Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Sicily, Alaska, a Northern Exposure podcast.
Speaker: I'm Anne Flynn Terrell. I'm a cabaret performer and emcee. I'm Caleb Cohart. I'm a documentary and commercial filmmaker. I'm Amy Gerlich. I own and run a improv and sketch comedy theater in Denver, Colorado.
Speaker: This is a podcast where we talk about Northern Exposure and how it's affected our lives. And we have some amazing special guests.
Speaker: Season six, episode seven, Up River. Up River. So let's continue on with our um our journey of Joel.
Speaker: Our journey of Joel. I actually didn't mind a lot of the vistas in this. I thought this was a beautiful episode. Yeah. And this is my only favorite Joel hair.
Speaker: In this episode. I was like, that's the kind of guy I used to date in high school. I have a note on Joel, uh, that comes courtesy of my wife, but it comes later in the show. Okay. Okay. Um, so we,
Speaker: we've decided to scrap all of the lousy sets and realize we have the opportunity to film in nature wherever they were filming this. I did not look up exactly where this was shot, but it is beautiful. This is what I want. When i think of Northern exposure, I think of these amazing, um, Alaska vistas. So Joel is missing. Joel has gone M I a, and Maurice,
Speaker: sends Ed to go get him because he went into a village to help a woman who was pregnant give birth. And then he was due back, but he has never come back. So Ed has to take a canoe and go find him up the river. ah and we see just, go ahead. Beautiful vistas. But I think this is when we find out that there's some deeper nefarious behavior going on with Ed because Maurice tells him it's so far up river, he needs to take a guide.
Speaker: In several of the Vista shots, we see him the guide in the canoe. But then. when pulls up to the village, the guide is gone. Yeah, Ed killed him. Did Ed kill the guide? Yeah. Did he sacrifice him?
Speaker: Did he go full Donner party? Yep. I did not even notice. Oh, you didn't? I thought that was the funniest thing. I was like, all of a sudden there's only Ed in the boat. um Yeah. Ed's a killer.
Speaker: Well, this whole episode, the time jumps are yeah ludicrous. It does not make any sense. We aren't given um any timestamps in this episode two weeks before, two days after. we we we have no idea when we are. And not only does it jump within the flashbacks from Joel, but it also jumps to how long Joel and Ed have been in the village. Like, we don't know if it's one day, we don't know if it's been a week. So listener, just understand that when you watch this, it's not going to make any sense. ah Joel is looking like he's been there for months.
Speaker: Like he's got a beard going. He does have very good hair. Like this is where he leaves the pomade and he leaves the oil behind. And he's starting to like maybe be one of the best looks for Joel yep in the entire series. Agreed.
Speaker: He's looking very unshaven, but not in a gross way. It just, it looks good. And he has become basically a part of this community. He is straight a Bushman. He can skin yeah animals and dry fish. But I would say this community is living hung very comfortably. He can speak their language by now. he's been there a minute.
Speaker: I know Joel is a consummate learner and I know that immersion is the best way to learn a language, but that's a feat. Yeah, you're not pulling that off in two weeks. No way. yeah no there's There's no Duolingo in the world that could get you there. I think this was the writer's solution to we're losing Joel. um This is the only way we can wrap up all of his storylines is doing this weird, wild time jump thing because the previous episode he was engaged.
Speaker: So I think they were like, this is this how we do it, guys. This is how we do it. What a great segue to our very first time jump because Ed and Joel are sitting down and Joel's like, well, here's how it all began. You know, we got back from the plane and we were engaged and now we're going to live together. This is going to be great. And immediately there's an attempted murder.
Speaker: Maggie curses back. though Yeah. Maggie. Hi. Yeah, I mean, I guess if they pulled anything out of the fishbowl of the first few seasons, they're like, yeah, Maggie kills people because she loves them. A woman's love is homicide. This is messed up, though, too, because she felt bad about that for the first few seasons, killing all of her lovers. Now she's turned on by it. Now she is turned on by it in a very weird way. has flipped the switch.
