“Archetypes With Meghan” Is Done Mourning

The national mourning period is over, the Queen’s still dead, and the show? Well plebs, it must pod onward. Thank god Archetypes with Meghan is finally back for a new episode after a four-week hiatus, because millions of women across Marklehead Nation had a shitton of underwear to fold and put away, and we needed something to listen to while doing so. Enter the silky-voiced comedy fanatic Duchess Meghan and her exclusive interview with the Queen, Margaret Cho. Did you know that Meghan Markle loves Hacks? And do you know she’s aware of the existence of the Hulu film Fire Island, though she doesn’t explicitly say she loves it? What are her HBO Max and Hulu passwords even? Classygirl1!1? Is she doing two-step verification? Has Archie accidentally stumbled upon Euphoria while playing with iPad?

After Meghan talks about grabbing Thai iced tea and going to the Korean spa with her mom at age 9, Meghan and Margaret deconstruct the concept of the “dragon lady,” which is the stereotype of the oversexed Asian vixen hellbent on destroying and dominating white men. Margaret and Meghan discuss the dragon lady’s film roots in silent films starring Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong (who, like total dimepiece Charles III, will get her own currency this year) and the enduring fucked-upness of the phrase “Me so horny,” which originated from a fictional Vietnamese sex worker in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket.

This was the most interesting episode of “Archetypes” yet, probably because Margaret Cho is hilarious and has lived a fascinating and traumatic life. She really only gets into the broad strokes of it, but its enough: growing up in San Francisco, her Korean-American parents owned a gay bookstore in the Castro during the height of the AIDS epidemic. She started stand-up at 14 years old, and helmed the first Asian-American sitcom in the U.S., All-American Girl. Margaret also shares a comedy technique. “Comedians essentially have one joke that they find different ways of telling. So my essential joke is: I’m here but I’m not supposed to be here,” she told Meghan.

I loved this and wanted them to discuss this for the rest of the episode, but Meghan keeps the convo on track by uttering the word “archetype” a dillion million times, much to the show’s detriment. I wish that Meghan would stop trying to teach me lessons, unless it’s how to look like that in this outfit:

Not to reduce her to the “movie-star beautiful” archetype, but hot damn. Why was she toiling away in obscurity in Canada on the USA Network until she was 35?

Lisa Ling, a Chinese- and Taiwanese-American journalist, pops onto the pod briefly to talk about becoming an 18-year-old news anchor alongside a young, fact-checking Anderson Cooper at Channel One News. Then it’s back to de-archetyping the archetypical archetypes that hold women back. At the end of the episode, we learn — for the fourth time — that archetypes are bad. Meghan’s grannie-in-law, the late Queen of England, is not mentioned a single time, even though she too was recently put in a box she can’t break out of.