The people of Cicely are gathered around Rick’s grave, where stands a new statue commemorating him. It’s a gift from Maggie, who absolutely insists she did not commission it out of guilt. During a moment of silence, she projects some insecurities onto Joel, and he begrudgingly admits that yeah, he agrees the statue looks like a hood ornament.
Just as the ceremony is wrapping up, a stranger from the back of the crowd steps up to say some things about Rick. She’s an attractive blonde woman who seems very kind and says her sweetheart Rick loved the people of Cicely. And she’ll miss his cooking and their walks together and their zesty morning showers.
[Cue moose strutting to funky jazz music.]
Officer Semanski is back in town, and she and Maurice are getting along better than ever. The two bond over their love of shooting stuff, and Maurice gives his lady friend a gun as a gift. As much as I find the fetishization of guns weird AF, it’s nice to see Maurice with a woman he genuinely seems to admire. Officer Semanski is not some teenage beauty queen or an astronaut groupie in town for a fling; she’s a strong, capable woman who has a lot in common with him. The two make sense together. Maurice throws a big, fancy couples dinner at his house, with Shelly and Holling sitting across from he and Officer Semanski. He buries the hatchet with his old friend and the ex he lost to him, having found peace now that he’s found a better match. Shelly’s a real catch and all, but “You can’t compare roller blading to crouching in a duck blind with a shotgun next to your cheek.”
Back at the Brick, Maggie has drinks with Joanne, Rick’s other lady, who it turns out thought Maggie knew about her and that the two were in an open relationship. Maggie tries to play it cool, but it quickly becomes clear she’d been deceived. Maggie: “So it didn’t bother you in the least that there were two of us?” Joanne: “Two?”
Adam comes to pay Joel a late-night visit–or rather, sneaks up to shanghai him for an after midnight house call. Adam is married, it turns out, to a woman named Eve (“Spare me the snake and apple jokes, please.”) The two have been hitched for nine years of absolute bliss… though Eve has a habit of exaggerating her medical concerns.
OK that’s bullshit. The two weirdos constantly fight: The Pathological Liar vs The Hypochondriac. And now the good doctor is caught in the middle of it. Fleischman does his due diligence and examines his (perfectly physically healthy) patient while the two awful, awful people squabble and shout. Eventually Adam storms off. Joel tries to make his exit too, but Eve has other plans.
Back in town the next morning, Officer Semanski enforces code. (This cop is “on” constantly. I will never not call her “Officer Semanski.”) Maurice visits Chris and tells him he’s in love. He compares it to weightlessness, which is a nice callback to something he said in the very first episode. Maurice had always looked to men for friendship and companionship and had seen women as only objects of desire, but now he’s found the whole package in his new wood-chopping, weight-lifting, duck-hunting lady love. He plans on popping the question soon.
But he gets home just in time to see Officer Semanski on her way out. Turns out she’d overheard Maurice’s accountant leaving a message on his answering machine about hiding capital gains from the IRS. Officer Semanski wants nothing to do with a tax-cheat. A criminal. She’s cleaned the gun he gave her and put it back in its case, and she’s gone.
Joel wakes up in shackles–like, seriously hobbled in chains–the prisoner of the delusional Eve, who seems to sincerely believe she needs round-the-clock care and that this is the way to go about it. She’s spoon-feeding her captive when Adam returns and the two immediately go back to screaming at each other. As a viewer it really is horrible, and I appreciate it when Dr. Fleischman finally yells at them to shut up. Adam episodes always bring out the contradictory New Yorker answer to toughness in Joel. He’s not big on physical courage, and he’s an absolute ninny outdoors, but he’ll shout down a couple of psychos and tell them they’re a couple of psychos. So Joel, exhausted and disheveled and hunched over in his chains, tells Adam to make some coffee because he’s going to play marriage counselor. Adam asks, “Vienna roast or Kona?”
Back at The Brick, a drunken Maggie takes her anger over her betrayal out on random men, insulting whoever happens to be nearby until Ruth Anne intervenes. Maggie keeps up her “men are trash” talk as Ruth Anne tucks her into bed. Ruth Anne insists not all men are bad–most maybe, but not all. She tells Maggie of her marriage and WWII. In a gender-bent twist on an old trope, she was actually the one to join the military and go overseas… and the one to be unfaithful. “We can’t know what’s in another person’s heart. We can’t even know what’s in our own. Life turns on a dime. And somehow we muddle through.”
