[Cue moose strutting to funky jazz music]
Northern Exposure’s pilot episode was busy. There was a lot of exposition, a lot of introductions, and a lot of just stuff happening. The following episode is slower in comparison, and I like it. It’s a nice breather.
The episode begins with Chris Stevens (who we just caught a glimpse of in the pilot), the DJ/host of “Chris in the Morning,” on KBHR (pronounced “K-Bear”), Cicely’s own radio station, owned by (of course) Maurice. Chris tells a story about his juvenile delinquency, in which he discovers Walt Whitman while sacking a house during a B&E. It’s an experience that launched him into a juvenile detention center, as well as into a lifetime of appreciation for the written word.
While Chris is broadcasting out to the Alaskan Riviera, we see Dr. Fleischman wake up and give a precautionary sweep under his bed with a golf club before getting up–only to scream when he sees Ed sitting in his room with a big smile on his face. For a show that’s mostly funny in a way that makes you say “Hmm. That’s clever,” this comedic jump scare literally made me laugh out loud. Ed explains that 1.) Indians don’t knock. It’s rude. And 2.) Most people in Cicely have matching keys.
Over breakfast at The Brick, Joel pleads with Maggie to do something about his plumbing. He’s not “the Grizzly Adams type;” he needs a toilet. Maggie revels in the opportunity to take the snooty New York doctor down a peg. The illustriously educated physician can’t figure out how to fix a toilet? Even when she finally comes by the cabin, she taunts him as she works. “You do have toilets in New York, don’t you?” After having even more plumbing problems (his shower this time), Joel learns Cicely has a library. It’s at Ruth-Anne’s store, beneath the shelf with the Top Ramen, across from the Spam. Maggie catches Joel checking out books about plumbing, and again teases him for his helplessness and arrogance. This comes to backfire on her later, when she needs Dr. Fleischman’s expertise after hurting her knee dancing. Fleischman mocks her double standard on frontier self-reliance, and she leaves.
I have to say, I hate this part. The only thing worse here than a landlord smugly reacting to her tenant’s legitimate need with plumbing help is a doctor smugly reacting to his injured patient. Grow up and try some professionalism, the both of you.
As Joel and Maggie argue self-reliance and plumbing on the frontier over breakfast, Chris in the Morning drones on, the Walt Whitman poems only interrupted by the philosopher DJ discussing what it felt to him, as a teenage street tough, to learn that the “big bear of a man” Walt Whitman was gay–a surprising fact which compelled a young and wayward Chris to reconsider what he’d thought of sexuality and the gay people he’d “kicked around” before. Maurice hears this and pays a visit to his radio station to throw Chris off the radio–literally, through a plate glass window.
After pulling the glass out of his scalp and stitching him up, Joel visits Chris at his shack by a lake. He learns that Chris lives a very rustic life as a starving artist–barbecuing his breakfast, bathing in the lake, and making metal sculptures. We also see that he has a way with women, when a very 90s-model-looking woman from Boston comes out and invites Joel to breakfast. Where did he find her? “In the woods.” What was she doing? “Just walking.”
Maurice doesn’t deny Whitman’s homosexuality, nor does he hate him for it. He sees it as a character flaw that should be kept secret. You don’t go blabbing about the great men of history having feet of clay. You don’t tell people John Wayne didn’t do his own stunts. You don’t go talking about America’s greatest poet being a pervert. “We need our heroes.”
Maurice takes over the airwaves and treats listeners to only the manliest of programming: stories from NASA and his rough-and-tumble Okie childhood, how Yule Brenner would have made a good flyboy, and his love of the Duke. Mostly he plays lots of showtunes. The townspeople revolt and hold an angry meeting to demand Chris in the Morning back on the air. They’re sick of Maurice’s voice, his jokes, and his showtunes. In a private meeting, Joel frankly tells Maurice that he’s not good on the radio. Like lox or coffee, he’s an acquired taste, best served in small doses. But Maurice just doubles and triples down.
Ed’s uncle Anku, a traditional healer, is sick beyond his ability to heal himself (tired all the time, blood in his urine), and Ed and his aunt are understandably worried. Anku skips an appointment Ed set up with Dr. Fleischman, so Ed invites the doctor to dinner. Fleischman is at first reluctant to chase down a stubborn would-be patient, but he ends up visiting with him several times.
