I moved to the middle of nowhere. How 'Northern Exposure' got me through it

In April of 1990, The Arizona Republic sent me to work in Kingman as part of the newspaper’s state desk. I didn’t know anything about Kingman and was utterly alone, thousands of miles from friends and family.

In July of 1990, the state of Alaska sent Dr. Joel Fleischman to work in Cicely, Alaska, because it had paid for his medical school tuition. He didn’t know anything about Cicely and was utterly alone, thousands of miles from friends and family.

The comparisons, such as they are, more or less end there. And the parallels aren’t exact — Fleischman, for instance, is fictional, played by the actor Rob Morrow in the CBS show “Northern Exposure.”

I am real.

But the timing was fortunate for me because a fish-out-of-water show where the main character struggled to fit in was just what I needed. (On my first Saturday night in Kingman a man threatened to beat my head in with a pool cue, if you’d like a taste of what the experience was like.) Is it overdoing it to so closely identify my own experience with that of a TV-show character? Of course it is. But if that’s what it took to feel a little less lonely, and a little more “seen” (a phrase not used in that way back then), so be it.

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Is there any way to watch 'Northern Exposure?'

This comes to mind because “Northern Exposure” recently became available to stream on Prime Video. Finally. It was one of the Great Missing Shows in the streaming era. (Two more I’m hoping arrive somewhere soon, though there seems to be no movement afoot: “Homicide: Life on the Street” — RIP Andre Braugher — and “Ed.”)

There wasn’t a lot of fanfare when the show became available for streaming, but there should have been. Some elements have not aged as well as you would hope (rewatching the first few episodes, I heard the word “Indian” a lot, not “Native American” nor “indigenous.”) Barry Corbin’s portrayal of Maurice, the former astronaut trying to turn Cicely into “the Alaskan Riviera,” is a lot more bigoted than I recalled, though that's just establishing him as a bigoted character.

But overall, it’s a really good show — quirky, warmly funny, sometimes bizarre. It was the sort of show that wasn’t seen much on broadcast TV then, like “Twin Peaks,” which came out the same year and overshadowed it in the quirky department (and, in truth, in the quality department, too).

Revisiting 'Northern Exposure' more than 30 years later

It was fun to rewatch the show more than 30 years later, in part because it took me back to living in my apartment on Andy Devine Boulevard in Kingman (right on Route 66!), but also because the way I’ve watched TV has changed so much since then. The way we’ve all watched TV since then has changed because TV has changed so much.

But watching has really changed for me. Occupational hazard. Now I watch everything with a critical eye, looking for strengths and weaknesses, evaluating the quality and establishing whether I can recommend it. When I saw “Northern Exposure” the second time, that’s how I watched. Couldn’t be helped. Not with note-taking intensity, but certainly I found myself looking for more than a TV companion this time around.

As it turns out, Fleischman is my fourth- or fifth-favorite character on the show. (Perhaps Morrow is just too adept at playing annoying whiners.) I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed Ed (Darren E. Burrows), the teenage weirdo would-be director, or Marilyn (Elaine Miles), Fleischmann’s quietly insistent office manager. (I never much cared for John Corbett’s Chris, then or now. A little too self-conscious in his latter-day hippie vibe.) The will-they or won’t-they, back-and-forth between Fleischman and Maggie (Janine Turner) is a little obvious, though that’s fine.

But the most overwhelming thing about watching “Northern Exposure” again was the realization that like most good shows (or movies or songs or books), it wasn’t as much a TV series as it was a time machine. The jaunty theme song, the inside of Holling’s bar, the moose walking down the street — it was easy to feel like I was back in Kingman, sitting on the couch, feeling a little bit more at home than I did before. (It was also nice to be able to turn off the TV and be back in the present.)

Or, as Chris says to Fleischman at one point during the first season, “If you’re here for four more years or four more weeks, you’re here right now. I think when you’re somewhere you ought to be there, because it’s not how long you stay in a place, it’s about what you do while you’re there. And when you go is that place any better for you having been there?”

I still don’t like Chris, but that sounds about right to me.

As far as my time in Kingman, I don’t know if I did. I hope so.

I lost track of the show after the first season. It has a long and weird history for a show that only lasted five seasons. (Later David Chase would run it, before creating “The Sopranos.”) But by then the newspaper had moved me to Phoenix and I didn’t watch it anymore. I didn’t need to.

But it’s nice to know it’s there again when I do.

How to watch 'Northern Exposure'

Streaming on Prime Video.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. X: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: What watching 'Northern Exposure' again after 20 years taught me