The most frightening aspects of Shining Valehorror comedy is how it portrays a real-world terror: society’s quick dismissal of women’s experiences. Co-created by Jeff Astroff and Sharon Horgan, Shining Vale smartly maneuvers familiar tropes to tell a surprisingly moving story that can be summed up in two words: Believe women. Season two, which premieres October 13 (that is, Friday the 13th) doubles down on this in a pretty compelling way.
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Through protagonist Patricia Phelps (Courteney Cox), Shining Vale depicts the harshness with which the world labels someone who is anything less than “ideal.” Pat, a recovering addict and erotic romance writer, often gets dubbed as crazy, bitchy, rude, and manipulative by her neighbors, friends, and, yes, even her family. In reality, she’s suffering through something traumatic that’s exacerbated by the fact that no one around truly understands or bothers to help. The writing and performances are exceedingly potent; they transcend the screen to make the viewer viscerally feel Pat’s anxiety, fear, and isolation. Is she seeing apparitions or is her mental health in utter decline? Cox captures her character’s paranoia wonderfully. While best known for playing Monica Geller in a sitcom and Gale Weathers in a slasher, Shining Vale is a challenging mashup of both vibes for her—and she’s clearly up to the task.
Pat is a uniquely relatable character, and not just because of her quips about her profession (“No writer enjoys writing,” she wisely says at one point) or her complex family dynamics. She’s a flawed hero with a strong desire to work on and improve herself. Despite her poor decision-making, it’s easy to root for her triumphs. In many ways, Shining Vale and Pat are akin to Santa Clarita Diet and Sheila Hammond (Drew Barrymore), who turns into a zombie and tries to use this life-changing twist for good. And like any good horror comedy, Shining Vale has a strong underlying message.
Season one was about Pat’s move to the titular town with her husband, Terry (Greg Kinnear), their two children, and a pet dog after she had an impulsive affair. Pat and Terry’s plan to work on their marriage went awry once she started seeing the ghost of Rosemary (Mira Sorvino), a repressed ’50s housewife who died in the same mansion. But was Rosemary real or a figment of Pat’s imagination as a way to process guilt? And is she gone for good now that Pat has received electroshock treatment? Shining Vale eerily tackles these questions while continuing to explore her depression and writer’s block.
The eight new episodes follow Pat after she returns home from a four-month stint at a hospital. She leaves, by the way, not because she’s necessarily “better” but because her insurance runs out. Pat’s reality now includes more fights with weary teen daughter Gaynor (Gus Birney), who took on the caretaker role in her absence, and mending her bond with Terry, who has forgotten that his possibly possessed wife tried to murder him with an axe. If that wasn’t a lot to handle already, Pat’s otherworldly visions are now of a coven or cult of some sort. Making matters worse (and darkly funnier), the book she wrote—when a demon was apparently residing inside her—is causing readers to kill their husbands in fits of rage.
All of these dilemmas make for a mostly thrilling return, especially because the writers sharply comment on prevalent misogyny and bias through them. Pat’s own daughter and mother, Joan (Judith Light), don’t initially sympathize with her plight. Neither does Terry, who is more than happy to keep calling his wife out without realizing the source of her pain. Of course, no one believes her about the spirits, and that part is somewhat understandable. But no one empathizes with her other, more tangible problems either. And Cox is delightfully unnerving as she displays Pat’s increasing perturbation over this.
It also helps that she is surrounded by equally commendable actors, with season two letting Kinnear and Dickinson’s Birney shine a bit brighter. As Pat’s husband and eldest child, respectively, they bounce off of Cox’s onscreen charisma to make the Phelps family’s complicated dynamic feel lived-in. That’s especially true for Pat and Gaynor, who realize they may be far more similar than anyone could’ve imagined, even if their mother-daughter relationship is fractured. Gaynor finally experiences her own, let’s say, horror-adjacent drama when an exorcist from the Vatican shows up at the front door.
That said, Shining Vale does occasionally juggle too many narrative threads as the season unfolds. After a thrilling and hilarious first half, there is a massive twist that steals focus for the remainder of the installments. It’s a bit distracting and a little random—as if the writers needed to pay homage to horror movies ranging from The Shining to Rosemary’s Baby as directly as possible. They don’t need it because Shining Vale already works exceedingly well when it’s nuanced and self-aware instead of blatant. But all in all, it’s a great season of TV. Thanks to the performances and a sharp look at intergenerational trauma through a horror-comedy lens, Shining Vale’s return is sinister, fun, and hilarious.
Shining Vale season two premieres October 13 on Starz