The birds of Cicely, Alaska
Northern Exposure's ravens, redpolls, cranes, curlews, ptarmigan, towhees, and more.
In my 20s I was once so heartbroken after a break-up that I moved to the Arctic circle1. It wasn’t motivated purely by a desire to freeze my heart and never feel pain again. I also thought that maybe the town I was moving to (which had a population of less than 500) could be my very own Cicely. It kind of fit the criteria, in that it was cold and isolated, and was also home to bears, moose, and ptarmigan.
If you’ve ever watched Northern Exposure then you have probably also experienced a longing for the fictional town of Cicely too. A longing to sit in the Brick listening to Chris in the morning on KBHR, to be best friends with Ruth-Anne, to have Marilyn teach you how to knit, and Adam cook for you, and to adorn your Christmas tree with ravens.
What you’re most likely longing for when you’re dreaming of Cicley though is community. Not a personally curated online community (not dissing, I love them), not even a group of people with similar views necessarily, but an actual real life community that feasts together, fights when it’s needed, puts out fires for each other, and even does their laundry communally.
If you haven’t watched the show, which ran from 1990 - 1995, allow me to be that one annoying friend that relentlessly recommends something until you give in.
As nice as it is to dip out of the real world (more so than ever at the moment) and into a fictional world where people embrace in the street to wish each other a Bon Hiver2, watching Northern Exposure is not an entirely escapist endeavour.
I think watching this show can be medicinal.
Your back might be up a little now, and I wouldn’t blame you. In much the same way that every indulgence does not need to be reframed as “resistance”, they also do not need to be reframed as medicinal, as a way to ‘wellness’. Maybe it would help if I started off by saying that stories can be medicine. That’s easier to swallow right? TV shows are stories3, and thus can be medicine too. You could also spend your life bathing in the glow of a screen and ignore the world outside completely, it’s only the dose that makes the poison.
If I was to go through every single episode and break down what I love about them (this would get harder in season 6), and little details that I notice, it would take me forever, and Moosechick and the people at Alaskan Riviera have already done an incredible job of this. Instead, I am only going to write about the episode with birds in them (of which there are plenty), and the medicine therein.
This is part 1 of 24, the second half will come later in the year.
Season 1. Episode 2. Brains, know-how, and native intelligence.
Written by Stuart Stevens. Directed by Peter O’Fallon.
This episode opens with Chris Stevens talking over the airwaves of KBHR 570 AM, delivering a monologue that introduces what Northern Exposure is all about far more deftly than the pilot episode5 did.
“It was a day not unlike any other in the summer of 1976. I, a boy of 15, and my oldest and dearest friend, Dickie Heath, having just stolen a car from the parking lot of a ShopEasy, and finding ourselves with nothing much to do, entered a house on Fox Hill Lane.
While Dickie rifled the upstairs for valuables, I entered the sitting room where, while pocketing a gold-leaf pen and a silver humidor, came across the book that completely and irrevocably changed my life.
So, this morning, Chris in the Morning is gonna dispense with the weather and traffic report and local news and get down with the complete works of Walt Whitman.”
He then goes on to read out When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d, a poem that touches on some of the recurring themes in Northern Exposure, like death, and birds6.
Cicely’s radio station is owned by Maurice Minnifield, who does not take kindly to Chris following the poem reading by broadcasting that “Whitman, that great bear of a man, enjoyed the pleasures of other men”. Chris is fired (and punched), and Maurice takes over his spot, and plays nothing but showtunes (including Shall We Dance? from The King and I).
Maurice is a millionaire who sees dollar signs in every natural resource, an Okie by birth, a former marine and astronaut, and the towns resident bigot. He’s deeply flawed, but he’s complex and fleshed out in such a way that he is often quite likeable7. As Chris says, later in the episode, Maurice’s mind is “deep where you think it's gonna be shallow and it's shallow where it should be deep.”
