The Shining Vale (2022-2023)

Why The Shining Vale Deserves a Third Season (and Why It Feels Like Women-Led Shows Never Get One)

Let’s talk about The Shining Vale — the haunted comedy series starring Monica Geller… I mean, Courteney Cox. It’s a two-season show that somehow doesn’t have a third one lined up, and honestly, I’m not okay with that.

Why can’t The Shining Vale get a third season? And why does it always seem like my favorite shows get the two-season cutoff? Isn’t there a writer or exec somewhere who can keep this story going?

Here’s my idea: streaming services should give us an option to vote for another season at the end of a series. Imagine if my monthly subscription money actually went toward the shows I want to see — what a concept!

And maybe it’s just me, but it always feels like it’s the women-led series that get axed first. RIP Just Like That, Single Drunk Female, Dollface, and so many more. Anyway — back to The Shining Vale.

What It’s About

The series follows a married couple, Pat (Courteney Cox) and Terry (Greg Kinnear), who move their family from the city to a small town after an affair rocks their marriage. Of course, the house they get a great deal on turns out to be haunted — because of course it is.

Pat starts seeing ghosts (maybe) while also struggling with depression and questions about her own sanity. The show keeps us guessing: is she really being haunted, or is she having a mental breakdown?

The Shining Vale is two seasons, eight episodes each, about 30 minutes per episode — a quick binge. I watched the whole thing in a week and have already rewatched it twice. It leans more comedy than horror, but with the ghosts, it gets classified as a “haunted” show. The real horror, though, comes from its themes: depression, isolation, and gender roles inside a marriage.

A Smart, Creepy Play on “Hysteria”

Season 1 opens with a statistic: women are more likely to suffer from depression than men — and twice as likely to be possessed by a demon. The series blurs those lines brilliantly, showing how easily society labels women as “crazy” when they’re unhappy or angry — especially when they seemingly have it all: a career, kids, a husband, a home.

The first episode sets the tone perfectly. Pat daydreams about an affair while her husband Terry drives, completely oblivious to her inner turmoil. When she sees what she thinks is a little girl in the road, Terry dismisses it as a deer — a perfect metaphor for how he ignores her reality.

Later, in therapy, Terry blames Pat’s “mental instability” and her family’s history of depression instead of taking any accountability himself. He’s obsessed with control, sex, and appearances, while Pat is quietly unraveling — struggling with self-worth, loneliness, and the ache of feeling unseen. It’s a dynamic that feels painfully familiar for many women in hetero relationships: the man as the rational one, the woman as the emotional problem.

What’s even more unsettling is how easy it is, at times, to fall into that same mindset. Terry’s upbeat charm and calm surface can almost convince you he’s the victim — proof of how deeply internalized misogyny can shape our empathy. Pat may be the one fighting ghosts, but the show makes you realize how often women are haunted by the way others choose to see them.

A Marriage That Feels Too Real

Terry constantly minimizes Pat’s fears. When she says she saw someone in the backyard, he focuses on correcting her terminology (“You mean the living room, not the family room”) instead of comforting her. He critiques her descriptions instead of listening to her emotions.

Every conversation becomes a subtle power struggle — him needing to be right over being kind. When Pat suggests moving back to Brooklyn, he shuts it down, reminding her that they can’t afford it. She’s isolated and financially trapped, doubting her sanity while being gaslit by her husband.

And that’s what makes The Shining Vale so sharp — it’s not just a haunted house story, it’s about the ghosts of patriarchy, marriage, and identity.

The Weight of It All

Pat’s life is unraveling from every direction — a marriage held together by denial, two teenagers who couldn’t be more different yet both barely tolerate her, and the relentless pressure to deliver the first chapter of a novel she can’t seem to write. She’s sober, she’s trying, and feeling the weight of the expectations of being a wife, a mother, a writer. Every part of her life demands all of her without ever pausing to ask how she’s doing - or what she wants. And no matter how hard she tries, it never feels like enough. The cruelest part is that she never asked for any of it.

By the end of the episode, Pat convinces herself that Terry was right — it was just a deer. For a moment, she doubts her instincts, tries to quiet the voice inside her that insists something’s wrong. Then she turns and sees the ghost waiting in the hallway. It’s the perfect collision of horror and heartbreak — a haunting reminder that what women are told to dismiss often turns out to be real.

Why It Matters

The Shining Vale takes the old “hysterical woman” trope and flips it on its head. It challenges the idea of what it even means to be “crazy” when your experiences are constantly dismissed or explained away. It’s psychological, yes — but it’s also deeply human. At its core, it’s about a woman trying to reclaim her voice and her worth in a world that keeps telling her she’s too much, too emotional, too complicated - yet somehow still predictable.

I think of Pat as “the unknowing woman” — someone suspended between haunting and healing, between who she used to be and who she’s trying to become. She’s surrounded by her family yet completely alone, caught in the irony of being needed by everyone while feeling unseen by all of them. Her husband thinks he has her figured out, but that certainty is exactly what keeps her invisible.

So yeah, The Shining Vale deserves a third season — not just because it’s funny, eerie, and sharply written, but because it makes space for women’s anger, confusion, and evolution. And honestly, television could use a lot more of that.

Written by: Sharon Horgan & Jeff Astrof

Directed by: Liz Friedlander