Cast Chemistry Makes `Northern Exposure' Special

"Northern Exposure" explores territory familiar to most theater-goers. From William Saroyan's "The Time of Your Life," written in the '30s and set in a seedy bar, to Lanford Wilson's '70s tribute to a rundown hotel near the railway tracks, "The Hot L Baltimore," playwrights have delighted in creating a group of outsiders - wistful misfits, poets, love-hungry whores - and throwing them together in a location that seems to exist at the very end of the world.

In "Northern Exposure," the end of the world is the fictional town of Cicely, Alaska, founded at the turn of the century by a lesbian seeking to live in peace with her lover.

The town's appeal doesn't lie primarily in the moose that sashays down the main (and only) street at the beginning of each episode; or the characters' woolen hats and funky clothes; or the way the smoke hazes around the neon lights of the bar-restaurant where much of the action is set; or the rustic cabins whose heating and plumbing are constantly on the fritz; or the glorious, green vistas around Cicely.

It lies in the grave and beautiful courtesy with which the inhabitants invariably treat each other.

All the show's strengths - and its few weaknesses - were apparent in last month's Christmas episode.

Joel Fleischman is a frenetic, Jewish, nervously opinionated New Yorker, forced to practice in Cicely to work off his medical school debts. In this episode, he becomes fascinated with the idea of having a Christmas tree in his cabin. He tries to persuade several people to help him decorate his tree, and his fumblings make this common ritual seem marvelous and strange. Then he asks 65-year-old Ruth Anne (Peg Phillips), who works in Cicely's post office cum store, what decorations to buy.

She doesn't really know, she says. She hates to see Christmas trees. It bothers her to think of something vibrant and alive degenerating into a brown skeleton. And besides, she's not a Christian. She imagines God as female, she explains, not as having a human form, but as present in all things.

Philosophical speculation is a popular pastime in Cicely, and Ruth Anne can often be found chatting about life and death with Ed Chigliak (Darren E. Burrows), the young Indian whose goofy grin and halting speech mask real artistic brilliance.

Chris Stevens, or Chris-in-the-Morning, is played by John Corbett. He is a handsome young mail-order minister and a highly eccentric disc jockey. From his perch at the town's only radio station, he observes the people of Cicely, adding resonance to their activities with snatches of poetry, recycled Jungian concepts, gentle criticism, an occasional benediction and an eclectic collection of music.

The Christmas episode explores the meaning of myth and ritual. A Korean woman genuflects before a Buddhist shrine. Shelly (Cynthia Geary), an 18-year-old girl who's coupled with the 60-year-old Holling Vincoeur (John Cullum), yearns for the traditional ceremonies of her Roman Catholic childhood. The Indian legend of how the raven stole the sun and gave light to the world is brought to life and celebrated. And Joel eventually gives away his Christmas tree.

Other themes emerge: the meaning of family, of community. Maurice Minnifield (Barry Corbin), the one-time astronaut who dreams of a huge and commercialized Cicely, is visited by a Korean son he didn't know he had. He has always wanted a son. Now he has to face his own racist revulsion. Maggie O'Connell (Janine Turner), Joel's beautiful landlady, who flies small planes and fixes mechanical problems with ease, is turned into a fumbling klutz by her nervousness about spending the holidays with her parents.

There's something else that makes "Northern Exposure" very appealing. It's a sexy show. Sexy in a warm, sometimes surprising, but always grown-up way that never snickers or panders. Maurice, the astronaut, the epitome of masculine bravado and toughness, is passionately involved with a massive woman cop. She loves enforcing laws, no matter how petty, fondling guns and arresting people. To see Maurice beam proudly as she takes on Holling in the boxing ring is to see love at its most idealistic.

Then there's the relationship between Holling and his teen-age Shelly. It is, the script makes clear, based almost entirely on lust. Yet, perhaps paradoxically, it's also filled with passion and yearning, and shaped by a profound mutual respect.

In one episode, we learned that Chris periodically comes into something resembling heat. In this state, he gives off an odor that brings any woman he encounters flying to his side, filled with desire. Yet he cannot attract the quiet, plain little optometrist he's fallen head over heels for.

And of course, the attraction/revulsion between Joel and the confused and impulsive Maggie is the linchpin of the show.

"Northern Exposure" isn't perfect. Sometimes it seems to be trying too hard to be cosmic. Sometimes the pace is too slow; the Indians too wise; the whole thing too much like an urban sophisticate's wet dream of rustic simplicity. But when it flies, it flies.

Executive producers Joshua Brand and John Falsey were also the creators of "St. Elsewhere," which, over the years, metamorphosed from an intelligently written show into something resembling true art. "Northern Exposure" isn't there yet, but it's certainly heading in that direction.

In the meanwhile, Falsey and Brand have accomplished something very important. They have proved that you can take risks, you don't have to recycle stale and shallow formulas to attract an audience. Nor is it necessary to simplify scripts, or to assume that watchers will be turned off by anything unusual - unfamiliar music, riffs on the new physics, quotations from Robert Burns. Turns out people love these oddities. Especially if they're safely grounded in the human longings and dilemmas of the brilliant fools of Cicely.