A clearly awful-feeling Holling comes in to see Dr. Fleischman. Diagnosis: He hasn’t paid his taxes. Ever. So he owes $9,000 to Uncle Sam. Fleischman has to tell him that no, he cannot fix this with a doctor’s note.
[Cue moose strutting to funky jazz music.]
Joel walks into The Brick to find they’re serving good food, which can mean only one thing: Adam is back. He’s as brilliant a cook/giant an asshole as ever. Eve is in China, receiving acupuncture for the latest of her many dubious health issues.
Maurice lashes out at a guy for using the Cicely newspaper (his newspaper) to clean up some dog poo on the sidewalk. He marches into The Brick to chide the town for not supporting their local paper–individually calling out Ruth-Anne, who is reading The Christian Science Monitor, and Dave the cook, as he sponges up some spilled coffee with the latest edition of Cicely’s paper. Ruth-Anne bluntly tells him the paper is boring and Cicely isn’t big enough for exciting news, but Maurice insists. Another small-town American newspaper has been nominated for a Pulitzer. Why not The Cicely News and World Telegram?
Meanwhile, Chris is feeling down. His brother from another mother (but the same philandering father), Bernard, is getting in touch with his roots in Africa–and sending Chris postcards, making him realize how humdrum his life is these days. It’s good timing for Holling, who comes into the station to ask Chris to be his business partner at The Brick. 1/2 interest in the bar for $9,000. Chris jumps at the idea.
At The Brick that night, an enthusiastic Chris hands out drinks on the house while Adam wows people with his fantastic cooking, with his wild (and dubious) tales from around the globe, and by being a massive jerk. Maurice, still trying to drum up support for his little paper, isn’t super excited about Ed’s idea for a movie column, but he sees some potential in Adam’s stories. He follows him into the woods and offers him his own column and the chance to write whatever he wants. After some persuading, Adam agrees. “But get out your checkbook, Minnifield; this is gonna cost.”
Chris is pumped from his first night as a guy who irresponsibly hands out tons of free beer businessman. Before too long, he gets serious about it–perhaps too serious. He advertises on the radio and wears a Brick shirt. He hounds patrons to try the new ptarmigan pizza, to use a coaster, and to not write on the walls. He comes up with silly, gimmicky theme nights. He talks Holling into raising the price of the chili. He muses about changing the decor.
Maurice’s idea works. Adam (credited in the byline as “Adam”) writes what the people of Cicely want to read. And apparently the people of Cicely want to read about talking trees. Fleischman, predictably, is the only one who seems to take issue with this. Maggie, perhaps just as predictably, takes issue with him taking issue with this. It’s the exact kind of pseudo-ecological woo woo she would go for. The papers sell out, and Maurice demands more.
A knife-wielding Adam shows up at Maurice’s house the next day, in a rage over Maurice “butchering” his story (that is, editing it for space). Doesn’t Maurice know how serious this is? The government is listening, always and everywhere. And now they’re using the plants to help them do it. “Botany is the next battlefield. What’s going on out there is just the beginning.”
When Maggie asks to borrow a stethoscope so she can hear what her firewood has to say, Fleischman again takes his concerns to Maurice, champion of the 1st Amendment money-grubbing asshole. When Joel finds out Maurice made a deal with the devil Adam, Maurice insists the role of journalism is to give the public what they want. Joel: “No, Maurice, that’s the role of professional wrestling.”
Despite the free drinks, The Brick under co-management with Chris is doing well (financially, at least). Holling is having a crisis. The Brick was his bar, and his bar alone. Now he wants to punch Chris’ lights out (a feeling sympathetic to many viewers at some time or another). He decides to sell out to the superior businessman. But Chris, too, is having a crisis over The Brick. Possessing something he loves has changed his relationship with it. His cozy dive is now a thing that has him thinking about profit margins and coasters. The two meet to discuss the bar, and Chris tells Holling he wants out. Holling can keep the amount Chris blew on free drinks and repay him the rest whenever he’s able.
This might be the best thing we have seen, or will see, Chris do.
Maurice tracks down Adam in the woods and demands two more articles to finish the “talking tree” series. The two exchange some cringey threats with one another before Adam tricks Maurice in a “look over there” kinda way and disappears. A week later, a sad Maurice watches as The Cicely News and World Telegram is once again used to collect old coffee grounds. But then Ed comes in with an issue of The Naknek Signal with a front page story about an Army chemical spill causing environmental damage, seemingly validating Adam’s articles. Fleischman remains skeptical. Maurice is morose.
Maggie takes Joel into a dark, rainy forest, where she tells him to set his cynicism aside and “just listen.” The episode ends with them sitting quietly in the woods.
Miscellaneous notes, quotes, and anecdotes:
– Adam’s self-purported Chinese skills: “Cantonese like a native. Mandarin still gives me a fit.”
– Maurice pulled a dick move and played a pretty dangerous game by using that logger looking guy’s hat to scoop up dog doo.
– Fun Shelly Earring Alert!: Hoops with parrots perched on them! And a return of the pink pigs.
– In season 1, Cicely was said to be in Arrowhead County. But Alaska doesn’t have counties; it has boroughs. At some point, Northern Exposure characters start referring to “the Borough of Arrowhead County,” which I choose to believe is the writers trolling the critics who pointed out their early flaw. The phrase is used three times in this episode, by my count.
– Articles about local climate patterns, mosquito control initiatives, and bear activity are honestly the kind of things I would read.
– “Ed Goes to the Movies”: 4 bear claws = instant classic. 1 bear claw = stay home and read.
– Fleischman was 54 in his class at Columbia Med… out of 140. So higher-than-average at a top-rated med school. But Adam uses it as an insult to Joel, and it clearly gets to him.
– “Why should I write for your pissant paper, Minnifield?”
– Adam’s headline refers to “Amazing find in tundra,” but tundra is, by definition, unforested.
– I wonder how many bear claws Ed gave to this classic bit of cinema, seen advertised at Cicely’s little theater?
– Biggest Laugh: Paranoid, dramatic Adam will only meet with Maurice in the freezer of The Brick, where he barricades the door with a large wooden crate. Dave easily opens the outward-swinging door, and Adam yells at him to leave.
– I guess everyone’s used to Adam’s bluster, but I’d probably take death threats from this weirdo more seriously than they do.
– Goof: Fleischman repeatedly accuses Maurice of inventing his source, and then seems to figure it out on his own, despite the articles naming Adam in the byline.
– Adam at his most Adam: out-of-touch with reality, compulsive liar, full of bullshit threats, but he also clearly has some skills and has been around.
– Joel trying to cheer up Maurice: “Go buy more property. Or go hunting! Yeah, why don’t you go kill something?”
– This show has introduced me to so much music I likely never would have heard without it.
