Huzzah! You could almost hear the applause from moms across the world when Virgin River Season 7 was announced. Yes, it’s twee, but Netflix’s winning format destroys one recurring critique – “it’s too far-fetched.”
If you had to guess which show Netflix would be breaking records with, it probably wouldn’t be Virgin River. Even so, the cozy small-town drama has become the streaming service’s longest-running original series thanks to Season 7 getting the green light.
“But who is even watching this?” I hear you ask. The answer is almost every woman over 45, and sometimes their daughters (yes, this comes from personal experience). It’s a simple premise – a big-city woman falls prey to personal tragedy and takes off to a picturesque remote town for a new start. Of course, while she’s there, she meets a handsome yet troubled love interest.
Over the course of six seasons, this ‘simple premise’ has been plagued by one critique… why does it feel so much like a soap opera? Back in Season 1, we had good old-fashioned boy-meets-girl romance in a beautiful setting! We had formulaic drama we could follow, goddammit.
Now, in Virgin River, anything nonsensical goes. Resident Charmaine was infamously pregnant for five whole seasons before she popped two twins out. The baby daddy, Calvin, came back from the dead in Episode 10. At the same time, Brady has got stuck in the middle of a drug cartel operating in the area.
According to creators, all six seasons of Virgin River don’t even account for a year in real-time, which frankly boggles the mind beyond belief. However, Season 7 going ahead only means one thing in my eyes – fans don’t just enjoy a bit of far-fetched soap drama: they thrive on it.
It doesn’t matter what side of the pond you grew up on, you are bound to be familiar with a bit of tacky telly. A slap heard across the world in a telenovela, Susan Lucci somehow hardly aging in All My Children, Kat Slater telling June Whitfield – who for some reason guest starred as a nun – how much of slag she’s become over 20 years.
Like it or not, soap opera is a part of all of us. It’s often an integral introduction to how we understand stories on TV, and it’s frankly the only format left where anything can be possible on the small screen. No format, no structure, no rules. As long as there’s drama and people are tuning in, nobody cares.
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We roughly know where Virgin River Season 6 is heading – down a slightly tamer path with Mel and Jack’s wedding – but Season 7 is where things could get really exciting. Sure, the binge-worthy TV show could follow the footsteps of Robyn Carr’s original novel series, but it stopped playing by the book (sorry) long ago.
The result? Mel and Jack could start a new business on the moon if they wanted to. All characters could suddenly start speaking Spanish, or go full Gleek and dedicate a random episode entirely to musical theatre. Hell, they could even try the Riverdale method and introduce time travel and supernatural powers.
Okay, some of these things go far beyond the realm of typical soap dynamics, but the point remains. The level of soapiness Virgin River has hit is working, regardless of a few disgruntled remarks from those preferring what they had back in the day (who doesn’t?). This issue isn’t these types of shows, but us.
In the privacy of our living rooms, we’re having the time of our lives with the most ridiculous plot. Charmaine’s pregnancy was something you couldn’t tear your eyes away from, both because it was insanely fun to guess when she might pop but a thing of pure disbelief that she hadn’t had her own Alien moment. We were sideswiped by Calvin’s return, and are now being left on tenterhooks with Preacher’s upcoming trial.
This is all very difficult to admit in public when enjoying something so superficial (although I’d argue it’s not under the face of it) is extremely uncool. If life was like the Black Mirror episode ‘Nosedive,’ people would rate us 1 star for enjoying this sort of drivel. So what do we do? Jump on the hater train, and get in our own heads too much about the meaning of television.
Not only is Season 7 a chance for the Virgin River story to get to the next level, it’s a chance for us to apologize to the Netflix Gods, give in, and enjoy the madness. The show is breaking records for a reason, so let’s make sure we see it.
Virgin River Season 6 hits the streaming service on December 19. A release date for Season 7 has yet to be announced. In the meantime, find out more about Season 6 storylines, if there will be a time jump, and more shows to watch if you like Virgin River.