Northern Exposure
Northern Exposure was a quirky, surreal, character-driven comedy television show, originally broadcast between 1990 and 1995.The central character was Joel Fleischman (played by Rob Morrow), a New York Jewish doctor who is contractually obligated to practice in the tiny remote Alaskan town of Cicely for four years in order to repay a student loan from the state. The comedy centred originally on the clash between Fleischman's urban mindset and the individual, easy-going and community-minded people around him. As time went on the focus became more on the quirky characters of the town.
Some of the more notable characters were:
- Maurice Minnifield (Barry Corbin), ex-astronaut, aging millionaire, entrepreneur and all-American hero, determined to make tiny Cicely the next boomtown;
- Chris Stevens (John Corbett), the philosophical ex-felon DJ, who intersperses the music of his morning show with musings on the nature of life, or readings from philosophers, Tolstoy and "Where the Wild Things Are";
- Maggie O'Connell (Janine Turner), fiery and independent bush-pilot, whose boyfriends all die in bizarre accidents, and who has the mother of all love-hate relationships with Fleischman;
- Shelly Tambo (Cynthia Geary), 18 year old Manitoban beauty pageant winner, brought to Cicely by Maurice, who had fallen in love with her. However immediately on arrival she met, fell in love with, and now lives with:
- Holling Vincoeur (John Cullum), the sexagenarian ex-hunter, now given up killing and the owner of 'The Brick' bar and restaurant, where he lives with Shelly Tambo. Best friend of Maurice until they fell out over Shelly, his main worry is that, since the males of his family mostly live to over 100, Shelly will die before he does;
- Ruth-Anne Miller (Peg Phillips) octogenarian owner of the local store;
- Ed Chigliak (Darren E. Burrows), native foundling and general gopher for Maurice, learned everything he knows about life and the outside world from movies, especially those of Woody Allen. Ed is a Shaman-in-training and is occasionally visited by his invisible spirit guide, 'One Who Waits';
- Marilyn Whirlwind (Elaine Miles), Fleishman's self-appointed receptionist and dispenser of native wisdom and common sense. Never uses one word where none will do.
Also notable is the involvement of series creator/producer/writer David Chase, who went on to bring The Sopranos to prominence.
The show frequently made use of dream and fantasy sequences and other dense imagery and could be described as a light hearted version of Twin Peaks which was filmed in the same area (The main street of Cicely was actually that of Roslyn in Washington).
Also, it can be noted that the show’s unique flavor comes from the combination of various strands: show’s creators, Joshua Brand and John Falsey, had been members of the Esalen Institute in California where they imbibed eclectically “spiritual” worldview, best exemplified in wisdom writings of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung and his disciple, American anthropologist Joseph Campbell (whose works are frequently referenced in the series), as well as fantasy elements, probably inherited from bestsellers like novels of Castaneda and, on a higher evel, works of Latin American magical realism of Garcia Marquez; also, both conversant with classical Russian litarature (Falsey is a major in Russian literature from Berkeley), this characteristic is evident in drastically satirical elements that are “trademark” of Russian literary grotesque (Gogol, Dostoevsky). But above all, the series explored the themes that pattern timeless human condition: envy, love, hate, aging, snobbery, ambition, motherhood, alienation, boredom, ...-all in a broad-minded and humane manner that attracted faithfull following around the globe.
External links
There are dozens of fan sites dedicated to Northern Exposure. Here are a few: