Where Watch Northern Exposure

[Mandy Geise]

Beforethere was the Wire, or even HBO, there was Northern Exposure. Irecently started watching Northern Exposure again (sans certain songs onthe soundtrack because the bastards won't pay for the rights) partly torelive nostalgia, partly to see how this show had aged, but mostlybecause Northern Exposure is in many ways my favorite TV series, like,ever.

Having been spoilt by modern television, with their heterogenousstorylines, epic story arcs, and some of the finest acting talent on theplanet, it's remarkable how well Northern Exposure holds up. NorthernExposure was made in the era of the stand-alone episode TV series, wherestory arcs began and ended on the hour, and events only loosely referredto previous episodes. The demise of the stand-alone episodes and therise of the complex plotings of shows such as Lost or the Wire was notdue to the lack of ability of writers in the past but rather to the riseof the internet. Today, we have the internet to help us fill the gapswhen we miss an episode of Lost or 24. But back in the 80's, whenNorthern Exposure first aired, it would have been exceedingly difficultfor viewers to keep track of complicated story lines if they missed buta single episode. I missed the Twin Peaks train when it first airedbecause I missed the first three episodes, and everything I watched didnot make any sense.

I loved Northern Exposure for two reasons. The first reason is entirelyaccidental. I grew up in a country town Australia. Whilst, I grant you,there were many kids in my school who were more than satiated by theculture that a town of 40,000 people has to offer (not very much), I wasstraining to see the wider world. And since my family was poor, I couldonly do this through books and TV. The character of Joel Fleishman, anopionated New York Jew, lover of bagels and hot jewish girls, exiled tothe wilderness of Alaska through a misreading of his med-schoolscholarship contract, spoke to me in a way that no other TV characterever had. Here was a sophisticated city dweller (that would be I) stuckin the nether regions of civilisation. A man with tastes and desires outof sync with the gorgeous wilderness around him. This disconnection wassomething that I could empathize with. I've always wondered if it wasJoel Fleishman who taught me to appreciate the unique qualities ofopinionated intelllectual retro-glasses-wearing jewish girls.

I loved Northern Exposure because it gave me the only characters onAustralian TV that I could identify with: Joel Fleishman with hisoutsider looking in, but also the character of Ed, the outsider lookingout. Ed was probably closer to who I was at the time, the dreamy countryboy with visions of Hollywood and visions of movies to be made, burstingaround inside his skill.

The second reason I loved Northern Exposure was that there was morehumanity in Northern Exposure than any other TV that I can recollect.This was a series where a bunch of talented screenwriters was let loosewith writing about the human condition. There were episodes that dealtwith art, with death, with myth, with food, and even with religion. Insome ways it was the inverse of Friends, instead of a bunch ofhomogenous twenty-somethings mixing it up in claustrobic bookshop in themiddle of the largest metropolis in the world, Northern Exposure was acollection of wildly clashing eccentrics mixing it up in the vastwilderness of Alaska. By setting the series in a fictionalized Alaska ofwild open spaces, there was plenty of room for beautiful things tobubble up from the deep.

Unfortunately, Northern Exposure could not avoid jumping the shark, manytimes, in the last two seasons, as it descended into an incoherent mess,especially after Fleishman consumated his desire for the fetching MaggieO'Connell, and Rob Morrow, who played Felishman, left the show. It turnsout that you do need a jewish doctor to anchor the weirdness of a analaskan conclave.

Let me end with my favorite episode ever, "Kadish for Uncle Manny" fromseason four where Joel receives the news of the death of his belovedUncle Mannt. Joel is unmoored as the town gathers round to heal theirbeloved doctor. Joel is conflicted in how to deal with his mourning, ashe wrestles with eternal questions about life and death. The episodeends in the town hall, where Joel, surrounded by his people, decides toperforms an ancient Jewish ceremony for his uncle, and invites his newcommunity to pray with him. The last shot has the camera panning acrossthe town hall lingering over the faces of the citizens of Cicely, eachas different to each other as New York is to Cicely or Lismore, praying,each in the way they see fit, for their dear friend and doctor, JoelFleishman, to bravely carry the ancient burden of mourning.

CHRIS: Soapy once told me that the thing he loved most aboutcountry music was its sense of myth. There's heroes and villains, good and bad,right and wrong. The protagonist strolls into bar, which he sees as amicrocosm of the big picture. He contemplates his existence and he askshimself, 'who's that babe in the red dress?' All right. Well, you know the wayI see it, if you're here for four more years or four more weeks--you're hereright now. You know, and I think when you're somewhere you ought to be there,and because it's not about how long you stay in a place. It's about what you dowhile you're there. And when you go, is that place any better for you havingbeen there? Am I answering your question?.

