Starz recently announced that it’d canceled the horror comedy, Shining Vale. As if canceling the excellent show wasn’t enough, the channel is also pulling the two series off its streaming service, so the show loses a chance to become an enduring cult hit. That decision is a shame because Shining Vale is a funny, sometimes thrilling, small show that deserves more viewers.
Friends alumna Courteney Cox proves her talent is far more diverse and versatile than network sitcom work. Like her costars, Cox had an unenviable task of following up Friends with several projects, most notably the solid hit Cougar Town and the Scream franchise, which look to give the actress a chance to transcend the chummy trappings of Friends. Shining Vale has a glancing kinship with Scream – namely, using Cox’s natural comic brittleness to create a seemingly unlikable protagonist defined by her prickliness.
Cox is Pat Phelps, a woman who, in the throes of a midlife crisis, cheats on her genial husband, Terry (Greg Kinnear). The infidelity prompts the Phelps to reassess their lives in their New York City apartment, and they decide to move to suburban Connecticut, the titular Shining Vale. The Phelps drag their reluctant teen children, the surly Gaynor (Gus Birney) and the taciturn Jake (Dylan Gage). Instead of sharing a cramped Brooklyn flat, Terry lucks upon a sham Tudor mansion that sets the tone for the show: it’s creepy and draughty, with ominous closets and menacing rooms like the attic that Pat chooses for her home office.
Created by Jeff Astrof and comedienne Sharon Hogan (Motherland, Catastrophe, Bad Sisters, Pulling), the show turns to many horror mainstays as inspiration. We see varying degrees of homage to Kubrick’s The Shining, Wise’s The Haunting, Lynch’s Twin Peaks, and Friedkin’s The Exorcist. As the show progresses, the reliance on visual cues from these seminal works becomes more pronounced, even tipping into parody. (Towards the end of the show’s first series, the Shining allusions become too obvious and take away from the show’s quality.)
As with The Shining, Shining Vale centers on a writer who is a recovering alcoholic. Pat is written as a sorta Erika Jong or Candace Bushnell – a popular author who found success writing about female sexuality. Almost two decades after her literary triumph, Pat struggles with writer’s block, trying to summon her creativity. She’s being pressured by her literary agent, Kam (Merrin Dungey), who vaguely threatens Pat with dropping her as a client if she fails to produce a sellable novel. Despite the two women’s genuine friendship, Kam is pragmatic, already nurturing a YA novelist (Chrissie Fit), who’s being groomed to replace Pat as the next big literary star. Kam’s loyalty has limits, and she’s strict: Pat has to produce sellable work, or she loses her advance.
These plot points create a surprisingly complex critique of horror fiction but also of creativity and, most saliently, women and mental health. (In one of the more literary references in the film, we get glimpses of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.”) Pat’s background is quite sad – not only is she struggling with addiction and mental health, but her mother, Joan (Judith Light), had schizophrenia and was institutionalized when Pat was a young woman. These issues of mental health are further developed in the droll therapy scenes, with Pat and Terry and their mediocre, pill-pushing therapist, Dr Berg (James M. Connor).
If all these swirling elements sound like they’d add up to a messy, incoherent show, watch it. Despite all of these disparate bits, Shining Vale is mostly surprisingly taught and focused (it does start to fray a bit in the first series’ final few episodes). We see Pat ensconced in the attic of her house, working hard, staring at a blank Word doc on her laptop, trying to figure out how to write her book. As she toils, she realizes that the creepy house she just bought may not necessarily be spooky but haunted. Doors slam. Furniture moves. Faces appear through windows. Ghostly music plays. Pat quickly believes she and her family are in a haunted mansion. Still, her history of mental illness and alcoholism provides a convenient excuse for her family to dismiss her fears.
And like her family, we, as the viewers, also doubt whether Pat really sees ghosts haunting her home. With threads of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique sewn into the action, we see a woman whose identity as a woman, a mother, and a writer come completely undone. And at the center of her crumbling resolve is Rosemary Wellingham (Oscar-winner Mira Sorvino), whose presence looms large over Pat’s disarray. The deceased Rosemary may be the answer to all of Pat’s questions about why the house seems so inhospitable, but she may also be the answer to Pat’s creative blocks.
The first season of Shining Vale is a very good introduction to this cracked world. The first five episodes are top-shelf storytelling as Pat gets deeper into her intrigue at the expense of her already disastrous family. If that high quality starts to slacken as the first season draws to a close, that’s understandable, as the conceit can only go so far before it tips into over-the-top camp. The balance of comedy and horror works, for the most part, because though the show approaches parody, it’s never a smug joke, like one of those Scary Movie films that pepper their jokes with obvious pop culture asides. Shining Vale does comedy but in a far more insidiously clever way, with Easter eggs nestled in throughout the episodes. (Sherilyn Fenn’s mere presence is a hilarious joke.)
As the self-destructive Pat Phelps, Courteney Cox is excellent. She approaches the role with a flinty sense of humor. As her character finds herself in perilous and terrifying situations, the camera lingers on Cox’s perennial haunted face. She’s matched well with Kinnear, whose affable screen persona juxtaposes her acid-laced work. Like Cox, Kinnear brings a body of work marked by light entertainment, but he allows for that likable image to be singed and marred. Terry works hard to be a steadying presence in Pat’s life, but the unintended consequence of his persistent kindness is her descent into self-loathing. The catalyst for the family’s move – the reason why the Phelps kids were forced to leave their home, school, and friends – was because of Pat’s infidelity, and yet Terry seems to have genuinely moved past it, working to piece together their marriage. Yet, despite his understanding nature – and because of his appeal to logic and reason – Terry becomes just another member of the Greek Chorus that doubts Pat’s concerns.
The first series ends on a depressing note, allowing for a disastrous second series. It speaks to a history of institutionalizing unruly and disruptive women. Pat is complicit in this history, having done so to her mother. What starts as a funny, twisted tale of ghosts becomes a pointed – if sometimes flawed – critique of the conversation about women and mental health.
A Seat in the Aisle 
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