Speaker: So yes, in maybe the way that Ed is homicidal, Maggie is also homicidal It's a murder mystery. Yep. Maybe this is the Benoit Blanc that we didn't know we wanted.
Speaker: Yeah, the season seven they didn't get to is like, it just becomes full on horror factory. Yeah. in our first flashback, they're making out and a gun goes off. And Maggie's kind of disturbed. She's concerned in the moment, but Joel's fully freaking out because yes, a firearm has just gone off. This is not okay.
Speaker: So he's very anxious and Maggie gets weird. Not... not Not unexpected. Understandable. I mean, yeah. Understandable. Yeah. if Even if you're around guns all the time, if one goes off, one, you should never leave a loaded shotgun without a safety in your room where you can bump it and it'll go off. yeah Everybody that goes up around guns knows that. Two, if a gun goes off, I think it's okay to be genuinely concerned yeah about the fact that a gun just went off.
Speaker: Your firearm is not safe if it has just gone off in your house. You should not have it loaded. You should have safety. Like, I don't even own a gun. I don't like guns. But I know basic gun safety. And I think most people do at this point in our lives.
Speaker: I digress because we've got a boring subplot to get to. We need to talk about Chris and the contractor, everybody. oh do he I thought we were just going to talk about the C-plot.
Speaker: ah ruth Well, he's a yeah he once again, his like about trailers move to a different place. yeah He's not by the lake anymore. The beauty of a trailer, Caleb, is you never have to be just one place in home. He's building like an enclosed patio, but he's had decks and patios in previous places.
Speaker: yeah I did say, i've got I took a journey with the contractor because at first... for this whole thing, he's going to run a new electrical line. and He's going to run complete plumbing and drain lines. And it's only going to cost Chris 570. I went, oh damn son. I want that contractor. Yeah. yeah Yep.
Speaker: Um, I agreed. I was like, Oh, but then I, I, I have a nightmare contractor story. Caleb, I'm guessing you do as well. Amy, do you have a contractor nightmare story? No.
Speaker: Really, I feel like it's the one of the universal human experiences maybe in America. maybe yeah. I don't own a house. Yeah, to home it's ah it's definitely a home ownership story. Yeah, you guys have houses.
Speaker: But, I mean, you could also have a trailer like Chris and still have a nightmare contractor story. But it's just like they're just chumming the – not chumming the water, sorry, scraping the bottom of the barrel for strife at this point. yeah So there isn't much to say.
Speaker: Yeah, well, the C-plot with Ruthann is definitely scraping the bottom of the barrel. i was so pissed off. Why? oh yeah You don't like- What they did to Ruthann in this episode.
Speaker: I mean, don't think I think it's kind of out of nowhere because they were leading us up to this. And I feel like they could have done a better job at incorporating them together to get to this point. But I'm always going to love a Walt story. And I love that she was randomly madly in love with him. And I love the... I did like all of the like little things. I mean, her writing poetry was stupid, but like I liked how she was in the because when I first started watching the episode, I was like, is something wrong with Ruthann? There was real concern.
Speaker: Yeah. I thought maybe she was like losing her marbles a little bit or like start dementia was starting to happen. So I was just like relieved. I think when I was like, oh, right. She's so caught up. She's madly in love with Walt. She can't deal with it. Got it.
Speaker: I love that people still want to write poetry for lovers. I think that that's a really beautiful part of love and creation and wanting to have something spring from only that person to only one other person. And it did feel a bit out of character. And I was also a little bit concerned at the very beginning. i was like, Oh, Oh no. Are we, is Ruthann? Okay.
Speaker: she Is she, she all right? um Honestly, this subplot didn't bother me as much as the contractor subplot. Same. um Hayden is having a season.
Speaker: Hayden is having a whole season. I don't know who his agent is, but we need to get him on the horn because Hayden all of a sudden has gone from a cursory character in the back to being a major part of break-ins to being insurance scamming and now attempted murder because the second time Maggie and Joel start to make out, boom, Hayden is walking by and his gun goes off.
Speaker: What is happening? in this poor little city. You know, they missed a real opportunity here. I just thought of this right now with all of these guns going off, they missed a real opportunity to make Joel have premature ejaculation.