In the pilot alone, they could be darting, distrustfullyanalytical (as when he arrives in the remote outback of Cicely, Alaska, havingbeen lied to about his presumed term of medical service in Anchorage, andimmediately scopes out the one-street downtown with its worn-out shop frontsand wandering moose); they expressed puzzlement (as in his first encounterswith Marilyn, the taciturn Native American who turned up at his officereception desk for work, despite never actually being hired); they expressedgreat fear (as town patriarch Maurice pulled a shotgun on him in a fishingboat); and they could be playful and sarcastic (as when he meets his newland-lady, the bush pilot Maggie, and immediately kicks off a screwballrelationship that would make Donald Ogden Stewart reach for his pen).

Debuting as an eight-episode CBS summer series on July 12, 1990,"Northern Exposure" immediately dropped viewers into a space thatfelt both alien and warmly inviting. "Exposure" could be called"The Sentimental Education of Joel Fleischman": a young doctor fromNew York (Rob Morrow) goes to Alaska to fulfill his medical school loanobligations (the state paid for his training), but instead of being based inAnchorage as promised, he is shipped to the small, quirky town of Cicely, oneof 845 residents living in the middle of nowhere. There, he encounterstownspeople who include Chris Stevens (John Corbett), an ex-con philosopher whois the sole DJ at KBHR, the town's sole radio station (centerpiece-by-defaultof the grandly-named "Minnifield Communications Network"); radiostation owner Maurice Minnifield (Barry Corbin), a wealthy, pompous, bigotedastronaut hero with dreams of turning Cicely into the Riviera of the northwest;Holling Vincoeur (John Cullum), a kindly63-year old bar owner, and Shelly Tambo (Cynthia Geary), his wide-eyed, 20-yearold ex-beauty queen paramour; Marilyn Whirlwind (Elaine Miles), whose ownsubtly expressive face acts as a kind of silent Greek chorus on Fleischman'smany missteps; and Ruth-Anne Miller (Peg Phillips), the 70-something shop owner who has seeneverything, yet somehow remains one of the program's least-cynical characters.

Most importantly, he meets two residents around whom his spiritualjourney will be based: Ed Chigliak (Darren E. Burrows), a young Native Americanfilmmaker and budding cinephile, and Maggie O'Connell (Janine Turner), theGrosse Pointe refugee whose relationship with Fleischman will form the backboneof the series. It is this triangle of interactions I want to use as a metaphorin what follows, because I think Joel, Ed, and Maggie each offer overlappingwindows on "Northern Exposure"'s role in a broader TV landscape, andwhy the program still resonates.

Joel looksout at his seemingly barren new home and initially fails to notice its rich,playful magic. Similarly, the notion of a summer replacement series as beinganything but a burn-off of a failed pilot, or episodes of an already-cancelledshow, was relatively new in 1990, and no one really expected "NorthernExposure" to be different. "I don't know whose idea it was to launchin the summer," Rob Morrow would recall to EntertainmentWeekly 20 years later. "I don't think anyone had any idea what theyhad on their hands." Despite solid ratings and strong reviews, it didn'tcontinue into the fall season, disappearing for six months while its creators,John Falsey and Joshua Brand, and production studio Universal negotiated withthe network for a larger budget. Somehow, its reputation only grew in itsabsence; in a 1991 piece for "Entertainment Weekly" (archived at theinvaluable fan site Moosechick Notes), writers Mark Harrisand Kelli Pryor quote Falsey's recounting of a screening of an episode atthe Los Angeles County Museum of Art:"It gave us a real jolt. For the first time, we heard 400 peopleresponding. It was incredibly refreshing."

Joel'sfish-out-of-water status made him theshow's creative emblem: for all his brusque insistence on his "NewYork" identity and his initial dislike of his new home, he's also drawn toits residents, its oddities, and its insatiable desire to flip its own script.The epigraph from Brand above captures the program's (and Joel's) need totransmogrify itself every week: as a "Jew doctor from New York" (toquote Maurice's description of him), Joel is "an attractive mystery,"as fascinatingly strange to the townies as they are to him, and "NorthernExposure" would use every stylistic and narrative trick it could as as away of expressing the need to bridge those cultural gaps.

The showwas an early example of a dramedy without a laugh track, juggling moods andrespecting its audience's ability to get the joke in a way that would helpcreate space for future comedy/drama hybrids like "The West Wing,""Parks and Recreation," "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and "Gilmore Girls" (whose small-townquirk, screwball-meets-melodrama tone, and character archetypes owe almosteverything to "Exposure"). Itwas also a show that respected its audience's intelligence, wisely ignoring"high/low"divisions of cultureand assuming viewers would appreciate references to both Voltaire and"Aliens," Walt Whitman and the Home Shopping Network (in that sense,the program's recurring fascination with show-tunes is not just another entrypoint for Joel's Manhattan-centric worldview, or a playful way to explore andtweak the homophobia of Broadway super-fan Maurice, but also a tip of the hatto an earlier art form's ability to encompass the whole eight-eighths ofAmerican popular life).

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