This post contains spoilers for Virgin River season 5 episode 5, Trial by fire.
The Grace Valley wildfires have reached Virgin River and while Brie is testifying in Sacramento, the town is slowly evacuating.
But while Jack, Preacher, Hope, Doc and the others have a lot on their plate, Mel faces double the amount of tragedy.
Let’s unpack the events of Trial by fire, this new episode of Virgin River season 5...
A bad thing never comes alone
Coming back from their camping trip, Mel and Jack are getting ready to face the catastrophe that is heading for Virgin River. He explains it isn’t the first time wildfires threaten the town, but it has never come this close. As he plans on heading for the bar, which Hope has designated as central command in her Fire Readiness Plan, he drops off Mel at the clinic as she knows Doc and Cameron will need all the help they can get on a day like this.
Over at the bar, Hope is distressed that Nick is not following her plan and he undermines her in front of the fire chief while accepting to have Preacher lead the volunteer’s effort. Listening to Hope more than Nick is, Preacher sends people to check on Virgin River’s most vulnerable residents, and Hope asks Denny and Lizzie to go tell Bert to evacuate.
At the clinic, things are as busy as Mel expected. When he drops her off, Jack is taken aside by Doc who asks him to go convince the people at the drug camp to evacuate and Jack enlists the help of Brady, who knows them, to do so. Soon after, Doc and Cameron are called on the field to help two injured firefighters and Mel keeps looking after the clinic’s patients with Muriel’s assistance.
When she takes a bathroom break, Mel realizes something is wrong with her pregnancy. She discreetly gives herself a sonogram and her worst fears are confirmed: she can no longer hear her baby’s heartbeat. Understanding she is having a miscarriage, Mel only has seconds to let out her tears before she forces herself to keep it together for the sake of her patients. Given the situation, she has no other choice but to focus on the job, and pours all of her strength in it, so she shows Muriel how to give patients oxygen and calls Ava to tell her to bring baby Chloe to the clinic because she is worried about the smoke.
Caught in the blaze
While Mel is going through all this, Jack arrives at the camp with Brady and they start to get people to evacuate. However a young mother cannot find her daughter so Brady decides to go look for the lost girl and Jack joins him. Meanwhile at the bar, Preacher, who heard the report about the injured firefighters and is worried one of them is Kaia, confides in Hope and tells her how he has caught feelings for the female firefighter.
Kaia is not the one who is in danger however, but her colleague Jay has been impaled by a piece of wood in his leg and he needs Doc and Cameron’s help. They do their best to patch him up in the field before taking him back to the clinic.
In the midst of the fire, Denny and Lizzie are making their way to Bert when they notice Lydie is still packing things in her car when she should have already been at the bar long ago. The older woman is worried about losing family mementos in the fire but Lizzie manages to convince her to go.
As Lydie gets to safety, Denny and Lizzie keep trying to reach Bert’s but they get caught in the blaze when a tree falls across the road, blocking their path. At the bar, Hope worries that she might have put them in danger by sending them to Bert’s, and Nick does nothing to make her feel better when he tells her this is why she isn’t fit to be mayor.
Eventually, after running around smoke and burning trees for a bit, Brady and Jack find young Hazel and get her back to her mom. That’s when Jack gets a text from Mel warning him that she’s gone to Ava’s farm to check on her as the latter has not made it to the clinic yet.
Speaking up
While all of this is going down in Virgin River, Brie is in Sacramento to testify in the trial against Don. She is staying with her mother, who wants to talk to her about her life but can be clumsy in her word choices. Holding onto Brady’s dog tags to find strength, Brie goes to court ready for a fight. Indeed, after she tells the story of what Don did to her, she is met by the defense attorney’s counter argument which tries to paint her as a liar.
During recess, Brie runs into Mike at the courthouse, and seeing him helps her feel a bit better. When court gets back in session, Brie stands up to the defense attorney’s argument and gives a nice speech about heroism, while images of what is going on in Virgin River illustrate her words. We see Mel driving to Ava’s. We see Doc and Cameron helping Jay. We see Denny and Lizzie driving while everything around them is burning.
After the trial, Brie is happy to see Mike stuck around for her, but her relief is short-lived when she receives a phone call alerting her of what’s happening in Virgin River. Indeed, things are still rather dicey there as Jay starts coding on Doc’s table, and as Mel, arriving at Lilly’s farmhouse that has caught on fire, rushes inside to help a screaming Chloe.
Will Denny and Lizzie be okay? What about Mel, Ava and Chloe? Can Virgin River make it out of this wildfire unscathed?
All episodes of Virgin River season 5, Part 1, are now available to stream on Netflix, so tune in to the next one to find out.
