I watched the first three episodes today while doing some mindless tasks. You all must know these folks a lot better than I do because I didn’t get the feeling this was about throwing anyone under the bus. It seems to me to be about telling your own story. I don’t find it terribly interesting, but neither do I find it terribly offensive. So far the only people who come off badly are the paparazzi and Meghan’s father and her 1/2 sister. As to the whole “she should have known what it would be like”, well maybe she should have, maybe she did and is lying, maybe she was just naive, maybe she was blinded by lust (aren’t we all in those early stages of love?). But I doubt anyone on this thread has any way of knowing. I do think the willingness to think badly of women, especially women who are not white, is deeply, if unconsciously, rooted in British (and American) culture. Complaining because you don’t like her nickname for him? Says more about y’all than it does about them.
So please do tell…what does this say about us?
This question is for those who did watch.
It was said upthread that Meghan’s father and sister came across badly.
I think they are family. Did Meghan speak badly of her family? Or did the documentary show her family in a bad light?
Kinda think that is throwing family under the bus. Unless I’m mistaken.
It doesn’t matter whose family is being shown in a bad light, it’s still family.
Meghan’s father has another side of his story.
Everyone has their side in a story. Even in an abusive situation the aggressor/abuser has a side. Doesn’t mean it’s the right side.
In this case, Meghan did not throw her family under the bus until after they shared (according to her) false stories about Meghan to the press. According to her (which you can believe or not believe- I take her at her word, esp in light of her close relationship with her niece who herself has no relationship with her birth mother - the half sister), but according to Meghan, the half sister wasn’t invited to wedding because they didn’t have a relationship at all. She didn’t put that out there, the half sister did by going to tabloids and saying she raised her and wasn’t invited. Does Meghan have right to set the story straight? I say absolutely. Same goes for the dad selling stories to tabloids then going dark and saying to tabloids he wasn’t going to wedding (which she was expecting him to escort her). To me, she didn’t put it out there except to set the record straight. In other words, if family doesn’t want to be thrown under the bus, they should not put out stories to the press throwing her under the bus - if they do, she has every right to tell her side.
As someone who has major issues with family, I have never aired dirty laundry so to speak, but when certain folks in my family started telling stories to other family members about why we didn’t get along, I felt all bets were off and I was justified in sharing all the laundry no matter how stinky to defend myself. That’s how I see this (except they’re famous).
I’m not @my3girls but I believe this post:
is self-explanatory. The suggestion is for critics to look in the proverbial mirror. To expound beyond that would be, in my opinion, a futile exercise.
That’s a shame her dad is made out to be bad, somebody should have helped him.
I read he took care of her when her mom was in jail for tax invasion. What does that say about us? We’re stupid taxpayers, that’s all.
In my opinion, I don’t think she made her father out to be bad. She said her parents did a good job co-parenting and she shared a lot of warm memories of the times spent with her dad growing up. Even in the days before the wedding, I don’t feel that she portrayed him as bad. Maybe that will be in the next episode but, in the one that aired, they showed her trying to reach out to him to find out what was happening and to get him out of his house (away from the press).
I’ve never viewed the royal family as a particularly close family unit. The kids are sent to boarding school at very young ages (Louis is four) and it isn’t like the cousins live down the block from each other. There are plenty of families who live across country or across the world from each other and still maintain a relationship. How does anyone know that this is not happening?
it says you’re not very discerning when it comes to fact-checking when a story confirms your bias.
One thing I believe we attempt to do around here is not insult one another. We can argue our cases, disagree…but not insult. That just causes ill will and makes for a disagreeable board.
I didn’t watch and don’t have much interest, but from stories I’ve seen in the press it seemed like the father and sister (half sister?) threw themselves under the bus. And in the case of the sister my general impression is that she keeps running back around to the front of the bus to throw herself under it again and again.
That’s what happens when you rely on clickbait for news of the world.
Blame it on Google.
I don’t care for the half sister, but I do think the father did help her a lot.
Excellent point, that’s why I reply what I did.
