Virgin River's Upcoming Season 5 Already Fell Into Grey's Anatomy Trap
Sometimes there's just no need to ramp things up.
It looks like Netflix 's Virgin River fans might want to mentally prepare themselves for things to become way more intense than they are now. If you liked the show for being goofy and feel-good — well, time to get ready for some drama.
At least that's what Alexandra Breckenridge, who plays Mel Monroe in the show, has indicated when speaking to New Beauty. With season 5 getting a new showrunner, Patrick Sean Smith, things are about to get different.
"I think this season has started out well and we're getting into a few episodes soon that are pretty heavy," says Breckenridge. "They're really intense and I think that they're some of the best episodes we've ever done. I think that there's a high sense of drama that starts to come up this season that it's going to leave people on the edge of their seats."
But do people actually want to be left on the edge of their seats? Virgin River has mostly been a show to relax to, not to get all hyped up and dramatic over yet another heartbreak or a cliffhanger. Now that the show is apparently changing course, some fans are preemptively concerned that it might repeat the mistake of... Grey's Anatomy.
If you are an old-school fan of Shonda Rhimes' medical drama, you remember that it was once a feel-good show just like Virgin River has been for four seasons. However, after the series has rebranded into a full-scale drama only to add on a layer of social justice later, many fans have abandoned the series because it "felt like a teen drama" and was simply too much.
"Watch Grey's Anatomy they said, it's good they said," Twitter user QueenBekz complained. "No one told me it's the biggest [...] emotional rollercoaster in life and I'd be bawling big eye water every [...] episode."
Virgin River might be going for the same emotional rollercoaster strategy — and it's not clear whether fans will enjoy that.
Virgin River was renewed for fourth and fifth season in September 2021. Season 4 has already premiered on Netflix on July 20, 2022, while the premiere date for the fifth season is yet to be scheduled.