While the B plot in this episode is about Walt Whitman’s sexuality, and Maurice’s problem with Chris talking about it, the main storyline is about plumbing and pride. Joel is having problems with the plumbing in his cabin, and Ed’s Uncle Anku is having problems with the plumbing in his body. Both Joel and Anku initially let their pride get in the way of getting their plumbing fixed.
Uncle Anku, played by Frank Salsedo, is a Native American healer8, who describes what he does as; “Holding the patient's hand, keeping their spirits up, maybe a little psychology. Plant root here, placebo there.” He says he would rather die than lose face with his patients by seeking conventional treatment for his condition, which turns out to be prostate cancer.
Joel’s arrogance (emphasised by him telling Anku that he fills the New York Times crossword out in pen) gets in the way of Maggie (“Cicely’s best plumber”) fixing his toilet and shower. He can’t stop being a dick to her, even when they’re interacting as doctor and patient. Joel’s arrogance is a core part of his character though, and Maggie brings it out in him like nobody else can.
This episode doesn’t only introduce Chris, birds, death, and Maurice’s bigotry. It also brings us another recurring theme; dancing.
After their discussion about medicine, Anku tells Joel he always found dancing to be one of the best remedies, and asks Joel to give it a go. Joel protests initially, but then does as he is told and steps like Anku, around their sitting room.
When Maggie has to see Joel in his capacity as a doctor, it’s because she has worsened her trick knee in a dancing mishap (zigging when she should have zagged).
The way they dance tells us a lot about who they are, Joel has to be convinced to dance, and after he does he rants about it to Ed and says he is finished with Anku. Dancing, despite a trick-knee, is very Maggie. In fact, I’d wager that she’s more likely to dance when there’s risk of injury.
Even Maurice kind of dances9, in a very Maurice fashion. When he visits Joel for advice, he stamps around on the floors of his new office (“not too soft”) in a way that is reminiscent of Joel and Anku’s dancing, but if an angry bull had been taught the steps.
By the end of the episode Maurice has found a way to swallow his pride and rehire Chris, Anku has realised “Pride is a powerful narcotic, but it doesn't do much for the autoimmune system”, and Joel has not only found a way to “think like a salmon to catch a salmon” (Maggie being the fish in question), but even drops some of his arrogance about Western medicine, and declares that if they taught dance in medical school he’d probably be a better doctor.
Birds - Ruddy turnstones. There is also a hermit thrush in Walt Whitman’s poem, and Maurice talks about “vultures and bookworms” when discussing what Whitman’s legacy might be.
Art - When Lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed - the Walt Whitman poem which Chris reads out. West side story, Guys and Dolls, Brigadoon, The King and I. “Yul Bryner would have made an outstanding flyboy”. The film Little Big Man, Bergman films in general (Joel doesn’t like them). Kiss me Kate. The Quiet Man (the only John Wayne film that Maurice didn’t like, it bored the hell out of him).
Other fauna, flora & fungi - Uncle Anku talks about stripping willow bark (and points out that it’s the same as aspirin10), and collecting loganberries before the bears get to them. The sauna, won in a bingo tournament, is cedar.
Food - KFC (flown in from Anchorage), uncle Anku tells Joel he figured he’d prefer it to seal steak. A stale donut that Joel would like to eat in peace. The salami sandwich Joel offers Uncle Anku.
Scents - The bus fumes that Joel says he can’t sleep without.
Best line - After Anku advises him to think like a salmon to catch a salmon, Joel says he was “up all night trying to think like a shower”, and Ed advises him he should maybe “start with something easier. Like a sink or faucet.”
Crew - Stuart Stevens wrote one other episode, Jules et Joel, which is one of my least favourite episodes of all. He didn’t write for TV for long, and ended up becoming a political strategist.
Trivia - Joel says at one point that he isn’t “some Grizzly Adams type”. The actor who played Anku in this (Frank Salsedo) was in a Grizzly Adams film 8 years later.
