Shining Vale-- My thoughts about the show with Spoilers!

 

PLOT SUMMARY: A family moves into a new house that seems haunted only to Pat. The ghost wants to help Pat finish her book. Then her true intentions are revealed.

A fresh start, a new home, isn’t that all we desire sometimes? To get a break? To leave behind a painful past and mistakes made?

A new city and a new house certainly helps, unless you find out that the house is haunted. Now, what are the chances that the ghost will be helpful? Pretty slim, right?

In Shining Vale, the ghost does turn out to be helpful, for a while at least. Or that is what she wants the protagonist Patricia to believe, anyway.

The show starts off with a card that tells you that the symptoms of demonic possession and depression can be the same. This little piece of information doesn’t click in until the final episode of the season when it makes you wonder if Patricia was a target of demonic possession or was she experiencing a psychotic breakdown just like her mother?

Before that we are made to believe that Patricia is indeed interacting with a feisty ghost called Rosemary who wants to do nothing but help her.

There are some themes identical to The Shining, particularly the protagonist being a writer, and an impatient one at that. When Jack Torrance from The Shining enters the Outlook hotel, he too experiences strange occurrences, much like the ones depicted in Shining Vale, for example, when Jack finds the bar suddenly open and staffed.

Or when Jack types a sentence over and over. Or when the ending of The Shining shows Jack in a photograph taken a long time ago. He shouldn’t be in that but he is, smiling.

The ending scene will surely remind you of that movie. If you wanted to watch a sort of parody of The Shining, then this movie is for you.

And of course the show does have the word “Shining” in it. Get it?

SHINING VALE Plot

Patricia and Terry move into a new house in Shining Vale. They have teenage kids, Gaynor and Jake.

The Phelps family are looking for a new start following Patricia’s affair with the plumber. The couple are in therapy which entails Patricia being on medication.

Patricia is also a writer who is facing the toughest writer’s block in her career yet. Her friend and agent Kam wants her to work on her novel but Patricia is struggling with writing even a sentence.

Luckily for her, there is a ghost in her new house, Rosemary. At first Pat is obviously terrified and believes Rosemary to be a side effect of her medication.

But when she finds that she has finally managed to write a whole chapter, she realizes that the “ghost” in her new house may be finally helping her write.

Gaynor befriends Ryan, her next door neighbor who also goes to her school.

Valerie, Ryan’s mother, keeps trying to warn Pat that there is something odd and dangerous in the new house but Pat dismisses her.

Jake is interested in his new VR game where he sees a girl who he believes to be an NPC. The girl, calls herself Daisy and leads Jake into the forest where he finds a skull.

Terry has an undeniable attraction to his coworker Kathryn but tries to maintain a professional demeanor with her. However, during his presentation for the Archdiocese, his slides have been tampered with obscenities and he is almost fired but instead Kathryn, who was working with him on the presentation is fired instead. Terry is suspended and he blames Pat for what happened.

Pat isn’t sure and admits this to her husband stating that her new medication has been giving her blackouts. However, on the bright side, she just found a Tiki bar in their basement.

Terry forgives her but then expedites his own firing by insulting his boss who makes a degrading comment about Pat.

Terry giving his boss the finger is caught on video that goes viral.

Meanwhile Pat is getting frustrated at not being able to finish her novel. She tries the pills which allows her to see Rosemary but when she stops taking them and tries to finish the novel on her own, she meets with failure.

Her psychiatrist flags her name at every pharmacy in the country because she was using a highly addictive drug and couldn’t possibly have stopped using it even though she claims it to be the case.

Unable to write without her pills. Pat goes to her mother for help. Her mother graciously gives her the pills but relentlessly taunts her daughter for institutionalizing her.

Gaynor learns that her mother gave up college to take care of her mother who she had admitted. She softens a bit but is also determined to get baptized as she turns to religion to impress her boyfriend.

Terry, after being fired, resorts to taking up woodwork. He’s bad at it.

But he show offs that he can build a fence when their neighbor Valerie comments about the broken fence.

Valerie keeps warning Pat about Rosemary and that she isn’t who everyone thought she is. Pat doesn’t heed her warning. Rosemary creates havoc in Pat’s life by convincing her to let herself get possessed. Rosemary sleeps with Terry under Pat’s guise, bonds with the children and writes several chapters.

Pat doesn’t think she’s got a bad deal by allowing Rosemary to possess her although Rosemary does write herself committing suicide in every chapter.

Pat scarps that idea and tries to take hold but Rosemary practically blackmails her into letting her in.

Terry is building his shoddy and pointy fence when Rosemary possessed Valerie and makes her jump out the window. Right on Terry’s fence.

Jake has found the skull and along with his friend, uses an ouija board to find out who it belongs to. The spirit claims to be Dan, a grocer from years ago who went missing.

Patricia is now under Rosemary’s control and prances around the house in a 50s ideal wife garb. Her behavior towards her family sweetens although the real Pat keeps coming out.

