Shark Bytes

I have been watching the series on DVD. Just the 'singing episode' and immediately came to this site to see what others thought. Although the series has had its share of lackluster episodes, the 'singing episode' was painful to watch. They should've scrapped it and played a re-run that week.

The show started to slip in quality the season where Joel and Maggie did it. The writers stopped being clever and just ended the brilliant tension built up between the two with a literal roll in the hay. It finally jumped the shark when Rob Morrow left but not before the writers decided to make his characters exit from the show as tortous as possible. They ended Joel's relationship with Maggie early in the season (in a flashback episode of all things) isolated his character from the rest of the cast like Suzanne Sommers in Three's Company , and changed his character's personality into some Grizzley Adams wannabe. Then in his final episode through lazy writing his debt to Ciciley is suddenly not an issue and he somehow manages to hike all the way to New York from Alaska!

I'd say Mr. Morrow has done just fine for himself.

Where's that movie career, Rob Morrow?

It jumped when Maggie went from tomboy pilot to beuatifully made-up glamour queen. The last season in particular was pretty awful. It deserved to die.

Joel was one of my favorite characters, so naturally I was upset when he left. But, I don't believe that caused the show to jump because they wrote him out in basically the perfect way. That episode made me cry and I think for the most part it produced the writers' desired effect.

Of course I was sad when he left but as there were only a few more left, I was still even sadder once the show just...ended.

The nadir came on 24 May, 1993 when, during the final episode of the 4th Season (Old Tree) the script writers forced us to endure Cynthia Geary's Shelly straining to sing while her fellow actors and actresses were expected to remain on set and in camera with a straight face. What an awful, awful way to kill off an otherwise superb and eccentric program. From that point forward there was no reason to ever watch because the writers had successfully scuttle what had been an otherwise watertight craft. When Shelly started singing the shark chewed and swallowed the last remaining morsels of Northern Exposure.

I don't think it jumped exactly because each episode basically worked on it's own. But if it did, I'd say sometime early in the 5th season. The episodes just seemed to lose their original flavor and maggie was becoming incredibly annoying.

It was just a beautiful charming fairytale... The landscapes, the characters, aaahh sooo magical!!!

By my count, Joel wasn't present, at least briefly, in only about the final six shows. Can't understand why people complain so much about this. And he was written out gradually and beautifully.

Don't forget the wonderful receptionist & the delightful store - owner !

I can't believe that it has been 12 years + since this great show, this masterpiece, ended. I haven't seen it since the original run. So please be lenient if I get a few details wrong in this post. Every once in a while ( every once in a blue moon in Alaska , ) a masterpiece manages to sneak stealthily onto the networks & manages to survive : this is one of them. From the 1st, I was entranced by this wonderful, marvellous, crazy - but - credible, colourful cast of characters. They were so well - written that you would swear that you had met them in real life. &, on the subject of writing, there was nothing PC ( nothing politically correct ) about them Eg , Shelly & Holling Vincoeur ( is that the correct spelling ? ) : Holling was more than 40 years older than Shelley ! &, it was Shelley which chased Holling into the match, a very - happy match! Also, the use of the traditional ( & real -world term ) Indians. I recall one of the characters was talking amiably with an older Indian with a preference for the traditional term & the other character smiled at the use of 'Indian' & said 'Ah, old - school ! ' &, something to the effect of ' I can respect that' or ' I can dig that' . & Chris In The Morning, & ex-astronaut & civic-booster Maurice Minifield : these are classics ! I've saved the best for last : Maggie O'Connell, the bush-pilot, played by Janine Turner, the start of the gamine, slender, sexy girls which briefly ( like 1990 - 1995, or maybe till as late as 1997, but no later than that ) held sway even in reactionary Hollywood. She represented a new generation which swept away a quarter - century ( 25 years ) of cob - webs which had accumulated in the old Hollywood look. Particularly, her short , sexy , youthful hair . Short hair girls are sexy ! ( Is it hair or haired in English ? Short haired girls are sexy ! ) I'd have a difficult & hard time trying to decide if Janine Turner or Teri Hatcher was the most stunning girl of the 1990s -- a wonderful decade for girls which is on level with the 1920s, the Golden Twenties, The Roaring Twenties, The Jazz Age, &c. & television may very well have reached her peak in the early & mid 1990s (up to, let us say 1995, or perhaps as late as 1997, but no later than that). After that, the increasingly powerful FCC, the continued fragmentation of the audience (cable, &c), the advent of the www dot world, &c : all these seemed to close what I consider a Golden Age, if you will forgive me for sounding melodramatic. Apologies for the length of this post -- just seeing this reference-page to Northern Exposure makes me nostalgic. --Joe From The City

In case anyone cares, and why should you, when I said "haven't seen it at all" below, I meant "haven't seen it at all since its original run."

For shows with some sort of fantasy element, magical realism, or what-have-you, the shark jumping is inevitably going to be because A) the creative person or team behind the original concept left; or, B) you've gone to the well too many times and drained the concept of every idea it could possibly inspire.

NE fell off my "must see" list before the end, so I didn't see every permutation it went through, and I haven't seen it at all until we rented the first 5 episodes of season 4 this week, (ending with "Blowing Bubbles"). So I can't say for certain, except to say that the first four episodes we just saw were quite good, and "Blowing Bubbles" wasn't too bad either. But I seem to remember that Bubble Man wore out his welcome pretty quickly in his following eps (reason B), and the "Shelly Sings!" episode felt a lot like reason (A).

Does anyone recall -- was there a change in production staff somewhere around the singin' episode?

I loved this show! Completely unique. Bubbleman Anthony Edwards was almost a deal-breaker, but it's such a great show it survived this...