Cicely News & World Telegram 49
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invented earflap-chic, viewers might not be Surely the show has earned its right to stand And flnally, it did not titillate with the able to make sense out of the more apart. Two seasons into its run, Northern seductive whiff of chic evil: There is the recentJoshua Brand-John Falsey creation Exposure is gaining texture, self-assurance - occasional corpse on the series, but no without an interpreter's guide. Or a Native and devoted followers - almost with each new sinister presences lurk out there in the pines: American guide. Or at least an L.L. Bean episode. Two seasons into its run, the late and no psychotic glow lights the eyes of secondary catalogue. unlamented Twin Peaks on ABC was headed characters. in the opposite direction, an interesting blind date that So why is it, then. that Northern Exposure had gone increases its exposure long after Twin Peaks sour. peaked? The murky, I think the secret lies in the fact that Brand mood- and Falsey have managed to create, gently drenched and patiently, what David Lynch promised to series had create, and what for a brief, entrancing opened to a interval it seemed that he had created, until cascade of the archness and falsity of his vision self- welcoming destructed: reviews. This was ... A place. A radient, many-layered, slightly TV's long- magical place, as achingly real and yet just- awaited out-of-reach as a dream you start to forget as union of art soon as you wake up. A place set off in and mass- glorious isolation from the rest of the world, appeal but urgently alive with its own rules. its own The real-life location for Northern Exposure's entertainment - remember? The critics were memories, its own secrets. and most of all, its Cicely, Alaska is Roslyn, Wash. thrilled by Lynch's menagerie of offbeat own community of characters: flinty, scruffy, characters, his avant-garde cinematic silly, often bickersome and self-deluding To all that, I say ... moose-patties! Or, techniques (dreamlike pacing; lingering, characters who collide and scheme and get as Holling might say to Shelly after she's shadowy camera shots), and most of all, his their feelings hurt. watched 13 straight hours of the Home sense of place. Remember that term, place. Shopping Channel, enough is e-gol-dang- Like Laura Palmer's body, we'll meet it again But who ultimately work things out. Who nough. It is time to do the right thing: Unhitch soon. grow from experiences. Who survive. Who those sublimely seedy citizens of Cicely, prevail. As a communlty. Alaska, from the bogus yoke of Twin Peaks, It didn't take long (although it seemed like and celebrate the deeper connections this forever) before Peaks' cultish cachet started Think of that town, Cicely. Think of Dr. Joel beguiling series has made with Americans to curdle. Lynch became an absentee director: Fleischman's threadbare office with its imaginations. it showed as the stylish elements turned as porcelain sink: you can almost smell the cold stale as day-old cherry pie. Those endearing seeping through the cracks. "A few curtains, a offbeat characters, got more and more couple heads on the wall - you're in business, grotesque: they became nothing more than drawls the ex-astronaut Maurice. (And you the sum of their eyepatches and the logs they can almost hear Rob Morrow as Fleischman, talked to. And, of course, it grew apparent our surrogate outsider, doing one of his that Lynch neither knew nor gave a damn who shameless Woody Allen riffs on that exchange killed Laura Palmer, any more than he cared to his skeptical nemesis/love interest Maggie.) about the flctional town of Twin Peaks, Think of Chris, the mail-order minister and Washington. So much for sense of place. Twin storefront disc jockey, gazing out the window Peaks was not an ongoing tale about as he broadcasts the world's dopiest local anything. It was an ongoing sophisticated gossip and quotes from a Great Book or two. smirk. In June 1991 it joined Laura in the Who hasn't ventured inside that jerry-built sweet hereafter. studio, or wanted to? Think of the neon reds By contrast, Northern Exposure crept onto the and blues that shimmer through Hollings' CBS airwaves almost unnoticed: It was a disheveled bar like honkey-tonk halos, against A canine resident takes in some sun on limited-run summer series. It did not have a the click of billiard balls. as Shelly, tray of Roslyn's main street. designer name attached to its credits: Brand beers in hand, pauses to nurse the beginnings and Falsey had done St. Elsewhere, but that of an idea. Think of Morty the moose, ambling wasn't as hip as Lynch's movie -Blue Velvet.