Chris is doing his thing on the air when he suddenly starts forgetting words and generally tripping over his speech until he’s at the point of not being able to functionally talk at all.
[Cue moose strutting to funky jazz music.]
Dr. Fleischman is leaving town for a medical conference. He’s excited to get out of Cicely, to be around other physicians, and to get laid. Marilyn sets up his slide show, and he heads off to the airfield. He’s disappointed to learn that Maggie’s the one flying him (and also that she’s planning on hanging out when they get to his destination), but so what? He’s off to a long weekend in the big city: Juneau.
Chris obviously can’t serve as a philosopher disc jockey when he can hardly spit out stunted sentences of pidgin English. So it’s fortunate that his half-brother Bernard shows up just then. Bernard is back from his tour of Africa, and he’s dressed the part.
“Africa called. I answered.”
Chris and Bernard are strangely not on the same wavelength. Chris didn’t feel his brother coming this time, one’s thirsty when the other is hungry, etc. Bernard wonders if maybe Chris needs to be verbally “defibrillated.” Reset.
A man comes into Fleischman’s office with a bad cough. Marilyn instructs him to take off his shirt.
Patient: “You a doctor?”
Marilyn: “No, but I watch.”
And thus begins an excellent C-plot, in which Marilyn spends Dr. Fleischman’s absence treating his patients. It’s as hilarious as it is wildly inappropriate and illegal.
Joel and Maggie get to the hotel in Juneau, bickering all the way (of course), and both learn the rooms they’d reserved are unavailable due to a plumbing emergency. But worry not, the hotel’s manager has agreed to put Dr. Fleischman up in a suite with “Mrs. Fleischman.” They both protest, but long story short, Maggie and Joel end up sharing a suite.
Bernard is speaking for Chris on the radio, and I’m not sure if his musings are a sign that the brothers share a philosopher’s soul or if it simply turns out anyone can prattle on a little like that and sound deep. But for what it’s worth, I do find Bernard very likable, and his words about changing over time and through travel aren’t untrue. What does it mean to “come home” when being away has changed your perception of it so much?
Chris: “Couldn’t myself have better it said.”
The everyday awkwardness of sharing a living space with Maggie clearly bothers Joel, so he overcompensates by making it abundantly clear that she can’t be there “cramping his style*” because he’s “large and in charge and looking for chickies.**”
* to paraphrase Maggie
** to quote Joe Dirt
So Joel goes on the prowl, seeing but not quite connecting with several attractive young women (picture lots of shoulder pads and hair spray) and rudely rebuffing a man who actually wanted to talk medicine with an “I’m trying to get laid.” He does indeed catch the eye of an attractive lady doctor–one who’s a little older and who boldly approaches him and bluntly expresses her desire. More than once. And I’m just going to handle this aspect of the episode here instead of coming back to it repeatedly in tandem with the episode’s chronology for the simple fact that I really hate it.
I get it. Joel swaggered into Juneau talking about what a stud he was going to be, and the joke here is seeing his bravado disintegrate under the attention of an assertive woman. But it’s too much, and it’s handled horribly. Mrs. Dr. Robinson follows him around, repeatedly making multiple direct advances. When he declines, she questions his courage and masculinity. She suggests he may have had traumatic sexual experiences when he was younger. (Because wouldn’t that be funny!) It’s played for laughs at Joel’s expense, and jerk that he is, he doesn’t deserve this. The whole thing is gross. It keeps going, but I’m done with it.
Meanwhile, back at The Brick, Bernard gives a slideshow from his Africa adventures to a fascinated crowd. Each time the picture changes, Chris makes a guess as to what’s being projected. And he’s incorrect every time. Maurice (rightly) tells him to shut up, and he sulks out of the room. I suppose this is to portray that he’s not quite himself and/or that he’s out of sync with his brother. But I like to think this is the show acknowledging that the town know-it-all doesn’t really know it all.
Joel is watching some infomercial at 3 AM when Maggie stumbles in drunk with a doctor on her arm. The next morning at breakfast, Fleischman tries to pretend not to care if she “scored.” You know, aside from his clinical interest in her health. She teases him a little before admitting that no, it didn’t happen.
