Why You Didn’t Like … Shining Vale

First, we killed the Black guy. Then, we buried the gays. Now we’re dusting off Salem’s greatest hit—making women the villains in their own damn story.

Shining Vale’s a somewhat new series with a delightful comedy horror premise: our hero Pat moves to the country where the big ol’ house is for real haunted. There are a few other challenges salted in there, like: Pat’s had an affair, her daughter hates her, she can’t connect with her son, and she doesn’t know if she’ll ever write again.

Cool so far. 

The train starts to agitate on its rails by about episode two or three. We get the feeling that Pat’s not just in couple’s therapy to save her marriage. Her mother was put into an asylum. Maybe the demon is just the drugs talking. These existential threats are fine, assuming we get to resolve them. See, the show makes a promise to the viewer: whatever’s up the mansion’s ass is real. And Pat just needs to prove it.

Victim Blaming as Sport

The show heavily intertwines supernatural elements with Pat’s mental health struggles. Rather than this being a fun redemption story, it’s just another story about how the biggest danger to a woman’s family is … the woman herself.

Eight episodes of watching Pat unravel isn’t horrific; it’s just wearisome. The supernatural elements could have been so much fun, but they’re used as a pale watercolour backdrop to, and if you guessed gaslighting a woman about her life and choices, you’d be right. There’s a trick the show misses, which is that it’s fine for Pat to question her sanity, but it’s us who should be on her side. We should know Pat is really the hero, and be cheering for her to overcome her intrinsic and extrinsic challenges. Instead, we get an overused trope of women being crazy. It adds nothing fresh to the conversation.

There’s no way out of this well. Little Timmy fell down and is lost for good. Our final twist, which is hilariously unbelievable because in no universe can a sixteen-year-old commit someone to an asylum when there’s no psychiatric evidence of breakdown, is Pat failing on every mission she had. The promise to the viewer is tossed aside. We get no satisfaction. There’s apparently a season 2 coming, but I couldn’t give less of a shit because these show runners don’t respect our time or attention.

Making Women the Villains

Pat becomes the danger to her family, reinforcing the harmful idea that women’s trauma makes them a threat.

There are more nuanced explorations of similar themes. The Babadook digs around grief, trauma, mental illness, and the complexities of mother-son relationships. Amelia’s struggles to cope with her husband’s death and her son’s behavioural issues serve as a backdrop for the supernatural events. The Babadook becomes a metaphor for the terrors of childhood and the anxieties of parenting, particularly single parenting under difficult circumstances.

Shining Vale doesn’t learn from this trick. Pat’s shift from victim to villain betrays audience expectations in a way that feels regressive. 

So, What?

Shining Vale had potential, but couldn’t stick the landing. I’m not even sure it made take-off velocity. It relied on outdated tropes, turning its protagonist into a villain and failing to deliver the promise it made to the viewer in the first episode: the ghost is real. The family can be saved. And there is redemption, if you work at it.

Instead, it was eight episodes of missed opportunities. I’m astounded it’s been renewed for a second season; it implies the decision-makers at the helm are on better psychotropics than Pat ever had. This show does its level best to take every character win and turn it into a fall. 

I’m not sure I have the fortitude to go through the second season’s eight more episodes of blaming Pat for everything wrong with her life and/or the world while we say it’s all in her head. I can’t trust any promise they make to me as a viewer. Life’s too short; I’ve moved on, and I hope Pat in her fictional world can as well.