Cathy Brandt

I found this show to rich with meaningful activities and recipes and enjoyable to watch. My husband got up the next morning with a craving for one of her dishes and improvised his own version. I’m down with a broken ankle but I look forward to trying my hand at some of the projects I have been observing. Meghan is a lovely host and I aspire to make my guests as comfortable as she does.

I got an uptick of joy every week when Apple alerted my phone - albeit w/o my permission - that a new episode was available. The first 30 minutes or so of the first episode annoyed me, with the screeching young girls climbing walls, dropping a shoe in a cake, making a mockery of the simplicity of just being American. Then these actors emerged and the storyline tightened and developed, layer by layer, unpredictably. The characters began to make sense and the fast pace engaged me, bobbing and weaving between vast, gorgeous landscapes, supersonic shifts in place, quick-witted repertoire. I get it: people who read the novel are annoyed. Step into any Bridgerton online group and the Book Police are making citizens arrests of the showrunners. I’m glad I didn’t read any of these period pieces because I can engage in these adaptations guilelessly, with a side of Gilded Age. I can calm down, like these girls eventually did as they stepped into mature roles. It’s going to be okay, y’all.

Watched because I miss Shiv Roy, and Sarah is fabulous. She didn’t disappoint and neither did the actress portraying her daughter. That baby’s wise, creepy, giant eyes and her ability to switch between characters on a dime … oops, I’ll stop right there. As much as that plot deserves to be spoiled, I don’t want to be the one. Listen, if Black Twitter gets a hold of this movie, it’s done. Burnt toast. That girl would have been six feet under after the school scene. First time that rabbit acted up, we would have been asking mama where she got that good chicken. I did not know where this film was going and I was suspended in its grainy cinematography and atrocious parenting until the end. At which point I wanted to throw the remote at the screen.