Footnote - Joel says he has “two left feet, and the right one doesn’t have much rhythm either”, he tells Maggie that he can sew up the puncture wounds that Rick must have puncture wounds from her “walking all over him in those heels”, and he also tentatively dips a toe in the lake by Chris’, before jumping in (there is something baptismal about this scene). Maurice says that the Marshall boys gave John Wayne “feet of clay” when they revealed he didn’t do his own fight scenes.
Further reading/watching listening on this episode - Again, Alaskan Riviera did a great write-up on this. While not specifically about this episode, I think it is worth listening to this podcast interview with Elaine Miles (who plays Marilyn) talking about Native representation in Northern Exposure (and only partly because Elaine has the most delicious sounding laughter of all time), or you can read this short piece about the same subject.
Medicine - This can be for when the only thing you need to swallow is your own pride, or it can be medicine for when you don’t know what medicine you need. It’s learning how to make a medicinal formula. You need a bit in the formula that helps the other ingredients work.
Sometimes if you’re making a herbal concoction, you need ginger or licorice in it to help get the medicine moving around the body. So Uncle Anku has an oncologist, but he also dances. It’s also recognising that sometimes dance won’t be enough, you’ll need the onocologist or the antibiotics.
This is the medicine that says if you can, you should find a way to add dance to all of your formulas.
If you can’t dance, you should watch something or someone dancing, be it a tree in the wind, or flamenco dancers (if you can, watch in person in a Sacromonte cave and it will feel like horses are galloping through your heart, and cure all your ills for one hour+).
Similar medicines - Watching Harold and Maude, The Nicholas brothers, Top Hat, or even that Take me to church video.
On Substack - Wendy Varley’s piece on dance school.
The really good bird episodes start in season 3, and are done with by the end of season 5.
Season 3. Episode 8. A-hunting we will go.
Written by Craig Volk. Directed by Bill D’elia. Costume & wardrobe dept - Katharine Bentley & Mimi Melgaard. Art dept - Sean Everett. Set decoration - Bill Hilliker.
This is one of my all-time favourite episodes, and is one of three perfect episodes in a row, all of which feature birds. Seasons 3 and 4 are the peak birdy seasons for NX.
Joel and Maggie’s relationship, which is fraught with sexual tension, starts off on the wrong foot in the pilot episode, when he mistakenly thinks she is trying to solicit him for sex. Joel continues to be at his most hostile towards Maggie when he views her as a maneater, as a devourer. While it’s true that all five of her former boyfriends have died in unusual accidents, she’s no murderer of men. Maggie is a killer, however, of deer.
When Joel sees Maggie with a dead deer in the back of her rig, and then learns that she has shot it (and seems pretty happy about the fact), he is horrified and calls her morally repugnant for killing such a “majestic beast” with “noble antlers”. Maggie retorts (fairly, I think) “You eat meat, don’t you? Well, say hello to meat!”, and then asks him what he knows about “Majestic, or wild, or even animal for that matter?”
Ruth-Anne visits Joel to get her foot injury looked at, and he grills both her and Marilyn (his receptionist) on their view of hunting too. Marilyn fishes, and Ruth-Anne said she used to hunt a lot, and enjoyed skinning the animals.
The only female main character we don’t see Joel discussing hunting with is Shelly, who incidentally is the only one who isn’t single.
During the discussion about her foot, Ruth-Anne mentions that she wants to get back on her feet in time for Sadie Hawkins night at the church social. I had to google this, having never heard of the person, let alone a whole night dedicated to her. It transpires that Sadie Hawkins day/night comes from a L’il Abner comic strip, and is a day when women can ask men for a dance or a date.
Of course, this episode is very much about meat and hunting, but in the subtext there is definitely a lot of exploration around gender roles, and why if you’re someone who reduces those roles to ‘predator’ and ‘prey’ or ‘the hunter’ and ‘the prize’, it might feel intimidating (“repugnant” even) to realise the roles can be switched. Maybe it’s easier to deal with if you assign one day a year for reversing the order.
