KARA KENNEDY: Harry and Meghan’s twenty excruciating seconds on Family Guy are proof of their descent into the cultural trash can – and America’s irritation at their lazy self-entitlement

It happened faster than many of us might have thought.

At the beginning of the year, Harry and Meghan were on everyone’s lips.

Thanks to the dual onslaught of their Netflix documentary whine-a-thon and Harry’s misery memoir Spare, people just couldn’t get enough.

Love them or loathe them, she were the talk.

Yet it seems that in less than ten months their inevitable implosion in relevance, their downward spiral into cultural trash, is all but complete.

And how sad.

A couple whose refreshing presence once said so much, who – if the The 21st century royal couple – offered a bright, modern future of influence (in the truest sense of the word), reduced to the butt of a throwaway joke in a cartoon comedy series well past its prime.

Gone are the days of complete South Park takedowns. On Sunday, Family Guy – which was limping along into its 22nd series – showed a twenty-second satire of the pair.

We see a cartoonish Duke and Duchess drinking iced tea by the pool at their Montecito mansion. A butler comes by with a stack of envelopes and says to Harry, “Sir, your millions from Netflix for… nobody knows what.”

“Put it with the rest,” Harry says, waving the butler away.

Meghan, lounging in her bikini, gets a notification on her iPhone: “Baaabe, time to post our daily $250,000 sponsored Instagram post… for Del Taco.”

“I shouldn’t have let that made-up nonsense stand,” Harry thunders.

No, he shouldn’t. Because look where it takes him.

The worst thing about the scene is that it’s excruciatingly unfunny.

The ill-earned Montecito millions, the moody prince, his fame-obsessed actress wife. It’s all pretty obvious stuff – and tells you a lot about the quality of the writers’ room on a show that’s been running since 1999.

No subtlety, no comedic timing, just one obvious punchline: America thinks you, Harry and Meghan, are frauds!

In June, when Meghan’s Spotify show Archetypes was axed after a disappointing run, US sports great and Spotify’s own ‘head of podcast innovation and monetization’ Bill Simmons explosively lambasted the pair as ‘damn fraudsters’.

It was rude, perhaps inappropriate and undoubtedly deliberately provocative.

It could also have been dismissed as the outburst of an angry old man.

This latest Family Guy clip changes things. It tells us that Americans now agree with Simmons everywhere. They have lost the culture.

But it didn’t have to be this way.

While Britain shook its hands of the annoying couple, the excitement in America was palpable at the prospect of acquiring a slice of royalty in the United States.

Hollywood was practically polishing the Walk of Fame stars in advance.

But guess what: in the Land of the Free, even this level of success, prepared on a silver platter, doesn’t really happen. free.

This is a country of hard workers. And when it became clear that Harry and Meghan wanted it all – to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars – without doing anything, well, very much, the Americans woke up from the royal frenzy.

How could they not? Even the most patient will admit that the moaning, the woe-is-me whining, the Mandela cosplaying all became way too much.

There was Oprah, The Cut, Netflix, Spare, the one after all interview amid bouclé couches and $1,800 Hermes blankets, repeating the same story of dismay over and over again.

Hollywood sure loves a sob story… until it doesn’t.

Whatever you think of them, America’s real cast of A-Listers – the Gwyneths, the J-Los, the Beyoncés – work hard to maintain their influence and wealth, often over decades-long careers.

Much is made of the constant wave of exciting brand evolutions, new album announcements and vaginal jade egg releases.

Paltrow is co-owner of California’s largest cannabis company and she never even talks about it.

So what definitely doesn’t work is calling up a few famous friends to whine about lazy self-determination on hour-long podcasts about your unparalleled struggles, while you’re a teenager on a gap year traveling the world on pointless ‘tours’ (see Harry in Japan ), spouting words at meaningless ceremonies (see Meghan’s Women of Vision Award), still expecting the butler to hand over the check on the gold tray.

Of course, there’s been a lot of talk about a coming Sussex reinvention.

In April, Meghan signed with Hollywood Rottweiler Ari Emanuel’s talent agency WME. And we’ve heard countless rumors about a revival of ‘The Tig’, a much-hyped return to Instagram, even a divorce from Brands Sussex (Meghan amping up her celebrity status, Harry prioritizing philanthropy and other noble causes).

But we’re still waiting.

There has been surprisingly little reporting on the couple’s recent public appearances.

September’s Invictus Games came and went with a brief frenzy over Meghan’s J Crew jersey. There was probably a World Mental Health Day in New York earlier this month – but who knows or cares?

Harry and Meghan fled Britain for America to escape their gilded life of privilege and unearned influence.

Perhaps now the sunny hills of Montecito will become an even worse palace prison, a prison where their possessions and friends are sure to diminish, their family ties become increasingly strained, and the chance for reconciliation sinks further.