The episode starts with what you can instantly tell is a dream sequence. A devilishly done-up Maggie plays an oversized game of Clue with Joel, who has plane tickets marked “JFK” in his pocket. He’s impatient, but she begs him to stay.
The surprise isn’t that it’s a dream or what the obvious symbolism is; the surprise (at least for me) is that the dreamer turns out to be Maggie and not Joel.
[Cue moose strutting to funky jazz music.]
Joel is at Ruth-Anne’s, asking for something stupid and touristy to take back home to New York. And while he’s paying for three boxes of marzipan willow ptarmigans (TIL: the state bird of Alaska), Maggie comes in to pick up a piece of furniture she’d ordered. Joel offers to help, surprising her. Confused about her feelings for him, she admits she never knows how to show gratitude when he does something nice for a change, because he’s normally so “sneaky and duplicitous and self-serving.” “You’re welcome” says Joel. When they get to Maggie’s place and lug the huge chair inside, Joel sees a little shrine Maggie’s made for the four boyfriends killed by the O’Connell curse. They’re kind of cute, in a macabre way–little skeletons made of melted down crayons and decorated with macaroni and plastic accoutrements.
Cicely is celebrating Founders Day, and Maurice is furious when Chris discusses the lesbian relationship between Roslyn and Cicely, who founded the town together. He calls the story “the lesbian angle,” but Holling corrects him. Apparently it’s not a theory or an interpretation but a known fact. Two lesbian women moved to Alaska to be themselves together. Holling seems to support this. Pretty progressive for a 63-year-old backwoodsman in 1991.
Just then, a lady of a certain age walks into The Brick, to the delight of the people of Cicely. Come to find out, she’s an annual visitor to Cicely while her husband, a wildlife biologist, tags hares. Though Maurice hardly speaks to her at The Brick, it turns out the two of them have a thing going on. The exact nature of this isn’t clear, but she doesn’t seem to be sneaking around. It’s Maurice that wants the privacy. So apparently she’s in some kind of an open relationship, and for all his judgement of alternative lifestyles, Maurice has no problem getting involved in this. He gleefully pops a tape of a rocket launching into the VCR and then hops back into bed with her.
Maggie has another Clue dream with Joel. This time they’re joined by the Grim Reaper, who says Joel is going to die on his flight to New York. She takes her moral quandary over these “premonitions” to Chris, who takes them very seriously. Given her history with men and the fact that dream Joel is wearing a black fedora… Woo boy. This is serious business. Unfortunately, fate is such a tricky thing, there’s no telling what to do. Telling Joel, not telling Joel–either of these could be fate’s way of getting him to his final destination.
Meanwhile, Ingrid is also concerned for her guy’s health, as she worriedly watches Maurice suffer from apparent untreated sleep apnea. She goes to see Dr. Fleischman the next day, who agrees to speak to Maurice (too proud himself to visit a doctor). Maurice is furious that Ingrid spilled the beans to the doctor. It turns out Ingrid is a sort of astronaut groupie Maurice has been seeing here and there for a while, and he is fiercely protective of this information. And at any rate, he will not allow the doctor to check him for sleep apnea by watching him sleep. “It’s kinky.”
Joel’s substitute shows up. Dr. Ginsburg, a fellow Columbia graduate also from Queens, is not at all what Joel would ever have expected. Dave (as he likes to be called) is cheerful and friendly. He eagerly took a temporary gig in Alaska, “a city boy’s dream come true… for two fabulous weeks!” immediately fixes the office’s heater, and has already started learning Tlingit words from Marilyn by the time Joel meets him. Ed likes him. “He’s nice,” Ed says, a conclusion he’s come to based on “his niceness.”
Maggie tries to weasel out of flying Joel to Anchorage and ends up telling him she had recurring dreams about his death. Joel is just touched that she cares–and that she dreams of him. At the Brick, while Dr. Ginsburg Dave is making friends, Ed sweetly asks Joel to sell his plane ticket. He refers to It’s a Wonderful Life, asking Joel to imagine what the town would be like without him. Joel imagines a very happy Cicely in which townspeople wave Israeli flags and blow into rams horns while singing about how great their alternative Jew doctor from New York is.
At Maurice’s place, Ingrid tells him she doesn’t want to stay the night. Misunderstanding, Maurice thinks it’s because he’s only a second string astronaut, but she tells him its because she doesn’t want to be there when he stops breathing and doesn’t start back up again.
Reverend Chris “in the morning” Stevens gives a lecture/sermon on the town’s founders, but it devolves into he and the other townspeople expressing concern for Joel and his trip. They start to pay their respects to the late still very much alive and present Dr. Fleischman. Mostly they say nice things, though there’s some debate about how cute he is. Ed: “I always wanted to be at my own funeral. This way you can see what people thought about you.”
Maurice decides to let Joel watch him sleep. Maurice, sliding into bed in his trout pajamas, tells Joel that in a way he envies Joel’s pending demise. Everyone has to go some time. Maurice’s biggest fear is dying in some mundane way. Slipping in the shower. Having a heart attack. Sleep apnea. At least Joel is about to go out with a bang, not a whimper.
Joel watches Maurice sleep for six hours, his breathing perfectly regular the whole time. He doesn’t appear to have sleep apnea. It turns out he’s allergic to Ingrid’s mohair Afghan; hence the breathing irregularities. They toss it aside and have one more roll before Ingrid has to leave. “The green-winged teals are flying south.”
Joel has a dream not unlike the ones Maggie has been having, except this time he’s on a plane. The “good death” Maurice envies him for is, of course, massively terrifying to a guy like Joel. Spooked by the premonitions and contemptuous of Dr. Ginsburg, Joel boots his would-be replacement out of his office and foregoes his vacation after all.
Joel pays a brief visit to Maggie, asking her what she feels for him and why she’s so concerned. She confesses to having… thoughts about him, but that’s it. Joel leaves, insisting he’s not skipping his vacation because he’s superstitious. Maggie puts in a cassette and plays a song Joel earlier mentioned liking.
Miscellaneous notes, quotes, and anecdotes:
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