Continuing my re-watch of Northern Exposure, it only took three episodes to find a stinker.
Episode 3, titled "Soapy Sanderson," is pretty staightforward: Cicely's local hermit commits suicide rather than face the difficult prospect of aging in a remote Alaskan cabin. In doing so, he bequeaths his 100 acres of land to Maggie and Joel in what appears to be an attempt to get the two of them together romantically.
There is some good dialogue:
Joel: You don't have a problem with this?
Maggie: Look, Soapy lived the way he wanted to live and he died the way he wanted to die.
Joel: And you're not rattled?
Maggie: What's the matter Fleischman? You're a doctor. Haven't you seen dead bodies before?
Joel: Yeah, and I'm still rattled. I don't like people committing suicide. Ethical considerations aside, it's just bad for business.
Maggie: He was doing fine until you told him to think about his future.
Joel: I was talking about a walker.
But the episode pretty much goes downhill from there.
Maggie wants to turn the land into a nature preserve but the local Indian tribe offers to purchase the land from Joel for $50,000 as a tax shelter. Joel, without informing Maggie, accepts the offer. And the tension is born.
One of Northern Exposure's biggest challenges ultimately became a strength. Joel Fleischman is often written and acted as a deeply unlikeable person. As the show progressed, the writers dealt with this by approaching Northern Exposure as more of an ensemble effort. Each character was fully developed and could carry their own story arcs. Because really, it's tough to get a story out of someone just complaining all the time.
But in the early episodes, that's a huge part of Joel's role: He just complains, and looks for ways out of his contract with the state. In the third episode, he jumps right to outright theft and fraud. And while his scheme does eventually come undone, it is only after being exposed. There is very little reckoning.
Mostly, episode 3 feels lazy. There is no other significant story arc or conflict. Maggie and Joel do share a romantic dinner and their attraction is teased out a bit more, but even that feels like it moved at unwarranted warp speed--in the same episode we hear Joel on the phone discussing real estate with his fiance.
There is a bit more going on in the episode, but nothing leads anywhere. A film crew arrives to do a documentary on Soapy and his life in Alaska; Maggie wonders about comparisons between her and Soapy's wife. These issues largely just appear and vanish.
Not every episode will be good, but this one seems like it missed easy spots for a more engaging story. Autonomy and aging issues seem obvious, but the bulk of the writing is focused on Joel trying to leave Cicely as fast as possible.
Gotta give this episode a D+/C-.
