Spoilers for Virgin River season 7 ahead.
Well, I still don't think I've got my head around the Virgin River season 7 finale on Netflix.
If Brady (Ben Hollingsworth) being left for dead in a motorcycle accident and Marley's (Rachel Drance) baby having a congenital heart defect wasn't bad enough, the town's leading couple, Doc (Tim Matheson) and Hope (Annette O'Toole) are on the rocks.
It's all because of Doc's season 7 war against Grace Valley Hospital, a nearby city medical center that wants to take over Doc's clinic. Even worse, they've been trying to do so by suspending Doc's medical license, investigating his life-saving season 6 procedure for medical misconduct.
Although Doc got his license back (yay), episode 10 threw a spanner in the works. Both Doc and Grace Valley's Dr. Hayes (Kaj-Erik Eriksen) work together to diagnose Marley's baby for Mel and Jack's sake, which makes Doc suggest a potential partnership between the two.
When Hope discovers that her entire campaign against Grace Valley has come to nothing, she flips, kicking Doc out of the house in the process. But does Doc really think a partnership would work, or was he acting on emotion in the heat of the moment?
I put the finale's shock U-turn to Matheson... and even he thinks the move could be a 'mistake' in the long run.
'He's considering all ways to try and do the best by his patients'
"I agree with you," Matheson tells me when I explain that I didn't buy Doc's certainty in a partnership. "You feel that Grace Valley are the bad guys. That's why he got away from Seattle to get to Virgin River in the first place, to get away from the bureaucracy and the small mindedness of people who run for profit hospitals instead of taking care of the patients.
"That's why he wanted to come to a place like Virgin River, where he could deal face to face with people, listen to them, look at them and see how best he could help. But when Mel came into the practice and it evolved and grew, I think with Doc, having some of the facilities and the money that Grace Valley has could be better for his patients than just the clinic alone.
"I think it may be a mistake," he continues. "But I think it's something he's considering because of the way he's grown through his relationship with Mel. Modernizing his clinic has been a good thing, and maybe taking another step like that isn't bad. You can always take it back."
The man makes a good point. We hardly recognize who he's become because of Mel, and that's been for the better. Doc has opened his heart and mind, and in pure great-grandpa mode, anything might feel possible.
But where does this leave his relationship with Hope, and can they find their way back to each other?
"I think it's just a natural evolution, of their relationship," Matheson adds about the episode 10 fight. "We'll see where it goes and how it lands. That's the beauty of the drama of it — we're the senior couple in the show, so it's exciting to see that even an older pair have to deal with the ups and downs of any any relationship."
Hopefully there aren't too many downs in the already confirmed Virgin River season 8, because I need them back together, stat.
