Ed’s changing a flat tired just outside of town when a bunch of weirdos come rambling by. One’s juggling. Another carries a unicycle. One has a bear on a leash. Ed cheerfully gives them directions to Cicely, and they go on their way.

[Cue moose strutting to funky jazz music.]

So it turns out the group Ed met on the side of the road are with the Ludwig Von Something Masquerade and Something Company circus. And so long as their bus is being repaired, Cicely gets to enjoy the presence of a bunch of talented performers. And also a bear. A guy who doesn’t speak takes an instant shine to Marilyn, and she flatly tells him she’s not interested.

Joel gets an alumni newsletter in the mail, and while he enjoys seeing that a former med school classmate who joined the military was sent to Alaska just like him, he’s appalled to learn that one he considered a lesser student has landed a prestigious position in New York, presumably making lots of money and dealing with more interesting cases and high-class patients than Maurice and his athlete’s foot. Likening himself to the Birdman of Alcatraz, the doctor decides he is going to use his time to raise pigeons better himself by cramming medical knowledge and gaining higher certification. He spends much of the episode with his nose in a book.

Back at The Brick, one of the circus people has Chris throw a dart at a board covered in Post-Its, and the one he hits reveals his age. The two have an absolutely insufferable conversation about quantum physics before the circus guy cops to the trick being some sleight of hand. For one brief, shining moment I thought the show was acknowledging that Chris is kind of full of shit. But boy was I wrong. You see, Circus Guy is (or was) an actual physicist with an impressive CV before he and his wife (also a professor) quit academia and joined the circus to show their daughter the world. And Professor Quantum McPTBarnum is just sooooo impressed with Chris that he can’t believe he didn’t study physics at the university level. The show is doing little to refute my hypothesis that Chris is the writers’ wish fulfilment character–an autodidact who knows it all and is so cool and also effortlessly gets all the ladies.

Speaking of getting the ladies, the quiet guy is revealed to be “The Flying Man” without further explanation. He still has the hots for Marilyn, and he follows her around, not taking no for an answer. I haaaate this trope. And because this is TV, it works. Marilyn eventually agrees to go out with him, in an example of a related trope I hate.

Holling has a problem. For the first time ever, he’s noticed Shelly’s feet–or at least, it’s the first time he’s bothered by them. They all of a sudden seem “inordinately large.” Though Chris doesn’t seem like the best person to be giving relationship advice, to his credit he’s pretty reasonable here when he tells Holling that it’s normal to start to notice flaws when you’ve been with someone for a while… but that this could also be a sign that romantic feelings are waning.

As silly as it seems for Holling to suddenly be disturbed by these ostensibly big feet, in a way it makes sense. This is a man who never had a real relationship until a teenage beauty queen asserted herself into his life. Holling, you’ll remember, swore off relationships long ago, knowing he has longevity in his genes and not wanting to spend decades as a widower. This is his first time experiencing a post-honeymoon phase reality check. Shelly was perfect until one day he noticed she wasn’t.

Head circus lady goes to Ruth-Anne’s store for “microdisks” for her daughter’s laptop. She reads Ruth-Anne’s palm while she’s there. By this point in the show we’ve learned to take magical stuff seriously so it’s no surprise when she accurately describes Ruth-Anne’s history. She goes on to say that she’ll find love again.

Holling proposes to Shelly, clearly out of a feeling of insecurity over their relationship. Shelly smells something fishy and forces the truth out of him. When he confesses about her “big” feet, she goes to stay with Maggie.

Flying Man has dinner with the Whirlwind family, and as much as I don’t like him, it’s funny how well he fits in with them. It is, unsurprisingly, a very quiet dinner, but Marilyn’s parents express approval of her date. There’s one other scene where I also have to begrudgingly admit the character works. Joel sees the Flying Man as he’s driving. He continues to toodle down the road, halfway paying attention to his surroundings as he verbally drills himself over internal medicine minutiae, and when he gets to his destination he is perplexed to see Flying Man has beaten him there. This tantalizing clue to why this guy is “the flying man” is the closest we’ll get to an explanation. Joel decides to put the books down and enjoy some whimsy for a change.

Maggie rants to Shelly about being a strong, independent woman who doesn’t need a man. But a couple days later, after Holling gives a sincere apology, Shelly disappoints her by taking him back. Shelly’s still mad, but she knows that he’s genuinely sorry and that they still love one another. We’ve seen plenty of Holling/Shelly conflict before, but I think this is the first time it’s been so one-sided against Holling. Shelly really isn’t to blame here, and in fact she shows a lot of emotional maturity in this episode.

Maggie doesn’t. She’s clearly jealous of Shelly and Holling. But she displays some emotional courage when she approaches Palm Reader Lady and asks for a reading. Palm Reader Lady sees that she’s mechanically-inclined, likes sports, and is healthy.

As for her heart line, she sees lots of loss in her past, and in her future she sees marriage before too long. A tall, muscular, outdoorsy, and macho guy. But it doesn’t seem that Maggie has much happiness in her future.

Flying Man asks Marilyn to hit the road with him, but she declines. Life on the road is not the life for her. There’s no mention of the fact that they’ve known each other for less than a week or however long it’s been.

Maggie’s rolling her eyes and walking away from Joel as he tried to impress her with his juggling skills, when she sees a tall, handsome man putting outdoors equipment into the back of his car. Maggie tells him that they can’t be together, even if he’s her type and the sex would be great and their kids would be beautiful. “I want to be happy,” she says to the confused stranger.

Chris spews some more teenage stoner musings about quantum physics and the nature of reality before reading a poem, as the circus people board the bus to leave and Maggie walks back towards her bumbling doctor friend.

Miscellaneous notes, quotes, and anecdotes:

– A bunch of circus performers wandering through the wilderness with a bear on a tether is something straight out of a Cormac McCarthy novel.

– Joel alternately gloating over a disliked former classmate’s misery and griping about another’s unearned success is a pettiness I understand 100%.

– The quantum physics stuff probably sounded more impressive before it became the go-to talking point of internet know-nothing know-it-alls in the past decade and a half or so.

– Fun Shelly Earring Alert!: Tropical fish. (A couple different types!) RIP Angel. Also: Pigs! And grasshoppers!

– Doing research for this episode, I found out that a Northern Exposure wiki also lists fun Shelly earrings in a “miscellaneous” bullet format at the end of some episode write-ups. Chris would probably say something about string theory and harmonic reverberations.

– I don’t really have feet opinions either way, but Shelly’s feet don’t look particularly large to me.

– What is a microdisk? I remember everyone using floppies in the 90s.

– I wish I could find a picture of Palm Reader Lady because she has some serious 90s mom hair.

– Ed helping Fleischman study is funny. If you’ve ever been the one grilling someone on a subject you don’t know anything about, it’s kind of an awkward fun they capture well here.

– Shelly: “I’d rather have big feet than a mean little heart any day.”

– Elaine Miles’ real-life mom plays Marilyn’s mom in this episode. You’ll remember that she originally tried out for the role of Marilyn and that she played Anku’s wife in an early episode.

– Maggie cites Dian Fossey as a role model–alone in the jungle, focusing on conservation work and not worrying about men. But Fossey was a conflicted, tortured soul, and in many ways not a good person. She also did not have an enviable love life, or a saintly lack of one. Since we’ve seen in previous episodes that the Northern Exposure writing team had some familiarity with the field of anthropology, I think this may have been an intentional bit of irony.

– Palm Reader Lady reads the November 1991 issue of Macworld.

– Maurice does not appear in this episode, despite the mention of his athlete’s foot.