Showrunner Patrick Sean Smith and star Alexandra Breckenridge break down the ‘Virgin River’ holiday episodes and Mel’s hunt for her biological father.
Mel has some daddy issues.
On the holiday episodes of Virgin River, Mel (Alexandra Breckenridge) embarks on a hunt for her biological father, a man whom her mother had an affair with. Using the postcards and letters her sister finds, Mel and Jack (Martin Henderson) launch their search — only to find that the man in question, Everett Reid (John Allen Nelson), still lives in the small town.
At first, Everett lies, telling Mel that he is not the man she’s looking for (even though she can see the Lumberjack Games trophy in his entryway that gives him away). Mel is disheartened, but Breckenridge says the rebuff is not entirely a shock either.
“When I played that scene, I remember thinking many things when I went to the door, and the main thought running through Mel’s mind was I could meet him and he could turn me away,” she tells EW. “He’d never tried to find her in the past. But the fact that he blatantly lied, it was a little bit harder than she thought.”
Eventually, though, Mel does get her happy ending when Everett seeks her out and brings her a music box that plays her mother’s voice.
For Virgin River, which has drawn out storylines like the identity of Jack’s shooter and Charmaine’s pregnancy across seasons, it’s a remarkable quick, contained resolution to a story that we only just learned about at the conclusion of part 1 of season 5.
“We were in the realm of Christmas spirit,” Breckenridge says. “We wanted to maintain a coziness and a lightness to the characters and what they were dealing with. Of course, it’s a little odd that she’s all of a sudden [jumping into this], but we had to move the story along.”
Showrunner Patrick Sean Smith adds that because of the letters’ evidence of Everett’s relationship with her mother, it makes sense that Mel would seek him out rather quickly. “She was heartened by the letters that she read to know that Everett did want to be a part of her life and respected her mother’s wishes,” he notes. “She came into it feeling that connection with her mother. It was a win-win situation for her to bring this man into her life.”
Before Mel discovered that her mysterious father is a man who both lives in Virgin River and is someone we’ve never met before, fan theories were flying about who the proud papa could be. Of course, many of us were rooting for it to be Doc Mullins (Tim Matheson), who is already something of a surrogate father to Mel.
Breckenridge reveals that the cast enjoyed speculating just as much as audiences. “Everyone thought it was Doc,” she says. “I was like, ‘That’s too obvious.’ Bert we thought would be fun. Nick was another funny idea.”
Smith admits they mulled every option before arriving at the decision to introduce a new character. “We consider all the possibilities, Doc being the most obvious one,” he notes. “But Doc is already a surrogate father to her. So to make it then about biology feel like it was defeating the purpose of what’s so special about their relationship.”
Although, Mel might end up having more dads than she knows what to do with. In a moving moment, she asks Doc to walk her down the aisle at her wedding to Jack, a sign of how far they’ve come since their antagonistic beginnings. “I don’t think that Mel really realized how much she needed family in her life,” Breckenridge reflects. “When you meet Mel, you get the feeling that she is really overwhelmed by the loss of her husband, her parents, especially her mother and her child. Over the seasons, she’s really softened Doc in a lot of ways, and that family connection that they have been so sweet and beautiful.”
But Mel asks Doc to give her away before Everett returns — so, can she balance all that paternal feeling? “Having another father figure move into Mel’s life will be a new challenge for Doc and their relationship,” teases Smith.