Joel does the marriage counselor thing for the two screaming jerkasses. Each has real complaints about the other: Eve can’t build a relationship based on trust and mutual respect with someone who constantly tells outlandish whoppers. Adam is exhausted by Eve’s constant need to be the center of attention and the restrictions her germophobic delusions place on where they can live. Joel tells them both they are the worst and that there is nothing to salvage in this relationship and that they should run in opposite directions and never meet again.
Maggie dreams of heaven. Or at least what her subconscious drums up as heaven. It looks like the Gross Pointe Country Club, and it’s stocked with people she knows who’ve died. A smiling and friendly Rick is there to discuss her unresolved issues. Rick claims he had 2,500 or so women on the side, which seems like a lot and makes me think this is unequivocally just a dream and not some supernatural thing. But the dream ghost of Rick perhaps makes a good point when he tells Maggie she has a habit of dating the unstable, unavailable, roaming type of guy. Perhaps she’d be better suited for someone more reliable… someone like Joel, even.
Speaking of, the very pictures of marital bliss decide to stay together and work things out. What does Joel know about it anyway? Adam read Elaine’s awful Dear John letter, after all. So Eve cuts his chains (partly, anyway), and they send the doctor on his way.
Maurice pays a visit to Officer Semanski, who brusquely tells her rebound Tony to 86 so the two can talk. Maurice tries to appease her with a sizable donation to a police charity. (It’s unclear why he doesn’t just agree to pay his taxes.) But she can’t be bought off. “Law and order” isn’t just a slogan to her; it’s something she truly believes in. She gives him the boot.
Marilyn seems completely unperturbed about her boss walking back into the office, having been missing for a day and a half and looking like Jacob Marley. While he’s trying to unshackle himself, Maggie comes by. She tells Joel that for all his “faults and limitations,” he has a certain honest quality to him. And she’s right. However much a jerk he might be, well, he’s not the type to keep secret girlfriends all around Alaska.
She finds him refreshing. And occasionally amusing. And would he like to have dinner? Joel says yes.
Miscellaneous quotes, notes, and anecdotes:
– Joel, on Rick: “We had a few beers. I removed a mole.”
– I take back every “Poor Rick” from previous episode reviews.
– Maurice’s toast to Officer Semanski: “Who didn’t find my radio, but who captured my heart.”
– New Ed T-shirt Alert: The Deep Purple. It’s similar to this one.
– 90s Trope Alert: A couple decades of NFL coverups and combat-related TBIs have taught us that getting knocked out is basically brain damage, but back then TV treated it like NBD. Dr. Fleischman doesn’t show any concerns about getting whacked with a frying pan and rendered unconscious for hours. He doesn’t even complain about a headache. It’s just a convenient TV way to incapacitate someone and jump ahead in time. I suppose it’s best not to think too much about it.
– Adam’s sorrel soup with roasted scallops sounds incredible.
– “Love is like friendship caught on fire.” –Chris Stevens –Bruce Lee. I can’t verify this quote. Anyone have a source?
– Blech. Maurice defending himself in a quote that is as sadly 2025 as it is 1991: “I bet Donald Trump doesn’t pay a dime!” Here we have actual conservatism vs something more akin to MAGA. I think Officer Semanski and I would disagree on a lot, but I genuinely admire the consistency of her morals and of the principled resolve she shows here.
– It’s summer in Cicely, and Northern Exposure is back to using the red-tailed hawk scream for wilderness scenes.
– Maggie tells a bar patron that he has no neck. “Just like Gumby.” It’s sad to see a Gumby reference being used for meanness.
– I did not expect to see Rick again, though given the nature of the show, I knew a dream or memory or hallucination (or, or, or) wasn’t out of the question someday. But we see more of him in this episode than in all of last season!
– This is the first of Adam showing seemingly preternatural knowledge of the people of Cicely, but it won’t be the last. Is it a hint his CIA talk wasn’t all BS? Is it supernatural or paranormal? Does he just creep around Cicely that much?