- along a street as empty of traffic as never a Cicely News & World Telegram 49 street you've driven down. Who needs Laura community of manic Muppets that the late Palmer wrapped in plastic? This is life, being Jim Henson and his partners created for HBO lived. back in 1983. Fraggle Rock's colllding, bickersome characters must have touched Cicely isn't heaven, and it isn't Disneyland-on- some universal yearnings indeed: in 1989 the-tundra, but it isn't hell, either. People die became the first American TV series to be in Cicely. People lose lovers, doubt their broadcast in the Soviet Union. sexuality, recognize their courage or confront their cowardice, have their vanities exposed for everyone to see, get their dreams trampled on. Will the world ever recognize Travel farther back in television time. You shy Ed Chigliak for the cinematic genius he is? might find traces of Northern Exposure's deep Don't count on it. In the end they adjust, sense of place and community in the oddest figure it out, mourn their losses, pull it of places: The Long Branch Saloon on together for one more episode. And somehow Gunsmoke. The small south Pacific atoll that you want to be transported there, have a seat was the site of Gilligan's Island. Mayberry, at the bar, when that next shaggy-dog episode North Carolina, the venue for The Andy begins. Gfiffith Show. Certainly Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and Sesame Street offered charmed enclaves for children, who are, after all, creatures of the Iocal. (Children are mostly missing fron Northern Exposure and that seems an unfortunate lapse for a series rooted in place - until you recall what TV series generally do to child actors, and then it seems a blessing.) Probably you can think of others. At any rate, Northern Exposure has found a Date: December 22, 1991 connection to American imagination that few Publication: Albany Times Union other TV series have discovered - certainly not Author: John N. Goudas King Features Twin Peaks. The connection is older than TV, of course. Perhaps if we're listening closely Strapping, handsome John Corbett, who plays some lonely Alaskan night to Cicely's prose- Chris, the small Alaskan town's philosophizing spouting DJ, Chris, we might even hear him radio D.J. in the CBS hit series, "Northern quote a passage from Of Time and the River, Exposure," says he hasn't really had much in by Thomas Wolfe, who understood the the way of fan attention until his recent visit enduring charm of all the Cicelys in our to New York during a short hiatus from filming national memory: in Washington state. Near the pole: Northern Exposure's Joel "A bracelet of a few, hard lights along the Fleischman (Rob Morrow) and Maggie Only recently have some people come up to river, a gemlike in candescence, few and hard O'Connell (Janine Turner). him after recognizing him from the series. and bright, and so poignantly lost and lonely Corbett admits he finds the whole thing a bit in enormous darkness as are all lights in unsettling. America, sown sparsely on the enormous Twin Peaks? No. Northern Exposure's roots go viewless mantle of night..." "I have been an actor for many years but not a deeper into American myth and yearning than very visible one. I was told by some people Ron Powers is a Pulitzer Prize-winrung TV that. We Americans have always loved to lose that a TV series would change all that, and I'm critic and is now at work on the authorized ourselves in stories about place - maybe it's beginning to believe it now," says Corbett. biography of Jim Henson. because we're so nomadic, so far from home, in our everyday lives. If "Northern Exposure" hadn't come along, according to Corbett, he was seriously There's a little Lake Wobegon in the flctional considering giving up acting and going back to town of Cicely - Garrison Keillor's make- working in a steel factory where things were believe one-horse Minnesota burg that gained less complicated and you had some control in fame first on public radio. There's a little your daily life. Fraggle Rock as well -that underground Cicely News & World Telegram 50 Corbett grew up in Wheeling, W. Va., where people are following any one program, song most of his friends were happy to have a job or fad. and do a little partying on Saturday night. He still can't believe how he gravitated towards But now there is some evidence, persuasive if acting. not yet conclusive, that even in the aggregate, even adding up all the varied audiences, Corbett had worked in a steel factory and was relatively fewer Americans are actually making good money when he was laid off.