On Secrets

  

 I’ve been watching the Netflix series Virgin River. I have been learning. 

     Each of the characters in Virgin River has a secret, and the series slowly, very slowly, discovers each secret. The steady revelation of each character’s secrets is what keeps me watching. I want to know what is going on, and though I think I know what the identity is of each of the secrets, I continue to watch to discover that I am correct. 

     Virgin River, like Cecily, Alaska in the show Northern Exposure, is a small secluded town to which it would seem people have come to get away from their complicated lives in the City. These towns are populated by a relative assortment of eccentrics. In Cecily I am attracted to the characters by their eccentricities, but in Virgin River it is their secret that makes the characters eccentric.  I suppose that the characters of Virgin River are emblematic of the rest of us who walk about protecting our secrets from being discovered by others. Not living isolated as in some fish bowl our eccentricities are easily hidden whereas the isolation away from the complexity of city life allows the secrets in Virgin River to be revealed unadulterated.. The rest of us possess too many avenues for distraction that permits us to protect our secrets from ever being noticed by others. Too many paths to swim out of view. 

     Of the inhabitants of Virgin River we learn: of Mel, the nurse-practitioner has come to Virgin River running away from the still-born death of her baby and what I suspect (yet) will be either the ensuing infidelity or abandonment of her husband; of Jack, who owns Jack’s Bar (of course) and is a marine veteran wounded several times in Iraq, who hides his abuse of alcohol and who suffers post-traumatic stress syndrome exacerbated by a guilt he incurred from his experience in the war. Of Hope, the town’s mayor, who was once married to the curmudgeon doctor, Vernon, who we discover had a dalliance twenty years ago with the mother of Jack’s girlfriend. That affair ended Hope and Vernon’s marriage though we learn she has kept the final divorce papers in her desk drawer for the past twenty years. We’ll wait to see where this might lead.  Of Paige, who operates the town bakery out of a food truck, and had come to Virgin River running away from something: we learn that her name is not actually Paige and we discover that she is coloring her son’s hair to disguise his identity. When her son wonders when they can stop the disguise, Paige answers, “When we are safe.” Of Lili who has left her baby on the doctor’s porch and the discovery of her motherhood organized the first few episodes.

     The particular eccentricities of the characters drives the continuance of interest in the series as each of the secrets is brought to light as a result of their eccentricities. I think it is the idea of secrets that intrigues rather than the particular secrets themselves: once we become aware of what drives each episodes then we simply await the event that will cause the revelation of the secret. The characters have little depth outside of their secrets; it is their secret that gives them depth and there is no complexity to the character outside of their secret.

     Maybe I am a slow learner. I wonder, however, if the discovery of secrets isn’t what drives so many plots: I think of Crime and Punishment, and Ulysses, Ethan Frome, and Catch-22. Pride and Prejudice. Oedipus Rex, Twelfth Night andOthello. Felix Holt, The Radical. What about Lord Jim, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights? I know I am oversimplifying: the characters in these novels are complex and not defined by their secret. Rather, their secret arises from their characters! I turn to Hamlet. When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern try to discover Hamlet’s secret he accuses, “You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass.” Hamlet is more complex than this one secret and that he keeps this secret stems from his complexity. I think as well of the novels of Henry James at the center of which are secrets but again, it is not the secret that is of interest but what the secret reveals about character. The Golden Bowl or The Ambassadors, for example. In Virgin River, the character is more complex than the secret. And when all the secrets are revealed, well, then I will have no more interest in the show. But of the novels and plays I have listed I would read over and over again and never suffer fatigue or boredom.