"Sparkling Valley" and "Welcome to Peletz": two series that do not rise above their basic idea

Two comedy series that have not yet arrived in the country are on the comedy spectrum of television today, and both are missing out.

Shining Vale with Courtney Cox is another horror comedy that is neither funny nor scary, and Welcome to Flatch is a small town series of the kind we've seen before, only without another element that sets it apart.

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18/04/2022

Monday, 18 April 2022, 00:25

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Shining Vale Trailer with Courtney Cox (Starz)

Too many comedies have been feeling lately that they are not good enough on their own and feel the need to eat another genre.

Producing pure humor is probably no longer enough, one should also incorporate suspense, horror or mystery to stand out or attract more audience.

While there are cases where it works, like "just murders in the building" or "after party", there are many more cases that do not ("The woman from the house opposite the girl at the window", "For me you die", "The Santa Clarita diet", "Truth seekers" ).

There's even something quite pretentious about it, a sort of ambitious statement of professionalism in the TV taps that tries to dance at two weddings and be photographed with all the guests.

"Shining Vale", the new series from the Starz network (did anyone already say it was an idiotic name for a TV channel?), Therefore, decided on its own and its creators that it was not only funny but also scary.

how?

On the one hand she has ghosts, on the other hand she has Courtney Cox who is a proven humor authority with "friends" on her resume.

The creators Jeff Ostroff ("Trial & Error", another Shatnaz series on the successful side of the scale) and for some reason Sharon Horgan ("Catastrophe", "Divorce") were probably convinced that all you have to do is put Cox into a haunted house and let For this snowball to roll alone.

Whoever wants to laugh Isaac, whoever wants to be afraid will be afraid.

After all, it worked so well with Kristen Bell and The Window.

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No horror cliché is spared.

Shining Vale (Photo: Starz)

This is Cox's third attempt to return to the small screen, after the failed "Yellow" and the goofy "Cougar Town" (Suri Abed), and unfortunately it seems to be the fourth as well.

This time, by the way, devout "friends" fans will have no trouble finding a few more quarter-familiar faces circling Cox as they circled around Monica Geller, such as Greg Kinnear (the ex-professor who stole Charlie Maros), who plays her husband here;

Marin Dangi (the museum worker who pressured Chandler about the wedding location), who acts here as her press agent, and Cherylin Penn (Chandler's ex with the prosthesis) as the insidious real estate agent who hid the new house secrets from the family. Mira Sorbino is also here As one of the ghosts, that if you really make an effort you can connect with Cox through Lisa Cudrow and "Rumi and Michelle".

The story is that Cox is Patricia, a frustrated writer who has betrayed her husband and now she, her husband and her two teenage children are trying to push the past back and move to live in an abandoned mansion in the middle of nowhere.

At this point in our lives, even TV characters are supposed to know what it means to have a crazy discount on a huge old house and neglected real estate.

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Viewers are miles ahead of the characters.

Shining Vale (Photo: Starz)

This blind spot is also expressed in every spare cliché of horror, like creepy music, self-closing doors, crooked shooting angles, flashing lights and bumps in the walls, all-inclusive, and "Shining Vale" is not even original in its treatment of the genre.

It takes Cox no less than four full episodes to begin to understand the concept of the series it's in, while viewers are already miles ahead, ironically thanks to the use of worn-out clichés, waiting in frustration that someone will already pick up on what's going on and start moving forward.

Even when it's already happening, it's not getting anywhere that "American Horror" has not been.

And it itself is a cycle of clichés under the guise of a bad homage, so there really is nowhere to go from here.

If "Shining Vale" was at least funny then okay, but just like "The Woman in the House Opposite", it has too few jokes most of which just fly through the air and don't hurt anything.

The reciprocal bites of Patricia and her daughter (Gus Birney, "Dickinson") are the most successful thing in the series (bet these are the parts Horgan wrote), but the preoccupation with suspense and horror takes over every good part and leaves not much room for anything else.

There is also an unclear attempt to frame the series within a “empowering” feminist context (does Patricia see ghosts that she is depressed or is one sewn for her so as not to believe her), but enough is enough.

Apparently the series itself has not decided what it wants to be, other than a comfortable platform for Monica Geller to say for the first time "Fuck" on the small screen at every possible opportunity, and she definitely takes advantage of each and every one of them.

In this, one must admit, one can find something a little disturbing.

Surprisingly, Ostroff is actually related to this series and not to another series that came up right at the same time, and is much more reminiscent of his humorously gifted talents of angular American towns as expressed in "Trial and Error."

"Studies show that Americans crave a simpler life in small towns," read the opening episode of each episode of "Welcome to Flatch," Fox Network's new comedy series (or what's left of it).

"To investigate these communities, Fox Network has sent a documentary team that will spend time with the citizens of Fletch, Ohio."

It's good that the network is at least referring to itself in order to preserve the illusion.

What does this remind you of?

Quite a few series, chief among them the British series "This Country" of the BBC, which is actually an adaptation of it, but certainly there are also a lot of "Gardens and Landscape Department", "Gilmore Girls", "Shit's Creek" and "Reservation Dogs" .

The documentary, as requested, is just a convenient excuse to laugh at American enclaves that time has forgotten, and flood the screen with a variety of eccentric characters, esoteric customs and absurd business ventures like selling cache maps or a local version of Uber.

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There is a reason most of us do not live in such a place.

Welcome to Flatch (Photo: Michael Lavine / FOX)

Creator Jenny Bix ("Cancer", "Divorce" for the second time today) and director Paul Fig ("Family in Disorder", "Freaks and Geeks") know the craft and do it well through the characters of Kelly and Sharab, young and scratchy cousins ​​who are dying to fly Maltz, but on the other hand it's hard to see them taking place anywhere else.

In general, this is a series that is strong in a cast that is mostly anonymous, except for the charming Aya Cash ("The Worst There Is," "The Boys") as the local newspaper's class editor, and Sean Williams Scott ("American Pie") who is surprisingly comic in the character of the pastor.

Desmin Burgess (Edgar from "The Worst There Is") also shows up for guest appearances and reunites with Cash, and someone even stepped up to do so and chose to call his character Jimmy.

As expected, the seam line between offensive and graceful reinforces most of the scenes in "Welcome to Flatch," along with a lot of Jim Halpert stares straight at the camera and seeds of disappointed loves that will surely sprout in the future for blooming novels.

The problem is that this is all there is to the series - a small town.

All the other series mentioned above had a completely different theme, with the town and its quirks adorning the backdrop that struck the dimension.

Inflating the location to the point that defines all the happenings in it creates a slightly dull and repetitive effect, and with all due respect to the provincial charm of Fletch, there is a reason most of us do not live in such a place.

In contrast to "Shining Vale", here there was definitely a place and a need to combine another presence.

Or at least some miniature horse.

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