An Apology

Dear Meg Cabot,

I am so sorry. So. So. Sorry.

Last night, The Princess Diaries 2 was on TV. Being an enormous Meg Cabot fan, I cooked paella, opened a bottle of wine and invited my friends over. Hurrah! Two whole hours of Cabotty goodness!

I should have known, really.

The first clue was in the opening titles when it said 'based on characters created by Meg Cabot'. Uh oh.

Then... what's this? Mia is graduating? She's 21? Her coronation is in a month?

How come she's forgotten about Michael?
What happened to the other SIX books all set before now?
Why isn't Fat Louie fat anymore?
Where the hell is Mia's mother?
Does Raven actually serve any narrative-related purpose?

and worst of all

Why why why why why is Lilly suddenly a glorified PA?
What happened to her IQ of 170? Where did her strident feministy liberal views go? (and no, wearing a World Wildlife Foundation tshirt isn't enough) What happened to her cable access tv show?

Oh Meg. You must be so sad. I mean, it was a while ago and I'm sure you're over it particularly since you just signed a book deal with Scholastic that includes the words 'world domination', but still. I can imagine that you went to the premiere and you wore a new dress and you were all smiley and lovely. And you sat down in the cinema, politely declined popcorn in case it made the dress greasy, and the lights went down, and you were so excited.

And halfway through you probably had to get up and pretend you needed to pee or something, because you just couldn't bear it anymore.

So I am sorry.

Lots of Love,

Lili.

p.s. Shonda Rhimes, you should be ashamed of yourself. Seriously.