By the time Joel talks to the men (Chris and Holling) about hunting, he’s far more receptive to the whole idea, and doesn’t berate them for enjoying it, or ask them if they have pangs of guilt after. Following a discussion where Chris tells him that humans have incisors for tearing into meat (“blood dripping off the fangs”), and Holling tells him “we’re predators, Joel, with eyes in the front of our head like other predators - wolves and bears and owls”, Joel asks to go hunting with them.
I think it’s notable, after Holling’s talk about being a predator like a wolf, that when Shelly sees the three men off on their trip, she is wearing fluffy dog (the wolf, domesticated) slippers on her feet.
Some people view falling in love as being consumed, all your independence and wildness eaten up. Holling swapped his rifle for a camera a while ago, but it seems to be the love of Shelly Tambo that has domesticated a man that has been “doing the wild thing” for 56 years. When Joel wants to know what Holling’s best kill was, Holling just wants to talk about what Shelly will be doing back at The Brick, and later he tells her that he has come to prefer home fires to campfires.
Chris teaches Joel how to shoot, advising him to “Note the rise, the arc. Lock on to it. Take the bird inside you”. There’s a wonderful contrast between the lightness in the way Chris accepts his place in the food chain, and the heaviness of Joel, who (later) tells Shelly that every inert body becomes like a lead weight inside him.
Back in Cicely, Ed learns that Ruth-Anne has recently turned 75 and becomes concerned about her mortality, fussing over her and telling her that she fits the profile for an aneurysm or ovarian cancer. His preoccupation with her lifespan, and desire to get her a birthday present that will keep on giving, come together when he gifts her a burial plot as a late birthday present.
That’s the other kind of devouring this episode deals with, the one that Mother nature does of everyone and everything at some point. As Chris says, “man becomes the food of the divinity he worships”. All your gods will eventually eat you up.
Ed and Ruth-Anne’s friendship is my favourite relationship in the whole show, and the final scene of this episode is the most perfect scene between the two of them. Ed takes Ruth-Anne to the plot of land he has bought for her, and when she learns that it’s a burial plot (for some time in the future, not at Ed’s hands. This is not The Sopranos) she suggests that they seize “the opportunity of a lifetime” and dance together on her future grave.11
Birds -“we’re going to kill birds”. Holling wants to go to a place called Broken Wing. On the shelf behind Ruth-Anne in the store is a cap with what appears to be a dancing Canada goose on it in. Pigeons, which Jerry Sweeny used to shoot. Grouse, which until now Joel had only seen in still lifes at The Met. “is there some kind of night animal we can blow away? An owl?” Ruth-Ann has Cornish game hens in her freezer.
Wardrobe - Shelly has troll doll earrings and wolf/dog slippers. Ruth-Anne has a sweatshirt with a deer with camera on its antlers. Joel wears bright orange hunting gear which according to Shelly makes him look “like a creamsicle.” Maggie has a duck print shirt.
Art - Films - The reversal of fortune and The fortune cookie for Ed and Ruth-Anne to watch together. Old yeller. White fang. The black stallion.
Food - T-bone wrapped in cellophane - which is what Joel says God gave us, from animals who didn’t know a better way of life. Kosher chicken soup for Ruth-Anne’s broken leg, Cherry garcia ice cream. Rainbow jello straight, no sprinkles or whipped cream, for Ed when he talks about Ruth-Ann’s age at The Brick. Beans and smoked oysters as Holling, Joel, and Chris sit around the fire. Eggs over-easy that Shelly tells Holling off for offering to Joel. Cornish game hens. Pot roast (Ruth-Ann says she can live with a dormant sex life at her age, but not without a pot roast). A lemon. Cornflakes. Cooked grouse (the first patient that Joel has ever eaten).
