Northern Exposure - The Complete First and Second Seasons [DVD]

OK, this is how it should have been done from the outset. For those who either don't know or don't remember, NORTHERN EXPOSURE was originally a summer replacement show, beginning to run only a couple of weeks after TWIN PEAKS in 1990. That first summer season ran 8 episodes and the following spring the second season ran for 7 episodes, meaning that Seasons One and Two run to a grand total of 15 episodes. Despite this, the first two seasons were originally released as separate box sets but priced as much as full single seasons. It was one of the most overpriced pair of sets in the relatively short history of DVDs. No sane person would have considered buying them (I rented from Netflix). Now, however, sane people can consider getting the first two seasons. I already own Seasons Three and Four, and now I can add Seasons One and Two.Before saying a couple of things about the seasons, let me say that people who complain about the soundtrack really need to . . . I apologize beforehand for any impoliteness here . . . shut up!!! Look, music substitution is just going to be part of the future from here on out in TV shows coming out on DVD. There is simply no way around it. Or rather, if you want to blame someone, blame ASCAP and BMI and RIAA. Here is the real deal: as long as these folks continue to exact such huge royalties for the use of songs, we are going to get vastly less expensive songs substituted for the original ones. There is simply no way around it. The makers of the DVDs have two choices: substitute music and sell the sets at reasonable prices or use the original music and sell the sets at absurdly high prices. Want to pay $100 per season of NORTHERN EXPOSURE? Well, neither do I. But to get the original music that is what it is going to cost. So, the choice really is substituting music or paying through the nose for our DVDs. This is the very reason why ALLY McBEAL may never some out on DVD. That show was written too tightly to particular songs to enable substitution. Right now they are unable to come up with pricing that makes it possible to bring it out on DVD. Someday? Maybe. But until such nonproductive entities as I mentioned above (especially RIAA), who own rights but really don't do anything for anyone that matters, especially the artists, start bringing the fees charged down to a reasonable level, substitution is going to be the standard practice.What gets me about NORTHERN EXPOSURE is how quickly it found itself. The surrealism that graced so many episodes would only come with the second season, but the atmosphere of weirdness took place almost immediately. In the first episode, it was at first Joel Fleischman who seemed a bit weird, as he bored some innocent fellow passenger on his flight to Alaska. But as soon as he was dropped off at the bus stop on his way to Cicely and was picked up by Ed Chigliak, he was one of the least eccentric residents of the town. The show made adjustments. Holling and Shelly were not at first as prominent as they later would be; Chris hadn't quite found himself as the spiritual voice of Cicely; Maggie wasn't yet as odd as she would become; and Peg Phillips as Ruth-Anne wasn't yet a permanent cast member. Still, as shows go, this one was pretty much in Season One the show we would know later. By Season Two, it was pretty much the show it would be through the first five seasons.One of my preoccupations in watching television has been the ways shows handle narrative. After HILL STREET BLUES in the early 1980s, the mark of most of what has come to be known by TV theorists as Quality TV shows has been multiple, ongoing narrative threads. Especially after advances in TV narrative by TWIN PEAKS and THE X-FILES, both of which overlapped with NORTHERN EXPOSURE, narratives were not merely multi-threaded but long term. NORTHERN EXPOSURE may have been the last Quality TV show to feature almost exclusively stand-alone episodes that resolve all or most of the story arcs with each episode. Especially after BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (1997-2003) virtually all Quality TV shows feature long and multiple story arcs (though popular with audiences, few critics or TV theorists have considered any of the shows in the LAW AND ORDER or CSI franchises Quality TV, but as regressions to an earlier period in TV history). One mark of more narratively complex shows is that they have to be shown in a particular order. For instance, you couldn't take an episode of Season Two of BUFFY and put it in Season Four. Although NORTHERN EXPOSURE does not utilize multiple story arcs or use long narrative, it does share this feature for the most part with other Quality TV shows. Although the DVDs frequently reorder the episodes compared with the original airing dates, frequent mention is made to previous episodes. It is an interesting way NORTHERN EXPOSURE varies from other shows structured around stand-alone episodes.This really is a very special television show, with one of the best collection of characters in the history of TV. I've told friends that while I have shows I like more, like BUFFY and ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT and ANGEL and FARSCAPE, if I had like the characters in PLEASANTVILLE enter a TV world and live there, my choice would definitely be Cicely. These are characters I've come to love and care about in a way that differs from any other collection of characters. And now that they have repackaged the first two seasons in saner fashion, any sane individual who wants to own them can.

