How 'Northern Exposure' Has Become My Source of Comfort in Dark Times

Every now and then I stumble across something that makes me feel like I’m not alone in the universe

I expect I’m one of the last people you’ll ever meet who can say he grew up in a log cabin. As I understand it, my dad and his brothers went around building each other’s homes. One brother was of an artistic bent and he insisted on having “Lincoln log” overlapping corners that were time-consuming to make. I’m glad we had them on our house because I used to climb them in the summers.

Imagine just pouring a slab of concrete, cutting down some trees, and building a place to live. You’d be done in a few months. Today, a house costs a half a million dollars and you have to pay for it for 30 years.

The simpler times weren’t that long ago.

Here’s the floor plan of the house where I grew up:

Image by Walter Rhein

We lived out on the frontier and there wasn’t much opportunity to interact with the arts. I enjoyed the freedom of being able to wrestle with raw nature, but I also wished to cultivate my understanding of what the human race had achieved.

I needed the equivalent of a survey course. I needed something that would provide some exposure to the thoughts and philosophies and different cultures that make up the world.

Fortunately for me, I found exactly that!

The candles in the darkness

There have been many things that I’ve had the good fortune to encounter exactly when I most needed them.

The books of Roald Dahl come to mind. They were so good, in fact, that I was fearful of leaving them in the school library. I thought they would certainly be discovered and destroyed.

The American Birkebeiner ski race offered another insight. Every year, for one day, our rural streets would be populated by people from all over the world. It was like a glorious fireworks display of culture, and then it was gone. I spent months gazing fondly upon the after-images.

Another piece of pop culture that spoke to me was the television show Northern Exposure. It ran from 1990 to 1995, which is almost as stunning a celestial coincidence as the fact that the sun and moon appear to be the same size in the heavens. I needed that kind of show precisely then, and I don’t think that there’s ever been anything like it since.

It’s almost as if it had been made only for me.

What’s the show about?

On the surface, Northern Exposure seems like a typical “duck out of water” comedy. Rob Morrow plays Joel Fleischman, a young doctor who agreed to serve a residency in Alaska in exchange for having his tuition covered by the state.

He expects to go to Anchorage, but at the last minute he finds himself on a bus to the remote town of Cicely where he meets an odd assortment of quirky characters.

You could say there’s a very strong element of magical realism. Basically, it seems impossible that a show like Northern Exposure and The A-Team could exist in the same reality.

Most of the kids I knew only watched The A-Team.

A place for everybody

What I’ve only recently come to appreciate is how well the show honestly embraces human differences, and yet still manages to depict a community living together in harmony.

I think it succeeds by never taking sides. Every viewpoint is represented and allowed to have a say, and then a solution is reached. There are consequences for the shortcomings of various ideologies, but there is no judgment.

The show contains many of the archetypes that you find in both society and literature. There’s a gruff conservative, a wise barkeep, a bubbly and beautiful young waitress, an ideological woman, a “big city” doctor who is a bit aloof, an aspiring filmmaker who is too innocent for his own good, a philosophical radio host, and on and on.

What makes Northern Exposure exceptional is that all of these characters are allowed to be unapologetically who they are.

Gentle criticisms of important social issues

In one especially poignant episode, Maurice, the gruff conservative, discovers he fathered a child back when he was stationed in Korea. When he discusses it with Chris, the radio host, Maurice finds himself struggling with his inherent racism.

Chris says, “Well, there’s a silver lining to this. Racism is learned.”

“Why is that a silver lining?” Maurice replies.

“Because you can unlearn it,” Chris says simply — (Paraphrased from Northern Exposure, Seoul Mates, S3E10).

I rewatched that episode this Christmas and that exchange gave me chills. What a beautiful, simple, and peaceful way to discuss a painful and difficult topic.

“Racism can be unlearned.” How can anyone object to a sentiment that’s so fundamentally kind.

Northern Exposure and my wife

Like many of the best things in my life, Northern Exposure seems to keep returning to my orbit. In the 90s, watching television shows was like hunting for animals in the wilderness. Just turning on a television required pulling a knob and waiting for the tube to heat up. I still remember having to wait for a light to appear at the center of the screen that would slowly expand. The television wasn’t “turned on” so much as “awakened.”

We seriously used a coat hanger for an antenna — Image by Walter Rhein

Every now and then I’d drift into a room and an episode of Northern Exposure would be playing. Sometimes it would feature the perpetually barefoot Adam and his wife Eve. Adam was a gruff and sarcastic gourmet chef/conspiracy-theorist who would stumble in from the woods to berate everyone and treat them to fine dining. In one episode his wife, a hypochondriac, kidnaps Joel and chains him to the bed to serve as her personal physician.

