The Inexplicable Wonder of Northern Exposure: Episode 7, A Kodiak Moment

When I wrote about Episode 6, I lamented that all the storylines were disconnected—a bunch of people doing separate things. And that left the episode feeling empty and dull. Episode 7 takes the same approach, but winds up with an entirely different result. “A Kodiak Moment” is sweet and soulful — it seems as though the writers were finally getting a true sense of the characters, and allowing that to shine through.

Something about this earnest shot of Ed sums up who he is wholly.

This is obvious, visually: Episode 7 features lots of scenes and shots that give a real sense of who these people are. And it pairs up characters in ways that will remain constant throughout the show.

The stories: Joel and Maggie teach a prepared childbirth class in the tiny, remote town of Boswell. Ed, Holling and Shelly go hunting Jessie the Bear (who once mauled Holling). The death of his brother leaves Maurice facing his own mortality—and asking Chris to be his son, so that he will have an heir.

There is none of the surreal, magical realism that defines some episodes. Even the dialogue has been simplified, relying on strong acting and understated emotion or absurdity rather than drawn-out monologues.

Notable exchanges include Joel asking Marilyn about Boswell:

Joel: “Where's Boswell?”

Marilyn: “Take Highway 90. Go past the saw mill. Go past the sun tan parlor …”

Joel, interrupting: How long?

Mariyln: Six hours, give or take.

The only thing worse than flying is a 12-hour round-trip drive.

Props to the prop department, for proper placement of the prop plane.

Ed and Shelly both accompany Holling on his quest to kill Jessie. Shelly as his determined, fatalistic and loving partner: afraid he will this time be killed by the monster bear. Ed acts as a porter and driver, retelling the story and taking care of equipment.

Shelly: Holling, I know what you’re going to say — it’s dangerous and no place for a woman. But I’m coming with you.

Holling: Shelly, you can’t.

Shelly: I laid up all night thinking and the way I see it, you’re going out there and there’s a chance you wont come back.

Holling: I’ll be back.

Shelly: Maybe. But Jessie almost killed you before. I can’t let you just drive off into the sunset.

Holling: It’s going to be rough.

Shelly: I know that. But this may be one of the last moments of your life, Holling.

Except Shelly and Holling never leave the tent—they spend the days having sex and enjoying camping while Ed reads comic books around the campfire. Yet still, Shelly describes it as “the most exciting thing I’ve ever done.”

Maurice, the man who wants to pave Alaska and fill it with shopping malls, is revealed to have a deeply senstitive and vulnerable side. It is a genuine bit of character development, and one Northern Exposure writers return to from time to time.

“Chris, can you call me ‘Dad?’”

For all his bluster and wealth (and relative power), Maurice is unconsciously afraid of a changing world. We see that in his casual bigotry, but here he is forced to confront it through the loss of a family member—and his ridiculous attempts to replace that role through Chris.

Quintessential Maurice. The American flag and NASA hat are nifty reminders that he stands in for the unconsciousness of the American psyche.

Needless to say, it is not a good fit.

“The Stevensons are quitters. We quit everything. School, work—you name it. The only thing we don’t quit is drinking.” … “You consider yourself grounded!”

But for subtle character development, everyone largely winds up where they started. As is almost always the case — both in Cicely, Alaska, and in real life.

Joel and Maggie have a genuine moment. They deliver a baby together, and it briefly washes away their antagonism. Rebirth of a relationship? Take this exchange, from the flight back from Boswell (planes always make Joel nervous):

Maggie: Something just isn’t right, Fleischman.

Joel, panicking: Where?! What?!

Maggie: No, Fleischman, the plane is fine.

Joel: So what’s wrong?

Maggie: We had a baby today.

Joel: Couldn’t have done it without you, O’Connell. You came here to teach these people how to floss, but you did ok.

Maggie: Did I?

Joel: You were splendid.