A lesser show could have easily fumbled the Fleischman/Anku conflict, but I wouldn’t be writing reviews about a lesser show. This is Northern Exposure. Anku is not some uncontacted tribesman or a luddite. He makes movie references. He watches the news with Dan Rather. He does crossword puzzles in his Finnish sauna. He has KFC flown in from Anchorage for dinner with Joel. And he has no delusions nor makes any false claims about his powers. He knows his role: “Holding the patient’s hand. Keeping their spirits up. Maybe a little psychology. A plant root here. Placebo there.” And the first rule of thumb: “Do no harm.” He knows he has prostate cancer. But after decades of serving as a medicine man for his community, he just can’t bring himself to go to a specialist. He would lose face. What would his patients think?
For his part, this is the best we’ve seen of Fleischman so far. He quickly sets aside his snooty Ivy League New York City doctor snobbery and shows the fellow healer due respect, even admitting that his practice is just as much ritual and placebo and that the human body has amazing abilities to heal itself. He never talks down to or condescendingly lectures the older man, but he speaks frankly: This is out of either of their hands. He needs to see a specialist. He needs surgery. He is going to die.
Anku, however, masterfully rebuts his efforts while remaining friendly. He changes the subject. He turns Joel’s words about the “self-righting machine” of the human body back on him. He leaves him dancing in circles (literally). But eventually the physician gets through to the medicine man. Anku flies off to get the help he needs, but not before paying Joel a house call, admitting the folly in his pride, and inviting the doctor to come check in on him when he gets back from the hospital. And he parts with some words of wisdom, repeated from an earlier conversation: “You want to catch a fish, think like a fish.”
Chris comes to speak with Maurice (the two of them still sporting bruises from their fight), crediting him for being a complex and interesting person, though one who is shallow in some surprising ways. He never intended to cut down Walt Whitman, though he can see how his words could have been interpreted that way. He doesn’t want people reading Walt Whitman for the wrong reasons. And he certainly didn’t “want to kill the child inside the man.” Maurice wrangles an apology out of Chris, and then seems genuinely happy at the chance to give him back his job. He even compliments his left cross. And I guess that’s the closest we’re going to get to an apology from Maurice.
I really don’t like this. I don’t like that Chris is lumped in with the “stubborn,” and I don’t like that Chris is the only one who says the words “I’m sorry” and “I apologize” in this episode. #chrisdidnothingwrong. But for what it’s worth, I know this won’t be the last word the show has on queer sexuality or, for that matter, Maurice’s love of showtunes.
Thinking like a shower doesn’t really help Joel fix his plumbing, but the lesson in empathy and the foolishness of pride gets to him. So Joel pays a late-night visit to Maggie, knee medicine in hand. Maggie agrees to come by the next day and fix his shower. It’s not exactly an “I’m sorry” from either of them, but it’s a nice bit of growth.
Miscellaneous notes, quotes, and anecdotes:
- There was a lot of back-and-forth among the three subplots of this episode. To avoid being too repetitive here, I forewent strict chronology in favor of handling the plotlines more smoothly. So if you’re following along with the episodes, this one’s timing may seem a little off in my review.
- Joel is still with Elaine, Maggie is still with Rick, and while neither of them do anything to disrespect or jeopardize their relationships, the air is already thick with a “will they, won’t they” tension.
- Marilyn doesn’t keep books at the office. She doesn’t believe in them.
- Holling mentions years living in “the bush” and gestures towards a taxidermied head on the wall as he says he “stopped killing the big guys.” We also learn in this episode that Holling is Cicely’s mayor.
- Joel and Ed do a brief Abbott and Costello style which/witch doctor bit. Not gonna lie, it got a chuckle out of me.
- Ruth-Anne: “If you’re looking for the Whitman, it’s on back order for the next three months. There’s nothing like an interesting sex life to get people reading again.”
- Ed’s aunt is played by Armenia Miles, the real-life mother of Elaine Miles (Marilyn). “Did you ever see Little Big Man? That was sooome makeup job!”
- Maurice, visiting Joel’s office: “[Laughs]. I see you cleaned up these droppings in here!” Trying to blow off Joel’s head the previous episode was “nothing personal.”
- Anku is watching something on TV about the history of barbed wire. Later, he asks Joel for help with a crossword puzzle. The answer is “barb.” Coincidence? Probably.
- The show plays it a little fast and loose with ecology. You aren’t going to find any logan berries growing in the Alaskan woods, nor do you need to worry about snakes nesting under the plumbing of your Alaskan cabin.
- Joel, on the subject of pride: “Well that’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it? You, Maggie, Chris, Anku.” Maurice: “Who the hell was that last one?”
- Rick is totally the type of guy to call bed “the sack.”
- No music highlights for this one, largely because Maurice was on the radio through most of the episode. No offense intended to fans of showtunes.