Speaker: Don't they make a joke about that in the show? i don't i don't know that they did, but just like firing off too soon. Oh, thought somebody made a joke. Maybe I made that joke in my head.
Speaker: I think both of you did. One thing, did you guys notice how good Maggie and Joel's skin looked? Oh, they are radiant. I also think her costuming person is doing a great job in this season. Her nightgown that she wears is really untypically Maggie. I've always imagined Maggie to be long johns or a t-shirt kind of person, but like The nightgown is really nice. She's living with her man now. This is like Hollywood glow up. like they but yeah They both look like their skin was taut and like they looked stunning.
Speaker: Was this around the time that she was in Cliffhanger? Or was Cliffhanger... No, because Cliffhanger was going on while she was dating Alec Baldwin. Cliffhanger was when she still had her short hair. Oh, then, yeah, maybe it was. This was 94 season, so this would have come This would have come out right after Cliffhanger came might have been doing press tour for Cliffhanger. So she might have had that good industry money that's like, you're going on tour, so you're going to look good. Yeah. Well, also, she thought at this point, too, you're transitioning from TV to movies, which back in the day was the thing. Same with yeah.
Speaker: The ultimate goal. The ultimate goal. so once you become a movie star, you don't have time for TV anymore back in the 90s. Yeah. So this was a huge transition for her. Yeah.
Speaker: In a lot of ways, a really nice, calm episode. They had a lot of those interstitials with the village, like where you just hear a river and you see rock and you feel mountains and you see Joel and you see Ed and Ed is having his own complex thoughts because he's feeling not indigenous enough. Yeah. Watching Joel assimilate into the society very simply. And Ed is feeling like he's getting a fish the wrong way. He's breaking a hide apart the wrong way. He's not doing things in the way that Joel, this man who's been in the village for maybe two days, maybe two months, who knows, is already doing. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Yeah, you know, this harkened back at least enough to some stuff that I actually started to gain a little bit of a philosophical theory about this episode. ah Yeah, um let's see, what did I write here?
Speaker: um All three of these people have something taken away from from them, and it throws them into chaos. um Chris is thrust into the chaos of this construction thing. His his individuality or like his ah his control is taken away from him and so he loses his easygoing nature.
Speaker: Ruthann has Walt taken away from her and her independence has been taken away because she realizes that she's in true love and that throws her into chaos and then joel and max late joel and maggie actually get together and that throws joel into chaos which then he is escapes to get away i guess in a way all three of them are fiercely independent and their independence has been taken away and they can't handle it it's not It's not my final work, but this wasn't this wasn't Northern Exposure's final work either. so i feel like That's also true. they They've come in in a solid C, C-plus on this episode, and maybe my philosophical takeaway for this episode was a solid C-plus as well. May I counter, Caleb? Because I think it might round out your whole idea.
Speaker: I saw it as all of their domesticity. Is that a word? Domesticity? Yeah, yeah. um That's a word. Was challenged. So it was like Ruthann being fiercely independent and not needing a man. um Chris um making a home out of his mobile house and Maggie finally sharing her space and living with somebody again. um and Joel taking the leap to being engaged again. So they were To me, it was three this of the same type of story of like those things were being challenged and yeah it upended everybody. Yeah, that's good. That rounds it out nicely.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's a beautiful way to put it. um I had not jumped back to Moose Chicken a little while and I was just scanning as you were going through that. ah Apparently, it's is just a matter of two weeks that Joel has been missing. So he masters the Tlingit language in two weeks.
Speaker: Quick study. Fastest learner. Yep. ah Moose Chick's favorite quote in this was Ruthann saying, isn't it lovely what they're doing with tissue boxes these days? In the beginning of the episode. I loved that.
Speaker: yeah It is true. that That really was a turning point in tissue boxes. It was. I mean, for a while, they were hiding tissue boxes underneath doilies and cloths. yeah Our Kleenex boxes are just out for everybody to see. yeah Exactly. It's like the Guggenheim over at your place. yeah Decor.
