`Northern Exposure': A Surprise Big Hitter

When Joshua Brand watches TV, he's always hoping to find something that surprises him.

Most of the time he's disappointed.

Like everyone who has grown up with TV, Brand already knows the rhythm of its jokes, the peaks and valleys of its dramas.

"I have a 7-year-old son, and he can sit and watch television and he already knows what the ends of the shows are," Brand said. "Even at 7 he's seen that many hours of television."

Unlike the rest of us, however, Brand can occasionally toss some rocks into television's predictable pond.

In 1982 he and his partner, John Falsey, created NBC's critically acclaimed "St. Elsewhere."

In 1987 they created the much-praised but short-lived "A Year in the Life."

Now they are the creative forces behind "Northern Exposure," a CBS series that wasn't supposed to be a hit - but suddenly is.

When CBS bought the first eight episodes of "Northern Exposure" for last summer, the show crept onto the schedule with little fanfare.

It was - well - strange.

A New York City doctor goes to work in Cicely, Alaska, a small town where people live according to their individual rhythms, not the normal TV rhythms. A 62-year-old man, one of the town's most respected citizens, is in love with a 19-year-old girl. The prettiest woman is a bush pilot who loved losers. The local disc jockey stops his music to read "War and Peace." A moose wanders benignly down Main Street.

In a recent telephone interview from the "Northern Exposure" offices in Santa Monica, Calif., Brand said CBS' executives immediately appreciated what he and Falsey had created. But they didn't think TV viewers would share their fascination.

"An audience won't get this. They'll think it's too far out. At best it will only have a cult audience," Brand said, reciting the executives' objections.

"They used `Twin Peaks' to show why we couldn't succeed," he said. "They'd all say, `I love the show, but will people watch it?' And my response was, `Well, you're a person. And you like it.' "

Brand's instincts were right.

Even with little publicity, "Northern Exposure's" summer audience grew halfway respectable. CBS, in need of midseason replacements, bought eight more episodes and began broadcasting them in April.

This time around, "Northern Exposure" attracted more publicity and a burgeoning audience. TV critics were lavish with their praise, and - more important - the show became the season's biggest water-cooler hit. People who missed "Northern Exposure" were suddenly out of the flow.

The finale May 20 ranked ninth in the national TV ratings. CBS ordered 13 new episodes for next fall and scheduled repeats for the entire summer. "Northern Exposure" had become a hit, a hit grown out of surprises, not formulas.

"I like to be surprised, so what we try to do is surprise ourselves," Brand said. "And then we surprise other people."

Surprising an audience isn't the same as shocking an audience. Simple shock comes easily - a vulgar word, a sexual innuendo, some exposed flesh, anything to inject excitement into a well-worn routine.

Surprising an audience, "Northern Exposure"-style, requires more skill. Everything must be woven into the fabric of the story. There can be no add-ons.

"Our characters are not trying to be quirky. They're not trying to behave against people's expectations," Brand said. "They are simply behaving in ways that are consistent with who they are as people. Then they surprise themselves, and they surprise other people."

"Northern Exposure's" biggest surprise this season came when Holling (the 62-year-old living with the 19-year-old, Shelly) decided to be circumcised because Shelly had never before seen a "little turtleneck." Before the episode ended, all of Cicely had become involved in the debate over whether Holling should go ahead with the painful surgery.

To some viewers, it may have been shocking. In fact, 40 percent of the mail about that episode was negative.

But for Brand, and for fans who had followed "Northern Exposure" since its beginning, the story figured naturally into Holling and Shelly's evolving relationship. He was an older man, worried about remaining sexually desirable. She was a teenager, making a casual comment. The story moved comfortably to a funny and tender conclusion. Holling didn't get circumcised - and Shelly thought that was just fine.

"We really looked at it in terms of a conventional May-December romance, the equivalent of an older guy who gets a hair transplant and buys a convertible to pick up young girls," Brand said. "It was about vanity. It wasn't about sex at all."

Most of "Northern Exposure's" surprises have been far more subtle.

In one episode, a stranger died in the doctor's waiting room and the townspeople refused to let the body be shipped to the big city for burial. Instead, they stood watch over the body, held a funeral service, shed tears.

The episode set a moral tone that is unusual for television.

Brand says emphatically that "we aren't trying to sell anyone a set of beliefs . . . . We don't have any agenda." But while there isn't any formal talk about religion, the people of Cicely succeed in being good to each other in a way that most religious groups only aspire to.

"What we've tried to create is essentially a non-judgmental universe," Brand said. "The only thing that is really judged in this universe is malice, intent to do harm to people."

Nowhere was that sentiment more apparent than in the season finale, when Maurice, a former astronaut and the town's wealthiest resident, was outraged to learn that two men he had befriended were gay.

When the story ended, Maurice hadn't overcome his prejudices.

But in the final scene, when the gay couple walked onto the dance floor at Holling's bar and put their arms around each other, Maurice shook his head in confusion, not disgust. Meanwhile the other townspeople continued dancing, unperturbed. Young, old, fat, thin, homely or attractive - they accepted the newcomers' uniqueness as unquestioningly as they accepted their own.

In the real world, of course, people aren't that way.

"We are constantly judging and being judged. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone's trying to get a promotion, or recognition, or love or fame." Brand said. "But in Cicely, everybody's OK."

Still, one worrisome question does rub at the edges of Cicely's borders. Can a fragile little world, so full of love and surprises, survive the harsh reality of network TV?

A promising sign is that CBS has given the series a good time slot, 10 p.m. Mondays, after the network's popular comedy line-up.