Netflix's Virgin River season 1 premiere recap: Carry On

A big-city nurse practitioner named Mel moves from Los Angeles to the remote town of Virgin River, California. But the challenges she faces once she arrives aren’t quite what she expected.

As Mel makes her way along the road to Virgin River, she has a slight accident and her car ends up in a ditch. She’s out in the middle of the woods and she has no cell reception. A neighborly old guy stops to help her but immediately starts treating her like an idiot before she’s even said anything. She doesn’t have any choice but to accept a ride from him into town.

As they make conversation she tells him that she’s the new nurse practitioner and that she was hired to help the aging town doctor. It just so happens that her cranky helper is Doc Mullins, the town doctor, and he doesn’t take kindly to being called old. He drops her off at her cabin, which is much more rustic than advertised and drives off on a huff.

Inside the rundown cabin, she meets the town’s mayor, Hope McCrea. She was the one who secretly hired Mel to help Doc. The cabin is nowhere near ready, needing repairs and cleaning and probably some pest control. The job Mel accepted includes a house for the year and she obviously can’t stay in the cabin as it is. Hope shoos Mel away to Jack’s Bar for dinner while she cleans.

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There she meets Jack, the bar’s owner, and Preacher, the bar’s chef. She and Jack share a few drinks and get to know each other. He pegs her as a big city girl based on her fancy handbag and manicure but is impressed by her ability to shoot whiskey, as if that’s something that big city women can’t do. There’s an awful lot of gender stereotypes being aimed at her and it’s implied that she’s special for disproving them as if she’s the exception to the rule.

Later, Jack walks her back to the cabin and they say goodnight. Mel has flashbacks of moving into her new house with her husband. Something sad obviously happened between them. Jack definitely noticed her wedding ring but didn’t ask questions.

The next morning Mel tries to apologize to Doc for calling him old. But he’s proud and a little bit sexist and it wouldn’t have mattered how they were introduced, he’d still tell her he doesn’t want her. Even Hope can’t get Doc to accept her. Mel is getting a little frustrated and has a little cry on the phone with her overprotective sister Joey. Joey says that Mel should stop punishing herself for what happened. “Nobody blames you,” she says. So Mel trying to start a new life after something traumatic, probably to do with her husband.

Mel stops by Jack’s for lunch and meets Paige. She runs the bakery truck and tells Mel that she should stop by sometime. Meanwhile, Hope tries again to convince Doc to take Mel on. Mel has amazing qualifications, but Doc wonders what she’s doing in Virgin River if she’s so good. What’s she running from? Doc finally agrees to a one-month trial employment.

Hope agrees to put Mel up at the inn while Jack helps fix up the cabin. They honestly can’t afford to lose her. But when Mel goes back to work, Doc won’t let her even look at a patient until he knows she’s competent. But why the heck wouldn’t she be competent? And how will he be able to confirm her competency if she can’t see patients? It is completely unreasonable.

While Doc is out on a call, though, a pregnant woman comes in with what looks like contractions and Mel has to check her out. It’s just Braxton Hicks, but Doc freaks out when he finds out that Mel saw a patient without his supervision. His stubbornness is actually endangering the patients he claims to care so much about. And because Mel is from a big city, he somehow believes that she cares less about people than he does.

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Since he’s clearly not going to let her do her job, Mel gives Hope her notice and says she’ll stay on until they can find someone else. Hope tries to bully her into staying, saying that she needs to suck it up because life rarely gives us what we want. But Mel took a job, with clearly defined terms, and she has more than enough qualifications to find a job that will honor those terms.

The next morning while Mel is out for a run, Jack stops her as she passes Doc’s office. Someone has abandoned a baby on the front porch.

What did you think of this episode of Virgin River? Be sure to tell us in the comment section below!

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