Virgin River season 1, episode 5 recap: Under Fire

Mel and Jack are held at gunpoint along a remote dirt road by a threatening character who wants to take Mel away to some kind of medical emergency on Virgin River.

Jack faces the guy down, but in the end Mel gets sick of the machismo and gets into the guy’s truck, saying that if someone is hurt she wants to go anyway on Virgin River.

The guy is Jimmy, one of the lieutenants who helps run an illegal pot grower’s camp and his boss, Calvin, has been injured in a shoot out. He doesn’t want to go to a hospital, for obvious reasons, but the injury is pretty serious and Mel can’t guarantee he won’t die without proper facilities.

Mel eventually has to cauterise the wound to stop the bleeding. Jimmy makes her stay overnight to make sure the wound doesn’t reopen. Jack and Mel are worried about what will happen to them if Calvin dies. But in the morning everything is okay so they send them on their way. But as they’re leaving, they hear a woman scream and discover that a young woman is giving birth in another tent. The woman is Maxine and the father is Spencer.

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Mel stays to help with the delivery, which is good because it turns out to be a breech birth with some complications. Calvin doesn’t want any of his people leaving the camp, but Mel insists that she take Maxine and the baby to the hospital. There is a stand-off.

Meanwhile, Preacher is also away and Jack’s Bar is chaos. Everyone in town seems to be at the bar and between Ricky and Brady they just can’t keep up. Hope throws on an apron and jumps behind the bar to help. Charmaine comes by to see Jack, but after a while she also jumps behind the bar, but the tension between them doesn’t help matters much.

It turns out that Charmaine is the daughter of the woman Doc cheated on Hope with and its hard for Hope not to have hard feelings against her. But it wasn’t her fault her mom betrayed Hope’s friendship, and she doesn’t deserve how she’s been treated. Charmaine is adult enough to clear the air with Hope, which really puts Hope in her place.

Doc tries again to apologize to Hope for everything that happened 20 years ago, saying that he still loves her. Why can’t she just let it go? But Hope says if he doesn’t get it yet, then he never will. Doc decides it really is time to move on and tells Hope that he’s found a new attorney to draw up their divorce papers.

Due to all the chaos at the bar, no one realizes that Jack and Mel are actually missing until the next morning. Doc sets out to find them, figuring that they must have gotten waylaid by someone at the pot farm. Doc arrives just in time to find Mel and Jack trying to leave with Maxine, Spencer, and the baby. Doc has an understanding with Calvin; he turns a blind eye to the drugs and Calvin lets him take care of his people. Doc is able to talk Calvin into letting Maxine and the baby go, but Spencer has to stay behind.

Once they’re finally back home, Jack and Mel share a drink and decompress. Jack says that Mel operates under pressure better than some special forces guys he knows. She was pretty impressive out there. But she’s still a little freaked out, so Jack sits with her until she falls asleep. But Mel is awakened later when Jack has a violent war nightmare, revealing the true extend of his wartime PTSD.

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