On "Northern Exposure" (my favorite all-time show)

I have the urge to ramble, to go a bit to the light side of things right now.  Northern Exposure was awesome!  For those unfamiliar, it was an American television show that aired I think sometime in the early nineties on network TV, which had a fairly solid run and went deep into syndication.  It had a reputation for being "esoteric," and perhaps "pretentious," was based in an ensemble cast and narrative structure, set in a small town in rural Alaska, loosely centered around the exploits of an erstwhile Manhattan doctor who, because of a condition of his scholarship to Columbia, was stranded there after receiving his medical degree in the position of town physician. 

The doctor's name was Dr. Fleischman.  To me, although the show contains such a myriad of excellent, lovely and memorable characters and stories, Northern Exposure begins and ends with the story of Joel Fleischman.  (For the record, my most loved characters are Chris, Maggie and especially Marilyn.)

I got into the show in reruns, watching most often during the summers when I was off of school and could catch it in syndication.  And I loved all the stories/parables, but if there was a theme to this beautiful show it was Fleischman's journey: in the beginning, he's a stubborn, furious New Yorker, thoroughly a student and product of the modern world (complete with arrogance and surety of his correct opinions about all things) flung into a situation that is very unfamiliar, and in which almost everything he knows is proved to be wrong or at the very least misguided, as it is based not in experience but in convention.  (spoiler ahead.)  And for those who have seen it, by the end, we know that Fleischman, though virtue of the trials and near constant cognitive dissonance he's experienced in Sicily, Alaska, becomes a better man, learns to let go, and finally finds his way home via a quite lovely leap of faith.  He transcends himself, more or less.  Fixes all his "faults," strengthens all his virtues, and returns to the world he came from fundamentally knowing how to live, care and be happy. 

What strikes me about this now is that there is something very realistic and telling in his journey, which is rooted in the fact that there were many seasons of Northern Exposure, and countless instances where Fleischman's beliefs were challenged and he resisted the evidence, being sure of the world as he had known it, only to eventually realize he was fighting a losing battle against the world as it was in that moment-- a world that, while different than the one he'd grown up in, was no less valid, or enjoyable, once the perimeters were accepted.  However, it took many seasons and adventures for the big acceptance to sink in, and for him to finally decide, in all things, to flow with reality, not holding on to old ideas, states of being, or emotions, but live instead in a state of acceptance and being.  One minor lesson would be proved after another, and yet the ideas that lay behind each instance and the fundamental suggestions of how his interface with reality itself was causing his own and others' dissonance was largely ignored, until in the end, through preponderance of evidence, it was unavoidable that he change. 

How like Fleischman we all can be!   I retold the story of my own live's journey to someone today, and realized how long it took me to stop saying "no..."

Those who watched the show may  understand when I say:

Here's to the journey to the jeweled city of the north...