The “floss” comment, references the “personal hygeine” class Joel thought he was going to teach in Boswell—only to be confronted by a roomful of pregnant couples. A bit of a softball, but again, the beauty is in the delivery:

Maggie: I don’t know anything about hygeine.

Joel: I’m not going to touch that one.

In the end, Jessie the Bear moves on. Maurice tries to accept his mortality, but fails. Joel and Maggie find a moment of peace.

All’s well that ends well, though the writers leave us with a final scene between Joel and a somber Maurice:

Maurice: The Minnifield empire will not bear fruit in one man’s lifetime.

Joel: Yeah, I hear it didn’t work out with you and Chris. I’m sorry. … Maybe you can start a trust. The Minnifield Foundation. It worked for the Rockefellers. The Gettys.

Maurice: No, I’ve come up with something else.

Joel: Really? What’s that?

Maurice: I’ve decided to live forever.

An excellent Episode 7.

Northern Exposure: An efficient, well-made, visually-appealing but soulless Episode 6

LOVE this shot: Chris and Maurice face off in an homage to Indiana Jones, but the background shows clearly we’re still in Cicely.

Episode 6, “Sex, Lies and Ed's Tapes,” builds on the visual artistry of Episode 5’s dream sequences. But it is also a very boring episode.

An unnecessary caveat: I am a huge fan of Northern Exposure. I wouldn’t be rewatching it, otherwise. But more than just rewatching to enjoy, I’m interested in figuring out what made the show so great. These episode reviews are my honest reactions, and they are not always positive.

There is nothing wrong but very little right in this episode.

A main feature is Ed visualing scenes from Cicely as popular movies: Chris and Maurice fight, a la Indiana Jones. Joel and Chris walking in New York City, an ode to Midnight Cowboy.

“I’m walking here!”

The upshot is that Ed is working on a film script but has writer’s block—he is stuck thinking about Hollywood blockbusters rather than able to write in his own style. Maurice gets in the best line of the episode:

“Writer's block my diddley. Give a stud a gun and a car, throw in a good-looking woman, then you've got yourself a movie. Grope and kill, grope and kill. Pretty soon they'll be naming overstuffed sandwiches for you down in the Lower-48.”

So what actually happens in episode 1.6?

We find out Shelly is not pregnant, but IS still married to her former boyfriend Wayne, pushing Holling to break up with her until they are divorced. Marilyn enters a dance contest. Rick discovers a possible tumor, leading him to fear Maggie’s history of dying boyfriends has come to haunt him as well.

The two don’t actually get divorced until Season 3, though of course Holling and Shelly reconcile. Nice shot.

The problem with this episode is that all of these things happen in isolation.

The best television writing ties together its major and minor storylines, but these all appear to happen in separate universes. Rick’s tumor is benign, but it has no impact on anything else and he simply vanishes from the episode. Marilyn dances, but the scene just floats there. Holling reconciles with Shelly in a wonderful dialogue exchange that further highlights the brilliance of actor John Cullum—yet still, nothing happens. Shelly wont actually divorce Wayne for anoher two seasons.

Perhaps the strangest thing about Episode 6 is that Joel is presented as … likeable. Clearly, something is amiss.

In the end, Ed sits down and begins to write his movie (titled, “My Movie.”) Joel, with an assist from Woody Allen, helps him understand he can only write his own story, not anyone else’s. Which seems like a good lesson for everyone—Northern Exposure writers included.

This is one of those episodes where nothing is really wrong, but it could just as easily have been any other television show with any other characters.

All problems are solved with breakfast.

Northern Exposure: Episode 5, 'Russian Flu,' great dream sequence & dialogue but an uneven finish

I used to have dense and detailed dreams. Sometimes they seemed meaningful and other times they were more like random brain farts. But most nights I would lie down to sleep and wake up to fleeting images and ideas that I then turned into poems and stories.

And then, they were gone. For years I slept without a hint of nightly brain activity.