Bernard tells Ruth-Anne the story of a pendant he got in Dar es Salaam. A moth Half a moth in amber. It’s purportedly over a hundred years old. An elderly man told him it was “meant for” him. And the next day he woke up with “the urge to get rid of” his western clothes.
Dr. Fleischman gives his talk, about middle-ear infections in a remote Alaskan population, and he’s embarrassed to repeatedly discover that interspersed with relevant slides are pictures of his friends in Cicely. It seems to me he probably shouldn’t have trusted Marilyn with this task, or he should have at least gone over it once before the big presentation.
Maggie comes back to the hotel room to find Joel popping champagne alone. She’s been dancing and seeing shows and enjoying the city and not sleeping since they got there, but when she asks if Joel has someone with him, it suddenly becomes obvious she is just as invested in him as he is with her. The two have had an equally unsexy weekend because they’re only interested in one another, despite trying very hard to pretend they’re not. They kiss, and Maggie tells Joel to relax (“For once in your life, just shut up.”) But when they get to bed, she immediately falls asleep.
In Chris’ trailer, he and Bernard share fragmented dreams of Africa. (Or, B-roll footage of animals in Africa, anyway.) Bernard claims that “certain cultures believe that when you dream, your soul becomes a moth that travels the world.” I’m not really sure how this works, but apparently Bernard’s half-moth in amber is causing Chris to be incomplete. They share a soul, and he’s missing part of his? I know magic is, by definition, not logic. But this extra doesn’t make sense to me. Anyway, Bernard gives Chris the pendant to wear.
Back in Juneau, the two almost-lovers share an awkward last morning–with Joel grumpy and Maggie acting a little strange. It turns out that, due to a combination of alcohol and sleep deprivation, she doesn’t remember what happened. So she’s playing it off like the sex was great, and Joel messes with her a little by acting like it wasn’t, despite there having been no “it.”
Chris is back to being his complete, talky self, and he and Bernard are once again completely in sync. They tap their feet and bob their heads to music together, and I have to admit it’s pretty cute.
Maggie and Joel get back to Cicely, and Joel is about to confess that nothing sexual happened between them, when Maggie makes a little speech about how embarrassed she is. His pride stung, Joel agrees to pretend the thing that didn’t happen didn’t happen. He walks into his empty office, completely none the wiser about Marilyn doing his job for the past couple days.
Chris closes out the episode with a quote from Shakespeare: “We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
Miscellaneous notes, quotes, and anecdotes:
– This is the second time Chris loses the ability to speak, the first being after a beautiful woman “stole his voice.”
– I’ve suffered temporary dysphasia, and it sounded not unlike what Chris experiences at the beginning of this episode.
– Marilyn’s first patient says he’s had a tough time quitting smoking but that maybe he’ll try “that new shoulder patch.” I guess I’d never really though of it, but nicotine patches were indeed new at the time.
– Another technological throwback: Slide shows! Two of them–one from Fleischman at the conference, and one from Bernard at The Brick.
– Early on, I would have assumed Marilyn just goofed up the slide show. But knowing her as well as we do now, I think it’s safe to say this was intentional.
– Fun Shelly Earring Alert!: Watermelon slices, matching her barrette.
– The hotel scenes were filmed at The Edgewater hotel in Seattle. It has an interesting history.
– This wonderfully weird song plays during the shared Africa dream:
– I’ve come to love the running gag of Chris and Bernard sharing a dream and then waking up all shocked and awkward over the intensity of the experience.
– I can’t find any specific cultural beliefs (African or otherwise) about our souls being moths that fly around as we sleep, but I know moths and butterflies have spiritual significance around the world. It sounds plausible, if not exactly true.
– When Chris and Bernard are vibing again, they play “a little juju from Nigeria” on the radio. I really like the song, but its identity seems to be a mystery, with others on Northern Exposure forums also unable to identify it. Shazam is even stumped. I’m assuming it was recorded for the show.
– Is Chris going to wear this moth forever? I’m going to guess we’ll never see or hear about it again.
– On the other hand, I don’t think we’re done hearing about Joel and Maggie’s shitty situation.