At the meeting, Pat/Rosemary tells Kam about wanting an advance. Kam informs her about the summer book deal going to upcoming author Claire Vanderbilt. Pat blacks out and wakes up in a new car with Rosemary in the backseat who tells Pat she needs to do things for herself once in a while.

Pat then suggests to Terry that they have a housewarming party and he needs to invite Kathryn. Terry is hesitant because he and Kathryn kissed at the winery.

Gaynor and Ryan sleep with each other because that is the only way Gaynor could console her boyfriend. Ryan isn’t too happy that Gaynor got his mother’s protection necklace. And he isn’t too happy to have lost his virginity.

The dinner party doesn’t go so well. Terry’s friend goes to the attic and says he experienced something bad and tells Pat she will die up there. And then he throws up and collapses possibly because he had taken drugs.

Pat doesn’t let Kathryn and her husband Blake leave without playing a game. During that she reveals to Blake that his wife almost had an affair with Terry. Blake, who works as a manager of employee happiness, loses it and leaves.

Kathryn is sulking when Terry comes over and they kiss.

Pat is under possession again and awakens the next morning to find evidence that she had spent the night with Blake.

As Terry confesses to her about his kiss with Kathryn, Pat is shocked to see obscene photos of her and Blake. She dismisses Terry and confronts Rosemary.

Rosemary’s true intentions are revealed.

In the 50s, she was an overworked mother and a dutiful wife. One fine morning, she found out her husband had an affair with his secretary. Fell unappreciated and betrayed, she slaughters her entire family.

She suggests Pat does the same to her family.

Pat dreams about killing the dog and for her son Jake to find out her burying the evidence. She knocks him out when Gaynor comes over and sees her mother burying her brother. She is knocked out with a shovel too.

Terry comes and barely gets to register that his kids are being buried when he is hit on the head too.

Pat is glad this is a dream and tells this to her husband who isn’t too happy that she checked on the dog before the rest of her family. He goes off to work while Pat manages to anger Rosemary by confronting her about Valerie’s necklace that she found in the attic.

Pat has had enough and takes the advice of a local paranormal expert to destroy the vessel that the ghost wants to possess. Meaning destroy herself. She tries to overdose on the pills but chokes and spits them out. She then takes them one by one with water while Rosemary watches.

In retaliation, Rosemary sends Terry the photos of Pat and Blake.

SHINING VALE Ending Explained with Spoilers!

Terry confronts Pat and then decides to leave her.

Ryan asks Gaynor to come with her and she agrees mostly because she feels she may be pregnant.

Later, she finds Valerie’s necklace buried in the woods and wonders if she was killed.

Pat and Terry have “The Shining” moment wherein she literally says: “Here’s Pat.”

Rosemary/Pat tell Terry that they weren’t too thrilled that he was so forgiving about everything Pat did. Rather than get angry or say anything else, he was buying her mansions and being extra nice to her that didn’t help her mental state.

Terry is then pushed down the stairs. Pat takes control and goes after him.

Gaynor thinks Pat has killed her father but he coughs and wakes up. She asks about the necklace and Pat almost attacks her but then firmly reminds herself she’s a mother and takes hold of herself again.

Unfortunately, the pills also take a hold of her and she collapses.

When she wakes up, she is strapped down on a gurney and in a psychiatric facility. Gaynor and Jake are signing papers, exactly like Pat had done to her mother years ago.

Pat tries to tell everyone she isn’t crazy but no one listens.

She passes a photograph on the wall that says The Shining Vale of Hysterical Women. The date under the photo shows that it was taken in 1859. Rosemary is in the picture as one of the nurses.

But…Rosemary was a housewife in the 50s.

Just what is going on?

Whether or not Shining Vale gets another season remains doubtful. With so many shows getting cancelled, this show doesn’t have a very good chance of getting renewed. However, it would be nice to see another season of this witty show.

Shining Vale is not without its flaws, however. There is nothing substantial going on throughout the season and no new information about the house or Rosemary is revealed until the penultimate episode.

There is hardly any character growth and the only reason to pull on and watch this show because Courtney Cox is entertaining to watch and gets the humorous scenes right without trying to hard.

Greg Kinnear’s characters stays on one track throughout the season and a second season may show what happens to Terry after he feels he was attacked by Pat.

And what exactly is going on with Pat? Does she suffer from an affliction, is crazy or does actually get possessed by Rosemary?

There is an instance when Valerie claims that the woman isn’t Rosemary. Did Valerie suspect that Rosemary was a demon all along?

So Rosemary was a nurse in 1859. A hundred years later, she’s a housewife who goes on a killing spree.

Another sixty years or so later, she is trying to get to Pat. She does write herself in several scenes where she’s killing herself. Could it be that the ghost is someone else and that Rosemary was under possession when she slaughtered her family? Does she now feel the guilt of killing people which is why she is trying to get herself killed?

How is it that of the whole family, only Daisy, Rosemary’s daughter, tries to contact Jake? Why not the rest of Rosemary’s family?

A second season would show us what happened in 1859 and it would be a relief to get some questions answered.

Let’s see what happens.

Scare Scale: 3.5/5