Best line - This was originally going to be a space for Shelly’s best line of every show, and she has some great ones in this (about taking her pet angelfish for a walk in a pickle jar, and salting oatmeal with your tears), but Joel’s “the killing was the best part, it was the dying I couldn’t take” is the standout line for me in this episode. In fact if you replaced the grouse with a person, and turned this into a gangster drama, most of the lines would still work perfectly, I’m especially thinking of when Chris says Joel has “Yeah, shame of Cain syndrome”, and that the first one is always like a brother.
Footnote - Ruth-Anne’s metatarsal injury, Maggie tells Joel to watch he doesn’t shoot himself in the foot, Holling says that Thursday is Shelly’s toe-polishing night, and Ruth-Anne’s grandmother was buried wearing her dancing clogs on her feet.
Crew - This is the only episode of Northern Exposure that Craig Volk wrote, which I think is a crying shame considering the quality of it12. You may notice that, after the writer(s) and director I am writing the names of the people in the wardrobe, art, props, and set decoration departments. That is because there are so many subtle details that come through in these areas.
Trivia - Ruth-Anne asks Ed if he’s been watching St Elsewhere reruns at one point. This was another TV show created by Joshua Brand and John Falsey (the creators of Northern Exposure).
Medicine - very similar to the medicine in ‘Brains, know-how, and native intelligence’, but this is a dance with the inevitability of death. It’s howling at the moon, and dancing on your own grave, and learning how to embrace the great devourer.
Similar medicines - The Emerald - On trauma and vegetation gods. Harold and Maude (again).
On Substack - Rosie Whinray’s piece on the immortality of stone has a great bit on deer and antlers.
Season 3, episode 9. Get real.
Written by Diane Frolov & Andrew Schneider. Directed by Michael Katleman. Costume & wardrobe dept - Katharine Bentley & Mimi Melgaard.
Magic is an integral part of Northern Exposure. In Cicely weather patterns can completely change a personality, you can dream your neighbours dream if the aurora are active, the trees scream when they’re in distress, magical portals open up if you know the answer to a riddle, and sometimes people can fly like birds.
This is the first introduction we have to a flying human. The Flying Man (aka Enrico Bellati, aka Bob Wilson) has come to town with the circus.
“Today, we'd like to extend a hearty K-Bear welcome to the Ludwig Wittgenstein Masquerade and Reality Company. The water pump on their '68 Blue Bird school bus gave up the ghost, and the troupe's gonna be with us ‘til a replacement can be found.”
What’s in a name? Some clues as to the themes of this episode.
The name of the bus is the first of many subtle references to birds and flight throughout the episode, and the name of the circus troupe refers to a 20th century philosopher.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, who studied philosophy under Bertrand Russell at Cambridge, explored language, logic, metaphysics, and (later), the concept of magic, especially in its relation to science. Somehow, almost all of these topics are crammed into a sublime 45 minute long episode of TV.
Wittgenstein’s most famous quote is about the limitations of language, “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”13
Marilyn is wooed by the mute Bob/Enrico/Flying man. Despite the fact that he never speaks a word, Marilyn is able to communicate with him with total ease, but then silence is her wheelhouse.
There are some episodes that pair with others in a way that helps you to give a fuller understanding of both, even when they are by different writers. The Flying Man makes one other appearance in Cicely, in season 4, episode 6 ‘On your own’, and in that episode Marilyn says one sentence that illuminates the speech theme in this episode; “Words are a heavy thing, like rocks. They weigh you down. If birds talked they couldn’t fly”.
Magic has a bigger storyline than the weight of words here though; it is dealt with in Chris’ conversations with the magician, about physics vs magic, and in Holling’s perception of Shelly.
I’ll start with Shelly as seen by Holling, or rather Shelly’s feet. There’s a reason I have included a note on foot references for every bird episode. I don’t know why, but feet often feature in the episodes with birds14. While Chris and the magician are discussing quantum physics and the many worlds theory, Shelly is behind the bar rubbing her tired feet and telling Holling about how her mum’s toes are like big bird claws. Holling looks horrified.
