Shining Vale premieres Sunday, March 6 on Starz with two episodes. This is a spoiler-free review of the supersized premiere.
Starz's new dark comedy Shining Vale, which is clumsily nestled between a paranormal haunting romp and a mean-spirited family fable, can't quite successfully manage either of its halves, though the second episode (which airs right after the first on premiere night) does improve over the pilot. Both of them together aren't quite enough to scratch the surface of what's going on, mystery-wise, though they do offer up a sampling of the series' confused tone, in which a parade of potshots often takes the place of humor. There's a sinister and spooky underbelly to all of this, but it's only sort of poked its head out after these two installments.
Of course, a dysfunctional family on the edge has been suitable source of many a comedy. The Bundys on Married...with Children already satirically ripped through the "ideal suburban family." And -- side note -- if you're looking for a better "wife communes with ghosts in a New England manor" comedy, CBS' Ghosts is worth the drop in. Shining Vale feels rote in its efforts to portray the Phelps family, featuring sluggish takes on the dweeby son, promiscuous daughter, and do-right "Clark Griswold"-type father. Greg Kinnear plays the latter, Terry Phelps, a man convinced being a "Phelps" means something inherently positive even though all signs point to the opposite.
At the heart of Shining Vale is Courteney Cox's Pat Phelps and a cursory (for now) glance at female depression. And in Shining Vale terms, this theme comes with the inclusion of hereditary proclivity for demonic possession, as if somehow the two are linked, which sort of does a disservice to the actual illness. Pat is a former alcoholic who, while in the midst of her worst window of addiction, wrote a salacious novel that put her on the map as an author. Now, years later and sober, Pat struggles to write her follow up and her rampant unhappiness recently pushed her into an affair. Enter Shining Vale: a suspiciously Stepford-style Connecticut town and the place Terry thinks will heal the family. In his attempt to distance everyone from Pat's infidelity, he's called for relocating to a large creaky estate in the sleepy burbs.
The first episode, "Welcome to Casa De Phelps," is the hinkiest of the two in the debut block, tasked with setting up the Phelps, their current standings with each other post-affair, and the large century-old house that Pat may has an unwelcome ghostly connection to. The family comes off as dry, bickering bozos who don't seem to fit with one another at all, as if they're incongruous parts slapped together from a joke machine. The humor just doesn't land and the ghost shtick is barely present enough to register.
The second outing, "She Comes at Night," does a little bit better in both worlds, managing to find more of the comedy in both Terry and Pat, as well as their kids, while layering in more of their backstory. A big flaw still remains though, which is that the Phelps seem even more unrealistic at times than the spectral retro gimmick of the town, and they're supposed to be reacting to the crazy pearl-clutching vibes.
Shining Vale comes from Jeff Astrof (Trial & Error, numerous other American sitcoms) and Sharon Horgan (creator/writer of UK series Catastrophe and Divorce) and at times it certainly feels like a choppy blending of cultural comedy styles. The UK can pull off acerbic meanness in a way many American comedies can't, and yes, there's an element here where one can imagine Brits delivering some of these lines more effectively. Then there's the question of "does a ghostly mystery even have a place here?" The second episode works mostly because it fleshes out the four main characters more (presents the kids with more context, has a fun moment between Perry and the handyman Pat slept with, etc), and not because it ramps up the phantom presence of Mira Sorvino's undead lady of the manor.
The series also stars Twin Peaks' Sherilyn Fenn as the Phelps' prudish realtor, Alias' Merrin Dungey as Pat's straight-shooting agent, and (yet to be seen in the first two episodes) Who's the Boss?'s Judith Light. Gus Birney and Dylan Gage play the Phelps teens, Gaynor and Jake, respectively, adding to the show's heightened ideas about modern-era malfunction, though the outlier here is Kinnear's Perry, whose sunny-side-up disposition feels oddly plucked from a different story with a slightly less malicious demeanor.
Cox is nicely suited for Pat, in a bit of a gender-flipped Shining scenario (former addict with writer's block living on a hellmouth), as a woman crawling out of her skin due to an overall uncertainty with her life. When the series starts off, the Phelps quartet feel like four strangers who've been shoved into a long car ride together, but, as mentioned, things start to congeal more with the second chapter. Given this, it stands to the reason that the series will continue to improve as the season continues, if not also because these first two episodes drop us off at a point where it's still easy to bail on the show if you'd like to.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/eh4FyuD
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