Now, the dreams are back. If I had to guess, I'd say their return is tied to my meditation and work on consciousness expansion. Whatever the reason, I welcome the dreams. They appear almost every night, and almost always feel meaningful and deeply symbolic.

Which leads us to Northern Exposure's Episode 5, which is very good until it isn't. “Russian Flu" highlights some of what made the series exceptional, and introduces the surreal dream sequences that would become a highlight of the show.

Here's the plot in a nutshell: Joel's fiance Elaine comes to visit him in Cicely after he's been living there two months. Just as she arrives, the town is struck with a flu epidemic that keeps them apart and eventually gets them both sick.

With modern medicine unable to bring any comfort, Joel's receptionist Marilyn gives the people an tribal cure that eliminates the flu in short order. Joel and Elaine get to enjoy a final few hours together, before she returns to New York.

The episode's dialogue highlight is a town meeting where Joel tries to calm fears about the health epidemic and explains that flus are often named for their point of origin: the Shanghai Flu, the Hong Kong Flu, the Russian Flu.

Ruth Ann: So it could be Russian flu?

Joel: Certainly.

Ruth Ann: I never did trust Gorbachev.

Maurice: We know that Glasnost is just a big crock, anyway.

Joel: Wait a second, one thing has nothing to do with the other.

Man: Perestroika is a total failure, too!

Maurice: Yeah, the whole commie system is bankrupt!

It devolves--hilariously--from there, hilighting both the town's paranoia and social awareness.

Woman: Pretty sad when the Soviet's only hope for world domination is to send a flock of sick birds across the Bering Strait.

Joel: Don't be ridiculous, this is not a political conspiracy.

Man: That's easy for you to say.

Joel: What's that supposed to mean?

Woman: It means your grandfather was probably a Trotskyite.

Woman: And your parents marched in candlelight vigils for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Genius. Amazing writing. Also, A+ use of extras in the meeting.

As the town's flu subsides, Elaine comes down with it. Joel turns to the Native American cure, which involves covering her body in a brown substance that smells like moose dung. The two fall asleep, giving us the show's first dream sequence. And it is excellent.

Joel is back in New York City, with Cicely residents showing up in random spots. Chris is filling in for Larry King. Holling is a doorman. Ed operates the building's elevator. Shelley is a "call girl" (who practices safe sex--nice little PSA the writers got in there).

Importantly, in the dream Elaine is Joel's sister and Maggie is his wife.

When Joel wakes up, Elaine is healthy but their relationship is not. That's basically the episode. However, it runs another seven minutes or so and gets WEIRD (and not in a good way).

Holling takes Joel and Elaine on a nature trek and it plays like a nonsensical dream sequence with dialogue and references that are unmoored. I've watched this episode a half dozen times over the years and the last seven minutes have never made any sense. It feels like a chunk of the script wound up on the cutting room floor or was never filmed at all.

The episode, early on, also features Joel doing voice-over exposition--the only time I can recall the show going this lazy route.

So Episode 5, "Russian Flu," is uneven. There are about 35 minutes where it features excellent writing and a tight plot. But it has flaws, and is marred by the strange finish.

If you have any idea what the hell is going on here, please comment.

Lentil Soup and Body Dissociation: I saw an animal in me

Library catalog card, oil pastels. Click to purchase.

Meditation advice often focuses on observing your thoughts as things separate from yourself. The idea is to cease identifying with your thoughts, and eventually to stop identifying with your mind and body.

The essential, fundamental You, is an eternal presence behind your mind.

I don’t claim much success in this realm, just for the record. But last week I had a completely new experience.

I was stress-eating lentil soup while getting ready for a work-related conference call. I was eating quickly, not paying much attention to the action or my body. And … I kind of missed my mouth with the spoon.

I don’t really know what happened: I didn’t spill the soup, but there was some kind of hitch. And instead of bringing the spoon to my mouth, my mouth went after the spoon. And in that moment—which lasted just a second, no longer—I dissociated from my body.