You know that thing that can happen when you’re still in the honeymoon period with a person, and you put them on a pedestal and think that everything about them is magic? That they exist at all is miraculous and so is every single thing about them? Holling has been doing that to Shelly, and now all of a sudden he is seeing her in a more human light. He used to see angels and swans when he looked at her feet, but now all he sees are feet, and big, unattractive feet at that. The magic has gone.
Holling looks to Chris for advice, as he is “a man who understands women” apparently, but all he tells Holling is that he isn’t into “real” relationships himself, and as soon as there is a chink in the romantic armour he is “finito Benito”.
Chris delivers a monologue on air about Merlin (Arthurian Merlin) quitting wizardry because he perceived that the time for magic had come to an end and the rationalists were taking over. The magic had gone. Only, Chris argues, it really hadn’t gone, and Merlin should have stuck around “'cause those same rationalists trying to put a rope around reality suddenly found themselves in the psychedelic land of physics, a land of quarks, gluons and neutrinos, a place that refuses to play by Newtonian rules, a place that refuses to play by any rules, a place much better suited to the Merlins of the world”.
Birds - the circus bus is a 68 bluebird, the blue heron picture behind Shelly when she asks Holling to hand her her socks, the racing pigeons in the birdman of Alcatraz, Maggie’s gull mug that Shelly drinks from, The grouse on the ground that The flying man/Bob throws food for on his picnic date with Marilyn. Holling’s bird robe., the bird on totem pole behind Marilyn when she’s talking to Bob about not going on the bus.
Other fauna, flora, fungi - Bear, deer heads on wall. The flying man has a floral arrangement that seems to be rowan leaves and berries, for Marilyn.
Wardrobe - Shelly has rainbow fish earrings and Watermelon patterned socks. Hollings green jacket against green wall looks great, there are lots of greens and blues in general. Ruth-Ann’s Born to bingo sweatshirt. Leopard print bodysuit of the contortionist and the Leopard print tights that Shelly wears.
Art - Birdman of Alcatraz. Red rose by Robert Burns.
Food - Fried burritos (the magician and palm-readers daughter, who was supposed to get steamed vegetables). Soup, biscuits, potatoes at Marilyn’s parents. Grapes at Bob and Marilyn’s picnic. The leg of lamb Maggie is going to rub with garlic and cook with cous-cous for her and Shelly.
Best line - “I’d rather have big feet than a mean little heart any day” - Shelly.
Footnote - Besides Shelly’s feet, there is also Joel moaning about treating athletes foot, and the contortionist dangling her feet in front of her mouth. A subtle callback to Brains, know-how and native intelligence where Maurice can’t cope with his heros being given “clay feet”, here Holling can’t cope with Shelly having human feet.
Crew - I have SO much to say about the writers (who, along with another writing couple, write the best episodes) that I am going to have to save it for a part 2, where I will have more space to write about the connections between Northern Exposure and The Sopranos.
Trivia - The flying man is played by Bill Irwin. Bill is also a clown15 (a graduate of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College), one of the founders of The Pickle Family Circus, and Mr Noodle in Sesame Street. This is Armenia Miles’ second appearance in Northern Exposure, she played Mrs Anku in S1, ep 2, but in this episode she plays Marilyn’s mum (she is Marilyn’s mum irl).
Medicine - It’s the looking that gives a thing it’s magic. The medicine in this is to get a good microscope and look up close at something until it regains its magic. Sometimes you have to zoom right out and sometimes you have to zoom right in. Take your lover down from their pedestal, and get into them on a subatomic level. The advice Chris should have given to Holling - zoom right into her massive foot, until it might as well be a swan again.
Similar medicine - Buy/borrow/get someone to gift you a telescope, a good magnifying glass, or a jewelers loupe. For maths magic, read Mister God, this is Anna by Fynn. For the weight of words, read The spell of the sensuous by David Abram (I haven’t finished it yet, so can only truthfully recommend the first two thirds of the book right now).
