Virgin River Season 6 Has Daddy Issues

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Virgin River Season 6.]

Mel Monroe (Alexandra Breckenridge) has got daddy issues. And so does Virgin River, if we're being honest. Season 6 of the cozy romantic drama is ostensibly focused on beloved couple Mel and Jack's (Martin Henderson) big wedding day, but the biggest, most enduring conflict of the season has to do with Mel attempting a relationship with her newly discovered biological dad, Everett (John Allen Nelson), and how that affects the one she has with the current father figure in her life, Doc (Tim Matheson). Call it Virgin River 6: Mel's Two Dads, if you will. 

Once Virgin River made the big reveal toward the end of Season 5 that Mel's biological father is not who she grew up believing him to be, that her mother had an affair and she was the result of that affair, and that her real bio dad lived right there in Virgin River (I still laugh about this one; it is objectively insane), you could guess that Everett's presence in Mel's life would be explored more in Season 6. Unfortunately, you could also guess that this particular storyline would turn out to be a mess, thanks to both the way it was rolled out in Season 5 and the fact that this relationship would, of course, be compared to not just one of the best father/daughter relationships Virgin River has got going on, but one of the best relationships on the show full stop: Mel and Doc. No matter how much they force it (and boy, do they!), this Mel/Everett storyline never really has a shot at being as effective as Virgin River wants or believes it to be, regardless of how it's written — but it definitely has no shot with the way it's handled in this new batch of episodes.

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For a TV series that notoriously had one character's pregnancy last for five seasons, Virgin River sure is rushing this bio dad business along. Learning that an integral part of your identity was actually a lie, and that your parents kept that massive secret from you, should be an earth-shattering reveal. Mel's life should feel irrevocably changed. Instead, in Season 5, it takes her about half a conversation with her sister to determine that she's processed the whole secrets-and-lies part of the reveal and would like to move on to getting to know her real dad. Then, it takes just one episode for her to track him down. 

When Season 6 opens, several months have passed, and while Mel isn't best buds with Everett, she is eager to make him a real part of her life. They're having a nice dinner together at his house! She easily, casually, refers to him as her dad! (Although she doesn't directly call him "dad" to his face for several episodes; thank god for small miracles.) By Episode 3, she has decided that because Everett has missed out on so much of her life, she would like to disinvite Doc from walking her down the aisle and instead have Everett do it. Virgin River completely bypasses any anger, resentment, or confusion Mel might feel by having her world rocked like this. In fact, the only time Mel expresses any of those feelings toward Everett, it's because he admits to being overwhelmed at suddenly being asked to become a father to her after he thought he'd let her go decades before. It makes you want to scream a little. Let the man be overwhelmed! That is a perfectly normal reaction to this situation! 

When Mel's sister Joey (Jenny Cooper) arrives in town for the bachelorette party in Episode 4, she at least introduces the idea that this is a wild situation, and not just for Mel. She confesses that she's upset because she feels as though she's losing Mel, and she's been struggling with the fact that their mother is "a stranger" to her now. Mel's reaction is… mostly one of surprise? Which means I'm sorry but I have to ask: Is Mel dense or just self-involved? This huge secret that's been revealed also affects Joey; did she just not think her sister would have any feelings about it? This conversation, though, ends almost as soon as it begins, with a hug and a request to go perform the Spice Girls' "Wannabe" at karaoke. Listen, I get that the Spice Girls heal all, but it feels like such a missed opportunity to not let Mel really marinate or process her new reality.

Sure, Virgin River is meant to be a warm show where everything, even burying bodies in the woods, seems to more or less work out for people. But in the past, there have been heavier storylines — Mel's miscarriage, Brie's (Zibby Allen) sexual assault, and, in this season, Muriel's (Teryl Rothery) breast cancer diagnosis — that have been handled with real care, storylines that we're still feeling emotional ramifications from, because they deserve that. It's why the mishandling of the Everett story is so confusing. Why not ground this relationship in something real so that there is actual depth to it, giving us compelling reasons to become invested in it? It would make the eventual happy ending much sweeter. Do you know how I know? Because that's exactly how they did it with Mel and Doc. And that relationship became one that anchors this series. 

Yes, the first misstep in developing the Mel/Everett relationship is that there is no room for Mel to breathe, emotionally speaking, but perhaps the bigger one is that Virgin River wastes zero time holding it right up to what Mel has with Doc. (And what Mel has with Doc is precious to me, to you, to the history of television, really.) We immediately learn that Doc has a decades-long grudge he's been holding against Everett because of Something in Their Past. Neither man will reveal what that grudge is about to Mel, but they will say things like, "You have no idea what kind of man he is!" Which, you know, doesn't exactly seem fair. When the details of their history are revealed in Episode 8, and the two men come to an understanding, it is certainly emotional, but not really "hold a grudge against a guy for decades and risk ruining my relationship with someone I care about" material, which is a bit deflating. Regardless, what it does do is add a wrinkle in Doc and Mel's father/daughter relationship, a wrinkle that eventually becomes a break and makes for the most compelling arc of the entire season. 

Why does it work so well? Because Virgin River has spent six seasons developing this relationship. Doc is the first person Mel meets in Virgin River. And while Mel and Jack are the romantic draw, Virgin River basically uses the enemies-to-lovers — or, let's call it enemies-to-family — trope here, to develop the dynamic between Mel and Doc. They hate each other when she first arrives to work for him. But by the end of the first season, he respects her enough to offer her a permanent position and put her name on the front of the clinic. By Season 2, he's helping her with her grief over her late husband. By the end of Season 5, after they deliver Charmaine's (Lauren Hammersley) babies, he's saying things like, "Sometimes when I'm working with you, I feel like a proud father," and telling Mel that he's lucky to have her in his life. This duo have been given room to grow into pseudo-father and daughter, and it's why their relationship feels so authentic. (It doesn't hurt that Tim Matheson and Alexandra Breckenridge have great on-screen chemistry, either.)

It's also why, when Mel yells at Doc that it's not his job to protect her because he isn't her father and Doc tells her, "You're not my daughter, you're just my nurse" in the back half of this season, it stings. It's a brutal fight between two characters who you know love each other, but also whom we, the audience, have come to care about — both individually and, more importantly, as a pair. When they make up in the following episode and acknowledge that when they first came into each other's lives, they lifted each other up out of dark places, it becomes one of the standout moments of the season. It's so moving and a real way to honor that relationship.

When you compare that to the big, emotional crescendo in Mel and Everett's relationship, when he almost dies and, from his hospital bed, tells a teary-eyed Mel that she isn't going to lose her father on her wedding day (it's technically a message from a dream version of Mel's mother; you get it), it doesn't hit as hard because there isn't enough emotional heft to their relationship just yet. There's still time to course-correct, what with the announcement of a Season 7 renewal, and let's hope they do. It's just a shame that Virgin River skipped over so many steps in a relationship where there is so much to mine, especially when we already have such a shining example of how fruitful and compelling a well-developed, grounded father-daughter relationship can be on this show.

Virgin River Season 6 is now streaming on Netflix.