Hilarity ensues.

When I moved back to Wisconsin with my Peruvian wife, I thought she might appreciate the show. She particularly identified with Joel as he struggled to adapt to Alaska’s freezing climate. He bundles himself up with a ridiculous jacket, hat, and mittens and howls in misery. My wife laughed until she cried and it wasn’t all laughter.

“Oh my goodness!” my wife cried out as Joel tried to get used to the silence of the forest. It’s not as easy as it sounds because forest silence can sometimes include the scratching of raccoons. “I miss the sounds of traffic!” Joel screamed. My wife went “Yes! Yes! YES!”

Her first winter in Wisconsin was difficult, but Northern Exposure helped her realize she wasn’t the first person to struggle with the challenges she faced.

Watching ‘Northern Exposure’ with my kids

Last month, I was delighted to discover that Northern Exposure had made its way to Amazon Prime. My kids are now 11 and 13, and the humor and themes of the show land well with them.

Growing up, the character I most gravitated towards was Chris the philosophical radio personality/ex-convict. His radio show serves as the show’s narration. Chris is played by John Corbett who you might recognize from My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

If you’ve ever wanted to get a degree in English, watching Northern Exposure is the next best thing. Every episode, Chris name drops quotes and references from dozens of giants in both art and literature. Watching the shows now, with my kids, I’m often left shaking my head at how relevant all the selections are. They even mentioned the film Gaslight in an early episode. Today, more of the public is acquainted with the term “gaslighting,” but that wasn’t the case in the 90s.

There were a few times during high school and college when somebody came up to me and said, “You remind me of Chris from Northern Exposure.” To this day, I can’t think of a nicer compliment. Although I didn’t deliberately go through the show and take notes on all the writers Chris referenced, watching it now, 30 years later, I realized I’ve pretty much covered them all.

The magic of the wild

The love interest of the show is an attractive young bush pilot named Maggie. She’s played by Janine Turner who you probably know from Cliffhanger. Maggie is a romantic, but she’s troubled by the fact that all her boyfriends end up dying in bizarre circumstances. She’s left making wax shrines in their memory.

Again, hilarity ensues.

Joel and Maggie constantly get caught up in each other’s orbits. There’s good chemistry between them as they bicker. Sometimes they bicker in anger, sometimes they bicker in passion. It’s surprising how similar those emotions are. There are even some touching moments of true connection.

Maggie seems to appreciate those times more than Joel.

Unlucky in love

Joel is hardly Maggie’s only dating option, and the way things play out in Northern Exposure always keeps you on your toes. One episode begins with a mention that grizzly bears have come into the area. The next day, Maggie finds that her garbage cans have been turned over.

The day after that, Maggie’s truck gets stuck in the mud. She’s surprised when an extremely tall, handsome, Nordic-looking man in a nice but dingy looking sweater emerges from the forest to help her. He easily pushes the car free, smiles, waves, and retreats back into the woods.

Later, Maggie stumbles across this same man catching fish in the river with his bare hands. He invites her to his home which turns out to be a cave. He serves her mead, and tells her how his mother was shot by a hunter when he was very young.

During this episode, my kids turned to me and said, “Wait, is he a bear?”

The mysterious Nordic-looking man does not end up becoming the love of Maggie’s life, but they share some time together that’s rewarding and valuable for both of them.

As my own daughters take their first steps into the sometimes perilous world of romantic relationships, I appreciate stories that underscore how we’re surrounded by opportunities to create connections that sustain us, even if they don’t take the shape we expected.

I can’t think of anything else like it

Image by Walter Rhein

I’m currently on my third viewing of Northern Exposure. I can’t say that I’ve ever bothered to watch any other program more than once. Today, it brings back memories from when I was in high school. There are also memories from my first days back in Wisconsin when my marriage was still new. Watching this show with my kids is a way of sharing these memories with them.

These days, the thing I appreciate most is the kindness and the sense of hopefulness the show embodies. It does not shy away from presenting people and their faults. They endure the consequences of their beliefs, and their community rises to the occasion to ensure they overcome hardship together.

We all navigate a perilous road obscured by half-truths and outright deception. Fortunately, all it takes is a flicker of insight to get you through a long stretch of hopelessness and confusion. You find those flickers in the most unexpected places. Northern Exposure provided one for me.

_______________________________________________________________________

Thank you so much for those of you who sponsor me. I’m looking forward to working with you to make the world a little bit better.

All of these discounts are forever.

My CoSchedule referral link

Here’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).