On Substack - Siv Watkins whole substack about microanimism.
Season 3, episode 10. Seoul mates.
Written by Diane Frolov & Andrew Schneider. Directed by Jack Bender. Costume & wardrobe dept - Katharine Bentley & Mimi Melgaard. Art dept - Sean Everett. Set decoration - Bill Hilliker.
I’m a sucker for Christmas TV. In fact, if you made me choose between having no presents at Christmas or not watching TV, I would choose no presents.
I won’t bore you with a big list of all the things that I love to watch during the festive season, but I will tell you that there are only a few that I consider to be essential annual viewing; The Snowman, Father Ted - A Christmassy Ted, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Northern Exposure - Seoul Mates.
Christmas is a sensuous experience, it’s full of glorious smells, sights, sounds, and tastes, and Northern Exposure is a sensuous show, which makes them a perfect pairing (like port and stilton, turkey and cranberry, etc).
Sight and hearing might be the only two senses that can be reached through the TV (at the moment), but that doesn’t stop Northern Exposure from constantly conjuring up smells and tastes in your mind.
This is a particularly sensual episode, jam-packed with smells and tastes, and they’re used to evoke feelings and memories. As Dave and Ed are unloading Christmas trees, Joel comments on how the smell evokes so much, images of sleigh rides and snowmen. When Shelly was watching “that fat Italian singer and the little boys choir in the big ol’ cathedral” it was like she could almost smell the incense. Smell conjures image, image conjures smell, and all of it makes one nostalgic.
The only bird in this episode is the raven, but it takes many forms; raven decorations around town, the wooden raven that Chris is carving, the hand-painted Czech raven glasses Shelly is cleaning, the raven menorah in Joel’s cabin, the raven atop Maurice’s aluminum Christmas tree, Ruth-Anne’s pumpernickel raven bread, raven t-shirts, Chris’ raven hat, and the raven Christmas tree decorations.
When Joel asks Marilyn why the town is covered in ravens and what they have to do with Christmas or the winter solstice, Marilyn tells him a story where the bird also takes the form of a spruce needle and a boy. Marilyn is Tlingit, raven clan, and the raven is an important figure in Tlingit stories16, so it appears on totem poles and t-shirts throughout the series, but this is the only time it really gets to be the star of the show.
The story that Marilyn tells Joel is told again, in a really beautiful pageant, at the end of the show and it culminates in the raven bringing the gift of light to the world.
The best gifts here are intangible; light from the raven to humanity (and Joel to Maggie), Chris’ guidance on concentric circles and learned behaviour to Maurice, Duk Won’s show of strength and appreciation for sour mash, and Holling’s song.
Birds - All the ravens previously listed.
Wardrobe - Maggie’s Mrs Claus coat (red parka with white-ish fur lined hood). Shelly has Christmas lights earrings and Christmas stocking earrings. All the raven merch.
Art - “That really fat Italian singer” aka Pavarotti? - Shelly. Charlie Brown Christmas - Shelly. Fly me to the stars - sung by Maurice’s son to Maurice. Chris reads out The raven by Poe and some of the words to the Christmas song The Friendly Beast (this scene often makes me cry).
Smells - Spruce tree. Incense. Ruth-Ann’s bread which Joel comments on the smell of.
Food - is very linked to identity in this episode. Pork chops. Ruth-Anne’s pumpernickel bread. Rice and kimchi at Maurice’s house. Eggnog (made by Dave). Chestnuts that Joel wants to roast. Plum pudding (“scratch it and there’s a matzoh ball underneath”). Maraschino cherries (Maurice recollecting who his son’s mother was).
Best line - “I always admired atheists. I think it takes a lot of faith.” - Joel
Footnote - Joel looks at Maggie’s foot when she goes to his house, because she has tripped and hurt her ankle.
Crew - Frolov & Schneider won a well-deserved Emmy for the writing of this episode.