For that brief, brief moment, I observed my body eat the soup. I saw it jerk towards the soup like a wild animal. I saw that it was totally unconscious, and I now believe that it ate from a fear of scarcity.

There’s not much more to describe. And as I’ve thought and pondered and told people this story, the memory has become a bit muddled. A part of me now wonders … did that really happen? What was that?

In that brief of moment I observed my body as something entirely separate from Me, and I saw it eat like a wild animal.

If wild animals ate lentil soup.

Rewatching Northern Exposure: Episode 1.4, the Beginnings of Different

My own cabin—in the New York Fingerlakes, not Cicely, Alaska.

It’s been a mild winter so far, here in upstate New York. But just as I sat down to re-watch Episode 4 of Northern Exposure we got smacked with a solid storm. Single-digit temps, a foot of snow and most of Trumansburg shut down to dig out.

I’ve been running the wood stove flat out, and struggling to keep snow off the solar panels. Off-grid living is wonderful, but it can also be difficult. A winter-rewatch of Northern Exposure was supposed to bring a little bit of solidarity.

Yet Episode 4 is one of those warm-weather episodes and opens with Joel playing golf in a t-shirt. So much for solidarity. Ah well. … Let’s jump into “Dreams and Schemes and Putting Greens.”

After the golf-related opening sequence, we get into the main thrust of this episode: A pair of Japanese investors are visiting Maurice and are considering parterning with him on the development of a major resort in Cicely. Joel wants in on the deal, offering to help wine-and-dine them, and work as the property’s part-time physician, in exchange for “a reduction of my sentence.”

The writers are continuing with the idea that episodes will focus on Joel’s efforts to leave Cicely as soon as possible. There is also a second story, and this one is given equal weight: Shelley is pregnant, and Holling has proposed. So Cicely will get a wedding, with Joel and Maggie as the maid of honor and best man—again putting them in close contact.

With one Japanese businessman translating for the other, we get to see Maurice’s racism in full bloom. And again, the show struggles with any sort of contrast, rebuke or acknowledgement.

Maurice: “I’ve got to hand it to you people. 45 years ago we bombed you into a pulp. Now, you practically own the whole Pacific Rim.”

At the same time, Holling vanishes and leaves Shelley waiting at the alter.

A minor arc is introduced: Maurice, who originally brought Shelley to Cicely after she won a beauty pagent he judged (she was crowned Miss Northwest Passage), still pines for her despite the fact that she loves the much-older Holling. He refuses to attend the wedding.

While Episode #4 is a marked improvement over #3, structurally it isn’t anywhere near the tight masterpiece of #2. Rather than three acts, this is essentially a tale told in two. Conflict resolution happens quickly, and without the seamless theme integration that marked the show’s very best writing.

Least-interesting: Maurice’s resort deal falls through. No real reason is given, though it turns out that both businessmen speak English. Perhaps the underlying idea is that Maurice’s racism is to fault, but it’s not explicit.

Maurice also agrees to sing at Shelley and Holling’s wedding, a sign that he is trying to put aside his own feelings for her (and no, he can’t really sing; it’s kind of a throwaway joke—I don’t recall him ever singing again during the show’s five seasons).

Chris, ordained thru an ad in the back of Rolling Stone, is officiating the wedding and gets the best line of the episode: “It’s ocassions like these, that my thoughts turn to marriage.”

All of this would set Episode 4 up to be fairly mediocre—but in the end we do see a glimmer of what made Northern Exposure exceptional. Holling reveals he is terrified of marriage because of the longevity in his family. He expects to live to around 100, and doesn’t want to do that without Shelley if she should pass away first (and the Vincour men have never remarried).

Of course, Shelley is 18 and Holling is 63, and therein lies the joke (or at least, one of them). The age difference between Shelley and Holling is frequent tool in Northern Exposure, but in this episode the writers go a step farther. In front of the entire town, Holling pulls Shelley away from their second attempt at a wedding. .

