Five seasons in and Virgin River could’ve easily shifted into cruise control. Why not? Five seasons is an eternity for most television shows these days, and the Netflix series, based on Robyn Carr’s novels, has remained a bona fide hit with its mix of wholesome coziness, soapy drama, and perfect knits — it clearly has a formula that’s working for it. It’s the ol’ “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” situation. Only, the formula isn’t perfect.
Virgin River has always had a tendency to somehow both drag out storylines — may I remind you people that Charmaine (Lauren Hammersley) has been pregnant for five seasons now — or, even worse, present a dramatic scenario and cut immediately to its aftermath without ever really showing us the conflict. I’ll never forgive this show for its insane choice last season to end an episode with Jack (Martin Henderson) having to take over a small plane when the pilot had a heart attack, and then cut to the next episode where everyone was at the hospital but totally fine. What a travesty! Let me actually see Jack Sheridan pull this miracle off! And HOW DARE YOU hold out on the post-landing Jack and Mel (Alexandra Breckinridge) kiss of relief! This may be my own beef that I need to work through, but still, leaving the most compelling part of entire storylines up to the audience to imagine was pretty par for the course in the first four seasons of the series. When I fired up Season 5, I had resigned myself to more of the same, which would’ve been totally fine (this show is fine as is). However, I had a much different and very welcome experience: It turns out Virgin River isn’t coasting. It is willing to tweak its formula, and in doing so, it solves a lot of its mentioned pacing issues. Season 5, led by new showrunner Patrick Sean Smith, dials up the soap opera several degrees and is a better series for it.
Now, let’s be real: Virgin River Season 5 isn’t some completely different take on the series. I don’t think it’s going to win over any new viewers, but its improvements certainly offer up a treat for its longtime fans (unless you hate the soap opera aspects of this show, in which case, grow up). The series has never felt more compelling than it does in its new season, because here, it is willing to wade down deeper into the drama at expense of some of the coziness (not all of it; don’t you worry). Sure, some of that drama is outrageous — the conclusion of Brady (Benjamin Hollingsworth) and Jack’s run-in with Melissa Montgomery (Barbara Pollard) and her scheme to launder money through, wait for it, Jack’s glamping business is particularly ridiculous — but at least it commits. And the best example of how not shying away from the drama — or, more importantly, the melodrama — is working for the series as a whole is definitely the two-parter in the middle of the season, in which wildfires ravage the town of Virgin River.
The wildfires are the centerpiece of the season, and the writers use them to their advantage in many ways. The storyline itself is emotional, as people in Virgin River lose everything and come together to support one another, just as you knew they would. Perhaps it hits even harder because of recent events. Virgin River doesn’t shy away from the devastation (although it doesn’t get as catastrophic or grim as the scenario can be in real life; this is still Virgin River, after all). But it also uses the tension in the town to further several other ongoing storylines and relationships — life-threatening situations seem to throw everyone off-kilter, don’t they?
Tragedy strikes Mel and Jack in the middle of the melee, made even more tragic by the fact that they can’t do anything about it since they both play integral roles in keeping Virgin River safe. When the fireline reaches Jack’s bar, it allows Brady and Preacher (Colin Lawrence) to hash out their differences (and teach us all what a backfire is). Being out of town together, waiting for news of their friends, brings Brie (Zibby Allen) and Mike (Marco Grazzini) closer together in a really organic way. Even the youths, Lizzie (Sarah Dugdale) and Denny (Kai Bradbury), get a big moment that is at once exciting, revealing, and the perfect way to develop their relationship (Lizzie and Denny have never been more interesting than they are this season — a sentence I’d never thought I’d write). The writers and cast write every bit of drama they can from the circumstances they’ve built for themselves without ever losing the show’s wholesome tone, and they wind up delivering two of the best episodes of the series. I’ve never seen Virgin River work so hard, and I mean that as the highest compliment.