Further reading/watching listening on this episode - This piece from AV club on this episode.
Medicine - This is medicine for when you’re trying to get someone the perfect gift, and nothing feels quite right and you don’t want to give Jeff Bezos your money. Just sing them a beautiful song, work on unlearning your bigotry, beat them in an arm wrestle, or throw a lasso around the moon and pull it down for them.
It is also medicine for when it feels like it has been dark for too long and you need the light back. Maybe gift someone else some light.
Similar medicine - Gift yourself some good sniffs. Go smell some flowers, or your lovers sweaty armpit, or woodsmoke, or horse shit, or hay, or your mothers perfume.
Light a candle for someone else.
Say thank you to any raven you encounter.
On Substack - Quinn MacRorie’s Christmas movie sniff-along piece.
Some birdless pieces will be coming up in the next few months, because I really want to write about my time in the Arctic circle, and also about the neighbourhood of Watts, and I can’t shoehorn birds into them just for the sake of it.
Good winter! This is where Bon Iver got their name from.
Films too. I omitted them from this sentence because I (generally speaking) much prefer television.
It was all going to be one piece originally, but that would have been stupidly long, chapbook length.
I find that so many pilots are either clumsy in their exposition, or confusing (preferable) in their lack of it. Northern Exposure’s first episode falls into the former camp. It’s still really good TV, but I don’t think it gets going until episode 2.
Sometimes I fantasise that Northern Exposure gets a reboot, and I get to pick the writers. I’d keep Joshua Brand (John Falsey died in 2019), and my favourite writing duos (Frolov & Schneider, Green & Burgess), and I would add Sterlin Harjo, Bayo Akomolafe, Rosie Whinray, and Chloe Hope (who writes Death & Birds on Substack).
One of the reasons for this is that he is capable of growth and change, like almost everyone in Cicely. I often think about whether I see the world through more of a Northern Exposure lens (people change and evolve for the better mostly), or through the lens of one of my other favourite shows; Succession (people don’t really change, and if they do it’s often to devolve). The two wolves inside me are TV writers.
In this episode he is also referred to as a Medicine Man, and a Witch Doctor. The latter term is used for the sake of a very silly bit of 1940s comedy style dialogue between Joel and Ed. “Which doctor?” “Witch doctor” etc
If you see fighting like dancing, which I do, then Chris and Maurice have also danced together (in a fashion) at the beginning of the episode.
This is a neat little nod to the fact that lots of conventional Western medicine comes from traditional medicine in the first place. The Salicin present in willow bark is turned into Salicyclic acid in the body. This is what was first synthesised to make Aspirin, and chemists wouldn’t have known about it had it not been for thousands of years of people using willow bark as an analgesic in herbal medicine.
I think Mike Judge (who references Northern Exposure more explicitly in another episode) is paying homage to this episode when he has Cotton and Peggy Hill dance together on Cotton’s burial plot in season 4 of King of the Hill.
He ended up becoming an associate professor of theater, film, and video production at the University of Colorado-Denver.
I hadn’t heard of Wittgenstein before, so in order to speak about him at all I read some of his work on archive.org, and I read a whole David Graeber piece on him, and then watched a bunch of documentaries, and then (and I don’t have a good excuse for this) I put his birth chart and Bertrand Russell’s birth chart into my big crazy spreadsheet to compare them (very very similar FYI). I have some kind of research disease, and I don’t know what episode the medicine for that is in. All of that to write one small sentence and quote.
There was an episode I decided not to write about, because there are no actual discussions of birds (just lots of bird noise, and an opportunity for me to go on about how much Foley artists love the call of the loon), but in it Adam’s footprints play a large role.
Adding this in for no other reason than to brag, I know THREE clowns separately of each other and they are all great.
Wow this is immense. I haven’t seen NE in years but it’s made me want to go back there and linger for a while. So much fun.
This is amazing! Thank you for writing this!