Shelley: “You promised! No backs-ies. You crossed your heart and you hoped to die!”

Holling: “I know I did, but if you could just see your way to letting me say what I have to say.”

Shelley: “Ok, fine. What do you have to say?”

Holling: “Well, it’s no secret that I’m not very good at expressing myself in words. But … there was a moment in there when friends were smiling at us, Maurice was warbling, you looked at me, and we became one. And I can tell you this: You are the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me. And I will love you, Shelley, and cherish you, and protect you and our little pup til death do us part. No matter who goes first. But, don’t make me do this.

Shelley: “Do we still get to keep the presents?”

End scene.

It’s a well-established idea in television writing, that things don’t change. Viewers tune in to see the characters they know and love, and change would complicate that relationship.

Cicely can’t get a big resort because it would change. Joel can’t leave. Holling and Shelley can’t get married. Change is anathema to this type of storytelling.

But Northern Exposure often found a way of using this construct to its advantage, and at its very best could be outright Zen about the whole thing. It’s not that change was shunned, but things were ultimately accepted As They Are.

Episode #4 isn’t one of Northern Exposure’s best, but it is a good one. And more importantly, you can start to see the beginnings of what would ultimately make the show truly excellent.

The view outside, today.

Northern Exposure Episode 1.3: ‘Soapy Sanderson’ … they can't all be good

Continuing my re-watch of Northern Exposure, it only took three episodes to find a stinker.

Episode 3, titled "Soapy Sanderson," is pretty staightforward: Cicely's local hermit commits suicide rather than face the difficult prospect of aging in a remote Alaskan cabin. In doing so, he bequeaths his 100 acres of land to Maggie and Joel in what appears to be an attempt to get the two of them together romantically.

There is some good dialogue:

Joel: You don't have a problem with this?

Maggie: Look, Soapy lived the way he wanted to live and he died the way he wanted to die.

Joel: And you're not rattled?

Maggie: What's the matter Fleischman? You're a doctor. Haven't you seen dead bodies before?

Joel: Yeah, and I'm still rattled. I don't like people committing suicide. Ethical considerations aside, it's just bad for business.

Maggie: He was doing fine until you told him to think about his future.

Joel: I was talking about a walker.

But the episode pretty much goes downhill from there.

Maggie wants to turn the land into a nature preserve but the local Indian tribe offers to purchase the land from Joel for $50,000 as a tax shelter. Joel, without informing Maggie, accepts the offer. And the tension is born.

One of Northern Exposure's biggest challenges ultimately became a strength. Joel Fleischman is often written and acted as a deeply unlikeable person. As the show progressed, the writers dealt with this by approaching Northern Exposure as more of an ensemble effort. Each character was fully developed and could carry their own story arcs. Because really, it's tough to get a story out of someone just complaining all the time.

But in the early episodes, that's a huge part of Joel's role: He just complains, and looks for ways out of his contract with the state. In the third episode, he jumps right to outright theft and fraud. And while his scheme does eventually come undone, it is only after being exposed. There is very little reckoning.

Mostly, episode 3 feels lazy. There is no other significant story arc or conflict. Maggie and Joel do share a romantic dinner and their attraction is teased out a bit more, but even that feels like it moved at unwarranted warp speed--in the same episode we hear Joel on the phone discussing real estate with his fiance.

There is a bit more going on in the episode, but nothing leads anywhere. A film crew arrives to do a documentary on Soapy and his life in Alaska; Maggie wonders about comparisons between her and Soapy's wife. These issues largely just appear and vanish.

Not every episode will be good, but this one seems like it missed easy spots for a more engaging story. Autonomy and aging issues seem obvious, but the bulk of the writing is focused on Joel trying to leave Cicely as fast as possible.

Gotta give this episode a D+/C-.