I’m somewhere into the fourth season of Northern Exposure on Amazon. At ran for six seasons on CBS starting in 1990, though the first two seasons only had 8 and 7 episodes respectively, rather than 23+ for the last four seasons. I watched quite a bit of it back then, though just how much I don’t recall. But I did enjoy it, so I was pleased to see it available for streaming.
I’ve not been disappointed. Great art? Probably not. Enjoyable entertainment? Certainly, though, frankly, I don’t much like the connotations of “entertainment.” Whatever.
One can certainly read it as a brief for diversity. The central character is Joel Fleischman, a newly minted New York doctor who has to work off his student loan by practicing medicine for four years in rural Alaska in a small town called “Cicely.” FWIW, a couple of episodes ago they had a show that gave us the origin story (myth) for Cicely. He was brought to Cicely by Maurice Minnifield, a former astronaut and rich businessman who owns the local newspaper, radio station, and 15,000 acres of land he wants to develop as a resort. Cicely is so remote that one has to fly into it. Maggie O’Connell is a former auto-money debutant turned bush pilot and with whom Fleischman had a flirting relationship that eventually turns serious.
Holling Vincoeur seems to be a Cicely native, though perhaps he’s merely Alaska-born, who owns the local bar and restaurant. He’s in his sixties and is in a romantic relationship with Shelly Tambo, former Miss Northwest Passage. Minnifield had brought her to Cicely to marry her, but his good buddy Holling got to her first, though I believe it was more like she got to Holling in preference to. Ex-con Chris Stevens is employed by Minnifield as a DJ for his radio station. He likes to wax philosophical, which I sometimes find intellectually soothing, but recently it’s been getting a bit annoying. On the other hand, he did manage use a trebuchet to fling a burnt-up piano into the middle of a lake with the whole town watching. That’s not something you see on TV every day.
The local general story and post office is run by Ruth-Anne Miller, a long-term resident of Cicely. Dr. Fleischer’s receptionist is named Marilyn Whirlwind, who is more calm and placid than whirlwind. Ed Chigliak is a half-breed – yeah, I know, not a particularly nice word, and somewhat against the spirit of the show, but you can’t have everything, not even in Cicely, Alaska – who works part-time for Ruth-Anne at the store and does this ‘n that for Minnifield. He’s an aspiring film director who every once in a while shoots footage that shows up on screen. Just how he acquired his knowledge of film while living in Cicely is not at all obvious. Nor, I suppose, should it be, any more than we need to know how a trebuchet made its way from Monty Python to Alaska, something Ed pointed out at the time.
So, basically, an ensemble show with a diversity of principals: young and old, male and female, income level, education, and ethnic background. But diversity itself is not a premise and guarantees nothing, much less entertainment, or whatever you call it. What makes the show work are the stories, stories that deploy these characters, plus assorted other folks, including Indians (aka Native Americans), an animal or three, and the land and the weather. They all work like there could be nothing in the world more natural than for these people and things living these stories in this time and at that place.
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