicidal. The source is the Daily Mail (trash) and someone she knew when she was 15? I don't think posing outside the palace as a teenager like millions of tourists every year is proof of an obsession.

It should be noted that Meghan makes a point of saying the Queen was always 'wonderful' to her, although I'm not finished watching the special. I wanted to get a fuller picture beyond the clipped highlights.

Manchin is shít in many ways but he's no fool. Here is another clear signal from him, after vocally backing both HR1 and filibuster reform in the last two weeks:

That's about what I expected. I think the lasting impact back in the UK will be in the younger generations, at least anecdotally from English friends. I do think it kills the British press and the royals that they can't wholly control the response here, as they often couldn't with Diana. Meghan is more divisive than Diana was, but they will continue to get attention and sympathy.

For people who want to watch the full 90-minute special, CBS appears to have it up here commercial-free.

I think part of it was an incredible writing team behind them and a gifted EP (Linda Gottlieb) with a very specific vision. But like I said before, I think another key aspect was that they balanced each other out. Malone was often the more florid and romantic guy given to flights of fancy; he could be very dark too and loved southern gothic stuff, but that's a kind of romanticism as well. Griffith was perceived as the edgier, grittier, younger writer who gave the social issue stories (particularly the gang rape) their bite. They created a great formula together with both dark and light. These are superficial stereotypes of each writer, though, and I'm sure there's much more nuance to both men. But we also know Griffith was big on the use of popular, current music, something he brought back with him in 2003 alongside Frank Valentini. I still remember when he and Malone were still ghostwriting early in that year; they did dramatic material with music from both Tori Amos and Elvis Costello, the latter being in a very kinky scene with Ty Treadway and Cat Hickland. The show had gone from brightly lit, loud camp under Gary Tomlin to dark and stylish again very quickly (and soon devolved back into dark camp not long after, but that's another story). That's how you knew Griffith (and Malone) were back. By contrast, if you only have one guy who is already past his prime pushing an (increasingly dated) take on dark, edgy, gritty material - dead kids, cold blooded murder (though again, that DAYS story was 100% justified IMO), rape on the family couch, Jigsaw the Vietnam vet is your dad and has locked you in a torture chamber, etc. - weaknesses are exposed much more quickly.

Megan McTavish's first run at AMC was largely well received because she had a tremendous amount of help behind her, AFAIC. Yet she took credit for most of it. When she was left to her own devices it went south.

I think public opinion on Meghan internationally is evenly divided. There's still a tremendous amount of interest and sympathy. I think she has a fair amount of the support Diana had globally, but it will always be cleaved in half because she's not white and because of the contrarian and/or cynical sociopolitical climate we now live in. More people in this country despise her than they ever did Diana, but nobody stops watching and the offers and sympathy keep coming.

In the minds of the British press and a lot of the American right (as well as just some garden variety American misogynists and/or racists), Meghan is the scheming bridezilla who ruined a wonderful fantasy kingdom we've all enjoyed from afar for years. That will always be the image some people have of her. For some it's fun to turn any young, happy and driven woman into a shrewish meme. If I needed to have that fix, well, I've already seen Heathers approximately 50 times. I have no doubt she can be difficult, and I've found some of her and Harry's moves rash and tone deaf at times. But I can't blame young and frankly, very naive people in love for being rattled by the situation they found themselves thrust into and the unbelievable burden put upon them to suspend their lives together and subsume it into "the Firm". And the stories she and her husband have told about how they were treated both inside and outside of the family are just too heartbreaking to ignore, not just the big stuff like the tabloids making all sorts of animal jokes but the smaller, passive aggressive things like asking after Archie's pigmentation. That's all too real. A lot of people will recognize stuff like that from their own lives and remember it.

I think, as others have said, a good portion of the British press and public will continue to reject the wake-up call and them. It's too much cold water thrown in their face. The press in particular will never let it go for deeper reasons, because these two played the American media game and not the UK one which is possibly even more insidious and labyrinthian. That's an unforgivable sin in that world. Still, the injury is going to resonate and fester for years to come. And while there will always be divided opinion about Meghan in the States in a way there really wasn't with Diana (who also became very skilled at playing the game and working media refs, but who above all was white, and we now live in a time of culture wars as well), I think you will continue to see a very sympathetic international reaction and among the British youth perhaps which the royals will have to contend with for a long time. This is going to stick.

And you are entitled to hate me! But I'm sorry, I lost my last shred of patience when you spent the last several pages posting screencaps of other people's tacky opinions on a pretty serious issue. You take care.

Don't worry, I did!

I don't know how you can possibly expect institutional racism to not be a legitimately real thing in a centuries-old white monarchy, but at least you have your own voice and I'm not expected to read low quality screencaps of tweets from nobodies I don't know or care about who aren't posting here.

This one is going to leave a mark on the royals, internationally at least (I can't speak to back in the UK). It's pretty damning. I don't think Harry and Meghan have always played it perfectly through the entire ugly ordeal but it is impossible not to sympathize with them now.

I still don't get Becker. But Ken Levine sings its praises nonstop on his blog, God bless him. Oh, I'd beg to differ. His dramatic turn on Damages revitalized his career significantly after Becker limbo, IMO. Not enough people watched that show despite it running five or so years, and it stayed pretty good overalI. I think it had some potential career best work from him, Glenn Close, Martin Short(!), Lily Tomlin and others (Rose Byrne was great but she had the less showy heroine role). Danson was clearly only supposed to be there one season but the Enron(?)-style villain was such a smash that they kept weaving him back in for several more years. Damages is the reason he got Fargo and The Good Place. In conclusion: Y'all should watch Damages. Just speed through that second season though where the writer's strike decimated it and William Hurt quit midway through.

@DRW50

I thought Ink could've worked, but it clearly didn't. From A.V. Club interviews with both Danson and Steenburgen, individually: