NORTHERN EXPOSURE
No. 27
Thirty years ago Northern Exposure, created by John Falsey and Joshua Brand, premiered on network television. The six-season series depicts life in a fictional small town called Cicely in the wilds of Alaska.
It’s an American town the way it could be: warm with genuine welcome to misfits, outsiders and people in need, inclusive of all kinds of ways of being human, and centred and grounded by the human beings indigenous to that land.
Also, as one fan, Gina Altamura, puts it, “Cicely Alaska is a special, metaphysically resonant place. Its residents experience magic on the regular, as well as a blurring of the dreamworld and everyday reality. And perhaps, above all, they find meaning. Their experiences, be them mystical or mundane, interpersonal or in solitude, are always integrated. They are reflected upon, and woven into the tapestry of the individual’s soul, and the soul of the community as well... Cicely, Alaska is ‘an ensouled town’, one feels Cicely itself to be a living, breathing, being. Its central characters coexist with it in a deeply soulful, deeply ecological manner.”
In this episode called ‘Seoul Mates’ the epiphanies of Christmas live with the story of the Raven and the return of the light.