I don’t know what I thought Virgin River was going to be like, but I did not expect to walk in to a funeral. (Yes, I walked in to the Florida Room exactly at the start of Lilly’s funeral. Don’t scream at me, Virgin River fans.) After my mother and sister quickly explained that the dead body wasn’t anyone super close to the protagonist — again, yell at them, VR fans, if you disagree! — I proceeded to watch Tim Matheson pay homage to a character I had never met. I thought that this was weirdly bleak for a show that seemed to promise escapist romance, but hey, death is a part of life…

Not knowing much about Virgin River at this point, I was nonetheless not surprised that the Virgin River lady, whom I have since learned is named Mel, stole the show at someone else’s funeral. When the daughter of the dead body struggled to make it through a eulogy, Mel obviously is called upon to head to the pulpit for moral support/monologue duty. I thought this was kind of funny and I also thought that Mel and Tara, the blubbering griever, looked like sisters. My own sister told me they were not.

Between the funeral and the reception, Virgin River cut to the sickbed of a beautiful woman who also looks like she could be the Virgin River lady’s sister. I gathered she was ill because she’s a) not at the funeral and b) in bed wearing sweats. In fact, I really liked her star-studded sweatshirt and found myself focusing more on it than the crazy dramatic conversation that ensues when a hot, blue-eyed, bearded man arrived. She has to know he’s not a dealer and he didn’t shoot someone! What sounded to me, out of context, like the start of a great I Think You Should Leave sketch, soon turns into this dude’s declaration of love. We also learn that sick lady was once a public defender and that’s why she has no faith in humanity, which is, again, more bleak than I’d expect from a show called Virgin River!

Even bleaker? I only learned in prepping for this piece that this woman, named Brie, like both the cheese and the Larson, suffered a miscarriage at the start of the episode! In the same episode that they bury someone!!

Less bleak? Learning that Brie is someone’s sister! But not Virgin River lady. Her beau’s. I feel mildly vindicated by this and wish my own sister had confirmed this to me. She gave me no context for this scene and instead was scrolling through Facebook on her phone.

Next there was a scene where Jack, the hottie played by Britney Spear’s boyfriend in the “Toxic” video, brings a plate of food to Mel. He makes a fuss about who made the food and how she’s probably hungry. She sniffs the food and…immediately sets the plate down. At no point during the following scene does she nibble on charcuterie or tear into some homemade grub.

It’s a small thing, but it made me laugh, mostly because I know the reason Virgin River lady doesn’t eat onscreen is probably to avoid continuity gaffes in coverage shots. If an actor takes a bite of anything in a shot, they have to eat the exact same thing in every subsequent take, from all angles the camera is capturing. It’s called coverage and it’s why actors play with their food in shows and films more than they chow down.

That said, I have not seen as hilarious an example as this: a woman sniffing a plate and then forgetting it all together. Coverage!

It was at this point that I remarked that there were a lot of white people on Virgin River and, once more, they all looked like they were related, in a beautiful inbred kind of a way. The room chuckled softer than they should have for such a superb point.

I know I keep banging this drum, but the white people on this show, aka most of the people, all look like they emerged from the same Vancouver-based gene pool. Case in point: these two little lovebirds who look like twins to me. (My mom believes the girl looks like Tara Lipinski. Do what you want with that information.) As these two young lovers get into a spat over the fact that he joined the Marines without telling her — a problem I have never experienced in the NYC dating scene — I couldn’t help think that they super duper look like an incest couple. Okay. That’s that.

So at this point, my mother and sister started to join in with the opinionated commentary, mostly about this beautiful woman who is apparently pregnant with one man’s twins and engaged to another man. Maybe it was the bottle of Sauv Blanc I had drunk by my sister’s pool or perhaps my mother and sister are not great TV recappers, but they led me to believe Tim Matheson’s character was the father. Wikipedia tells me it is Jack, the hot, rustic man who is in love with Virgin River lady Mel. Which simultaneously makes more sense and amps up the drama.

What doesn’t make sense is apparently how little this woman is showing her pregnancy? My mom and sister went back and forth puzzling out how far she ought to be along at this point. (Her pregnancy was revealed at the end of Virgin River Season 1 and this is the end of Virgin River Season 3.) So unless pregnancies work differently in Virgin River, or time moves slower, she should be showing. I guess?

A non-white person finally gets lines! My family tells me this is Preacher (Colin Lawrence).

“Oh, so he’s the town priest?” I asked.

“No, they just call him that.”

I am confused, but pleased that someone appears to be from a different genetic pool in this town.

After the funeral, Mel visits Jack’s bar, cleverly named “Jack’s Bar,” and the two have an all too mature conversation about their breakup. They reveal that they both love each other and kiss.

I guess this kiss is meant to be a big deal? A grand gesture of romance and passion? But not knowing anything about this couple meant that this kiss just looked really choreographed to me. We’re a far distance away from Simon telling he burns for her on Bridgerton here in Virgin River. Just saying.

I like to think that television has evolved over time. It’s shed its bad habits and clunky storytelling tropes. Streaming has opened the door for this change, no? Virgin River answers a resounding NO.

The penultimate episode of the season, where one woman has a miscarriage and another is buried, ends with a cop knocking on the door of Tim Matheson’s house and explaining that there’s been an accident. Even before this happened, my mother and sister heard that wife Hope was out driving and they predicted — much as I foretold the arrival of Kang in Loki — that she would get into an accident.

“Oh, is she dead?” “Yup.” “Told you.” That was the dispassionate chorus of commentary my mother and sister gave to this scene.

And that was my experience losing my Virgin River virginity. It was fine. A little boring and more bleak than I imagined. I guess I can see why people like it. You know, it’s a simple soap opera about beautiful people who all look alike getting pregnant, having miscarriages, and never showing pregnancies on screen. It’s classic TV drama wrapped up in a wholesome aesthetic.

Do I want to watch more Virgin River? Not especially, but I think I will have to if I find myself once again visiting family whenever Virgin River Season 4 premieres on Netflix…