Speaker: But before we get to the very end of the episode, there is one more death-defying moment for Joel with my favorite firearm mentioned in this episode or any episode because it's a musket that goes off. tis yeah This one.
Speaker: What? What is happening? Who the hell has a collective musket fully loaded 100-year-old gunpowder sitting in it? And this was just a stretch.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Do you want to talk about the contractor and Chris and the problems? ah well then he just We learned that the contractor sucks. Never pay $575 for your renovations. yep um because His whole trailer gets flooded. The guy just does a horrible job. Ruins whole Chris's whole vibe.
Speaker: um i did There was a nice moment where Chris comes in. His trailer's been flooded. He's fired the guy. he grabs ah a warm beer out of a refrigerator full of rancid food because the electrical box was also blown out and chris just walks out into nature with a freshly opened beer and so and yells into nature. um And then everything kind of centers back to normal. And I thought, you know what?
Speaker: That's a hell of a technique. I'm going to do that next time. i'm just going Next time I'm a little stressed, I'm just going to take a beer, walk out into the nature of my backyard, and scream at the top of my lungs. yeah I live on East Colfax, so nobody will give a shit. They'll be like, that's normal.
Speaker: um And I'll just let it out. I'll let the demons out like Chris. Yeah, yeah he should. Yeah. um I think that's a great way to deal with contractors in general. Just like I've had some terrible, terrible experiences and a few good ones. But um I think that Chris's way of dealing with it is one of the best. And if you can do it in nature, that's even better.
Speaker: at the end of the episode, Maggie breaks up Joel. she Well, the end of the episode, but of course it's the inciting incident for the beginning of the episode, which is why Joel runs away. This was the most chemistry i have seen between these characters in the existence of this television show.
Speaker: It was such a well acted scene. The two of them connected on a level that we have never seen them connect on before. i thought top marks for both of them. And it was the breakup scene that did it.
Speaker: Yeah. I wrote, Joel would rather move to a fishing village that speaks a language he doesn't speak than just go to therapy. ah Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: That's stoicism for you. Yep, that's stoicism. Honestly, a better ending than I expected for this episode. But again, i had the taste of the previous episode in my mouth still. Well, yeah, my only thoughts on the whole thing was it was so confounding that he spent so long in this town resisting all of the things that he embraced within a moment. And the catalyst was Maggie was like, we're done. So it's like, what are they trying to say that he was just holding on for dear life in Sicily? Because he thought there was a shred of hope with Maggie. But as soon as like she was like, I'm done. he was like, yeah yeah, I can get sued by Maurice. Yeah, I can live in a place that when it snows will be unlivable. ah no electricity. Drinking all of these things I wouldn't have drank if you paid me back in the day in Sicily. um
Speaker: Insane. To me, it was the most insane thing. shift for It's really interesting. You should say that, Amy. Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm trying to gender flip it in my head. And it's more common that this happens to a female character. That once the male character decides they are not worthy of love or relationship, then they self-carnate.
Speaker: explode. They combust. and their whole life is turned into tumult. And it's not often that once a man has been rebuked, his whole life combusts and he's willing to give everything else up. It's a really interesting that's chrisy perspective. You mentioned that.
Speaker: And looking back at all of my relationships, I think that even though the stereotype in entertainment is that the woman implodes and blows up her whole life,
Speaker: I truly think in real life, men tend to do that more. Every time, even if I've broken up with the girl, I get i blow up my life and ah go into existential crisis. They tend to move on very maturely and very quickly and make even better lives for themselves.
Speaker: So this is only from personal experience, but I think that Joel being the one to just blow up everything and leave is more true to life than how it's typically written in entertainment.
Speaker: That is interesting. I mean, yeah, for sure. I think it's a stereotype. a woman gets broken up with. She cuts off all her hair. She loses 20 pounds. But we never hear about the guy. but it makes sense that it's ah true more true to life in that way. Because, of course, why would society want to drill in our brains that men are weak and vulnerable and susceptible to a breakup to change their world? It's kind of funny that you said that, Kayla. That's interesting.
Speaker: Look at us. We can find beautiful nuggets of wisdom in a really rough season. So much silver lining.
