home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <text id=91TT1088>
- <title>
- May 20, 1991: A Little Too Flaky In Alaska
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- May 20, 1991 Five Who Could Be Vice President
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- VIDEO, Page 64
- A Little Too Flaky in Alaska
- </hdr><body>
- <p>By RICHARD ZOGLIN--With reporting by Sally B. Donnelly/Los
- Angeles
- </p>
- <qt>
- <l>NORTHERN EXPOSURE</l>
- <l>CBS; Mondays; 10 p.m. EDT</l>
- </qt>
- <p> It's a little town up north, out west. Everybody knows
- everybody else--and everybody else's business. Remoteness has
- given the community a touch of spirituality, not to say
- weirdness. Several residents have a propensity for prophetic
- dreams, and ghosts have been known to walk down Main Street. So
- has the occasional moose.
- </p>
- <p> Twin Peaks? No, that was last year's quirky small town
- that gained a cult following. The latest destination for fans
- of the outlandish and the In-jokish on TV is the village of
- Cicely, hard by the Arctic Circle in the state of Alaska. Among
- the town's 500 inhabitants is one reluctant interloper: Joel
- Fleischman (Rob Morrow), a New York City native who has been
- forced to move there as the sole doctor in order to fulfill his
- medical-school scholarship.
- </p>
- <p> Northern Exposure, which debuted last summer and has
- returned to CBS for a late-season run, is this spring's hottest
- conversation piece. Fans in big cities from New York to San
- Francisco are entranced by the backwoods whimsy; so are Sunbelt
- viewers like Bonnie Mintz, a court clerk from Winter Park, Fla.,
- who started the first Northern Exposure fan club. In Alaska the
- series has prompted some grumpy newspaper stories (THIS MAN
- THINKS WE'RE A BUNCH OF PSYCHOTIC RED-NECKS, blared one headline
- next to a picture of star Morrow), but viewers are warming to
- it. Says Tom Tatka, an Anchorage attorney who moved to Alaska
- 20 years ago: "It gives a good sense of this isolated state."
- For creators Joshua Brand and John Falsey (St. Elsewhere), it's
- really a state of mind. "We used Alaska more for what it
- represents than what it is," says Brand. "It is disconnected
- both physically and mentally from the lower 48, and it has an
- attractive mystery."
- </p>
- <p> The show's popularity is no mystery. Northern Exposure is
- less a realistic picture of Alaskan life than a big-city
- yuppie's romantic small-town fantasy. There is no bigotry or
- narrow-mindedness in this small town; the residents are all
- closet highbrows. The townspeople read D.H. Lawrence and quote
- Voltaire; the local tavern plays Louis Armstrong and Mildred
- Bailey on the jukebox. For Joel there's a cute, available brunet
- (Janine Turner) and a philosophical Native American pal (Darren
- E. Burrows) who is conversant with movies like The Wages of
- Fear. Gosh, it's not even that cold; the characters may be
- bundled up in parkas, but we never see their breath. That's what
- shooting near Seattle will do.
- </p>
- <p> The show has some nice touches. Joel's Jewishness is
- refreshingly up-front, and it's good to see a few Native
- Americans on TV for a change. But this domesticated Twin Peaks
- is too precious by half. In one episode, Joel's friend conjures
- up an Indian spirit to help locate his father; the town deejay,
- meanwhile, has his voice stolen by a beautiful girl. One
- whimsical fantasy per episode, please. The show's patronizing
- attitude toward small towners is more subtle but just as
- annoying. One episode makes snide fun of the tavern owner's
- 19-year-old girlfriend, who gets a satellite dish and becomes
- addicted to tacky TV fare like Wheel of Fortune and the Home
- Shopping Network. God forbid somebody in a remote Alaskan town
- should actually pass the time watching TV. What would Voltaire
- think?
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-