Northern Exposure is a virtual treasure trove of psychological and mythological insight. As commentators have often mentioned, connections to Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell abound, both of whom are quite often conspicuously brought to mind by either express reference or indirect allusion. These connections can be followed by reading some of the material mentioned in the various narratives of the series and thereby discovering the practically unending depth and sophistication of many of the episodes. In my opinion the second and third seasons are the best, but all are well worth repeated viewing. I will not go into detail on specific episodes or try to give a synopsis of the whole, but rather list some associations of the characters in the series with personages and themes of Gnosticism that I have found which might help to shed some light on what is going on under the immediately visible surface. The theme of Northern Exposure, as I see it, is based on a Jungian/Campbellian inspired vision of how we as contemporary viewers can use the psychological and mythological insights of Gnosticism presented in the images of the series to help us find meaning in the everyday gnostic events we experience in our own lives, thereby helping us achieve some kind of spiritual growth and, just maybe, eventually leading to our own internal revivification, i.e., the metaphorical "virgin birth."Joel Fleischman, the Jewish doctor (healer), is mythologically, symbolically and phonetically associated with Yoel of the Gnostic texts, another Jewish healer better known as Yeshua or Jesus, whose sign is the fish (Yoel fisherman). Joel, while being initiated into the mysteries of existence as manifested in the human condition--Cicely, Alaska style--serves as our unwitting spiritual guide on the journey of Jungian individuation and spiritual realization. When we meet Joel he is 28, making him around 33 at the time of the completion of his quest, the age Yeshua was said to be at his end. Realization, by the way, is brought about by the transformative knowledge (gnosis) that human existence is an uncanny mystery (i.e. something like Socratic knowledge of ignorance), not by means of faith in the historical accuracy of supposed supernatural events, reduced, as Campbell liked to say, to a "newspaper report."Mary Margaret O'Connell (Maggie) is Joel's companion on this gnostic quest (like Mary Magdalene, with whom Mary Margaret is obviously phonetically linked, was for Yoel in the Gnostic tradition) and serves as the catalyst for his transformation--just as each sex serves as the mystical other for its opposite, knowledge of whom in some strange way serves as one of the keys to spiritual wholeness. Adam and Eve are of course Adam and Eve, whose insolence and hubris are obvious enough in various episodes, but who, in Gnosticism, are not "responsible" for the benighted, lost and alienated condition of humanity. Thus the origins of the primeval couple are at first a stupefying mystery, but, when we find out the truth about Adam and Eve in "Our Wedding" (a magnificent episode from season 3 that is inexhaustible of this stuff), things are not what we thought they were as taught by the institutional tradition. The other characters, with the exceptions of Maurice and Chris, would then of course be the apostles. Maurice is a kind of mild mannered Yaldabaoth, responsible for creating things as they are (he secured Joel's services and virtually owns the town) but unable to control everything, though, like Yaldabaoth the head archon, he would like to.This brings us to Chris, who in many ways is the keystone to the Gnostic interpretation of Northern Exposure, for he is the end towards which the others ascend. Chris can be viewed as someone who has realized what Joel is unknowingly searching for: the Christ within. Chris is the same age as Joel and Maggie and in many ways is the measure by which we can view their development. Having previously been a criminal but now reborn (internally resurrected--see the episode "Crime and Punishment," season 4), Chris, by virtue of the metaphorical virgin birth or spiritual realization in life, serves as a guide for others on how they too might realize the Christ within, by means of compassion, self-knowledge and spiritual honesty. Thus Joel is to Jesus as Chris is to Christ. Jesus is the physical, empirical component in Gnostic soteriology; Christ (Autogenes, literally "self-begotten") is the spiritual, metaphysical component. It is not an accident that after Joel leaves Alaska Maggie ends up with Chris, who is waiting as her spiritual mate following her transformation resulting from her initiation into the mysteries with Joel, who served as the physical catalyst for her spiritual awakening. It is only after Maggie receives salvific gnosis--which results in the transcendence of her past troubled relationships with men--that she can enter into her proper identity, no longer in a "relationship" (ego to ego), but rather in her own individuated identity, which now includes the male archetype as part of her Self--that Self being the divine feminine, the very source of wisdom and life, Mary Magdalene.This interpretation of Northern Exposure as a Jungian/Campbellian version of Gnosticism cast in a contemporary mold is neither complete nor exactly symmetrical, and it is not presented here as the gospel of Northern Exposure by any means; but hopefully it can serve as a skeleton key which might help to deepen appreciation and understanding of what is going on at some of the more esoteric levels of this marvelous series. There are certainly many other archetypes which could be delineated, but I think this Gnostic characterization is an overarching theme in the series that opens the door to more discoveries. Just try following some of the gnostic allusions in Northern Exposure; in doing so you will find that if you put forth a little effort and use your imagination the results will be magical in the alchemist's sense of the word.

A serious comedy about just about anything of importance to human nature. As one of the tags say, intelligent, and very funny while being very honest. This series isn't about Alaska or small towns, it is about human nature and the whole, huge, world we live in.Dr. Joel Fleischman, played by Rob Morrow, is trapped in a town in Alaska that he finds offbeat, strange, and, sometimes, dangerous. Many of the characters you will learn to love as Chris the DJ, played by the amazing John Corbett. There is also Holling as 62 year old the bartender, played by the calm and mild John Cullum, along with Maurice played by the, somewhat over the top, Barry Corbin. And there is Ed, the want to be filmmaker in search of his roots and a good story, played by Darren E. Burrows who happens to be the best character in the series. Well, to me anyway. And the beautiful Maggie, the bush pilot played by Janine Turner, who has the boyfriend curse.There are others, of course. The one episode Adam, Rick the fifth boyfriend, and others. None of them are really minor characters yet few are major. Even Doctor Fleischman sometimes seems to be in the background, almost part of the audience, trying to understand the logic that is Cicely, Alaska.While there are two seasons the total number of episodes are 15, as it was kind of a filler when it first came out. I am also not sure CBS was sure of the humor and didn't foresee it becoming a hit.It has tons of extras in the form of deleted scenes and unused footage. The best part is now I have been to Alaska a couple of times I know, and have been, to the cities they are talking about and understand some of the background.

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