I know, I’m gullible. But so are some people here. What does that say about us. We’re all gullible.
That my expectation that all adult users on this site would cultivate their news sources more effectively than TFG was apparently a pipe dream.
Maybe you expect too much, set lower expectation and it will be met, lol.
I view these Netflix videos is like the old National Enquirer, I don’t know if they are still out there anymore.
I’ll jump back into this thread, maybe against my better judgment. I do think that, on balance, the dad and certainly the half-sister came across poorly.
Meghan was really complimentary of her dad throughout most of the doc. She had film of them fishing together and one shot where she ran up to him when she won an award at school. He comes across as a pretty involved dad, and at one point she even says that she was a daddy’s girl. Now, this might have been to manipulate the story so that the betrayal looks worse but who knows? None of us does. But we do know that he was supposed to walk her down the aisle so up until right before the wedding things were OK between them. The split came when photos appeared of him that, IMO, were ridiculous and totally unbelievable – him reading about her and the royal family in a window seat of a coffee shop? Puhlease. Total setup. There’s a whole other thing where he has a heart issue and that’s why he can’t go and walk her down the aisle, but he, according to the doc, won’t answer their texts inquiring about him. They offered to move him to avoid the media, but he refused. And eventually he responded to her in a way that wasn’t consistent with his usual texting, calling her Meghan instead of the usual Meg.
The half-sister, Samantha, who talked nonstop to the tabloids leading up to the wedding – Meghan alleges she never had a relationship with her. None. I tend to believe her as we learn later that Samantha’s dd ended up being adopted by her grandparents and that the dd doesn’t have much a relationship with her mom either. One reason I tend to believe the niece, Ashleigh, and not Samantha is that we saw numerous pics of Meghan and Ashleigh together. I Googled for this post and literally only found two of Meghan and Samantha, who supposedly raised her. If Samantha was telling the truth I would think she could produce more photos of them together. Also, I remember thinking at the time that Samantha was a piece of work, and nothing in this doc changed my mind.
So, to answer your question, I don’t think Meghan “said” bad things about her family but certainly was OK with them being presented in a not-great light. I assume. One thing I’m unclear on is how much editorial control they had over the final product. I disagree with you that just because someone is family then we must never speak ill of them. Samantha had no problem speaking ill of Meghan; this is Meghan’s opportunity to “defend” herself, and I have no problem with that.
I watched a show where people were talking about the doc, and one thing said that I think is absolutely true is that how you feel about this doc – again, you have to watch it to have a credible opinion, IMO – depends on how knowledgeable and familiar you are with the whole royal situation. One woman on the panel is British so most of it was boring to her. She knew most of what was shown and wanted more “dirt” – she actually acted like the British are OWED that, that they should name names so that people know who are the racists. I think that’s asking a bit much, and I seriously doubt that that will happen in part two. Other people on the panel felt like they learned a lot as they obvs don’t have the same familiarity as the British woman. Basically, I think it’s a rohrschach test – if you went in not liking them, then you didn’t believe them. If you went in with an already-favorable opinion of them, you like them more. I have polled a few people who didn’t have a lot of an opinion and walked away with a better opinion. For me, I had a slightly favorable opinion and I have an ever-so-slightly more favorable opinion, but what it did for me was put some meat on the bones of what I knew about them. They both already had been doing charitable work individually when they met so it made the relationship make sense.
I’ll say two more things then back to the World Cup. One, this absolutely is meant for consumption by an American audience. And two, ds2 thinks that’s because Meghan is setting herself up to run for office. 
Take it for what it’s worth:
Nearly 1 million households watched in the United States during the first day of release, according to Samba TV, which measures TV viewership. In Great Britain, the episode drew 786,000 households, which is remarkable—the country has way fewer households than the United States yet nearly matched the American audience.
Oh, I don’t mean actual numbers. I mean that, like the British woman on the panel said, she knew about most of this. Meghan and Harry apparently are going to make their lives in America so they care more about how we feel about them rather than the British. I imagine British opinion is totally baked in, as in few minds to influence there.