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TV Review – Northern Exposure Season Six

Northern Exposure Season Six (1994-95)
Written by Diane Frolov, Andrew Schneider, Mitchell Burgess, Robin Green, Jeff Melvoin, Meredith Stiehm, and Sam Egan
Directed by Michael Fresco, Jim Charleston, James Hayman, Lorraine Senna, Oz Scott, Michael Vittes, Victor Lobl, Daniel Attias, Michael Lange, Janet Greek, Stephen Cragg, Scott Paulin, and Patrick McGee

Wow. That was…um, something. By the time season six of Northern Exposure ends, you will have been waiting for it to end for a while. David Chase didn’t do too much damage in season five, but by the time six rolled around, it became clear he was disinterested in the whole thing other than ways to shoehorn in his own interests. While watching these episodes, I thought about how weird it would be to watch the pilot and then jump to season six. It would feel like an almost totally different series.

TV Review – Northern Exposure Season Five

Northern Exposure Season Five (1993-94)
Written by Diane Frolov, Andrew Schneider, Rogers Turrentine, Mitchell Burgess, Robin Green, Jeff Melvoin, Barbara Hall, David Chase, and Jed Seidel
Directed by Daniel Attias, Michael Fresco, Jim Charleston, John David Coles, Nick Marck, Mark Horowitz, Michael Katleman, Michael Lange, Michael Vittes, Oz Scott, Bill D’Elia, Lorraine Senna, Tom Moore, and James Hayman

Joshua Brand and John Falsey, the co-creators and showrunners of Northern Exposure, were dealing with some stress by the end of season four. They had helped create shows like St. Elsewhere and I’ll Fly Away, but with this series, they finally found something they could cultivate and grow. The first problem came when writer Sandy Veith sued Universal, the production company behind NE, claiming they had stolen his idea and given him no credit or compensation. Universal may have cribbed some of Veith’s ideas and fed them to Brand & Falsey, who didn’t know where they had come from. Veith’s script was about an Italian-American doctor working in a small town in the U.S. South. Falsey was struggling with alcoholism and related sickness. He would be in that fight until his passing in 2019. It felt like it was time to leave. Who would they be replaced with? Cue David Chase.

TV Review – Northern Exposure Season Four

Northern Exposure Season Four (1992-93)
Written by Robin Green, Michael Katleman, Diane Frolov, Andrew Schneider, Jeff Vlaming, Mark B. Perry, Sy Rosen, Christian Williams, Mitchell Burgess, David Assael, Jeff Melvoin, Denise Dobbs, and Geoffrey Neigher
Directed by Dean Parisot, Michael Katleman, Nick Marck, Charles Braverman, Rob Thompson, Joan Tewkesbury, Randall Miller, Michael Fresco, Daniel Attias, Win Phelps, Joe Napolitano, Bill D’Elia, Adam Arkin, Michael Lange, Jim Charleston, and Frank Prinzi

Northern Exposure was coming off season three, for which it won several Emmys. Season Four was to be the largest season order for the series, with twenty-five episodes. These days, most shows we get on the variety of streaming services come in around 8-10 episodes per season. Thirteen episodes feel like an indulgence. One of the downsides of having such large season orders was that quantity did not equate to quality. There are some utterly fantastic parts of season four. Then, some episodes are cringingly wrong and outdated. Even so, I’d rather watch this season again than watch much contemporary television, especially the fare that leans into cynicism.

TV Review – Northern Exposure Season Three

Northern Exposure Season Three (1991-92)
Written by Martin Sage, Sybill Adelman, Ellen Herman, Robin Green, Stuart Stevens, Henry Bromell, Dennis Koenig, Jordan Budde, Craig Volk, Diane Frolov, Andrew Schneider, Jeff Melvoin, David Assael, Mitchell Burgess, Kate Boutilier, Jeffrey Vlaming
Directed by Nick Marck, Bill D’Elia, Miles Watkins, Jim Hayman, David Carson, Sandy Smolan, Michael Katleman, Jack Bender, Michael Fresco, Lee Shallat, Dean Parisot, Rob Thompson, Matthew Nodella, Steve Robman, Tom Moore

This was the season where the awards started coming in for Northern Exposure. It was also the first season to have a complete order, twenty-two episodes. The budget has been increased, and the amount of care put into many of these episodes approaches cinematic levels. I had to check what year these episodes came out, 1991-92, but they feel more complex than something you would expect from CBS then. It’s become clear to me how this show was one of the experimental US programs of the 1990s that paved the way for the prestige TV of the cable era.

TV Review – Northern Exposure Season One

Northern Exposure Season One (CBS)
Written by Joshua Brand, John Falsey, Stuart Stevens, Karen Hall, Jerry Stahl, Sean Clark, David Assael, Steve Wasserman, Jessica Klein, and Charles Rosin
Directed by Joshua Brand, Peter O’Fallon, Steve Cragg, Dan Lerner, David Carson, Sandy Smolan, Max Tash

I was a weird kid, if you haven’t picked up on it. I read TV Guide every week when I had access to it. It was through reading that magazine that I came to learn about the show Northern Exposure and the comparisons to Twin Peaks. I watched that program as a kid, and on rare occasions, I caught an episode of Northern Exposure. What I liked about Twin Peaks was the horror of it, and this show about a small town in Alaska didn’t have any of it. Many decades later, I still hear very positive things about Northern Exposure and decided I should sit down and watch it with more mature eyes.