Northern Exposure

Dr. Fleischman arrives in Alaska and is informed that instead of working in a modern hospital in Anchorage, he will be the sole doctor in remote Cicely. He is greatly displeased by this unexpected development and tries frantically to get out of it.

Ed gets Dr. Fleischman to talk to his medicine man uncle. The man is seriously ill, but refuses to seek conventional medical treatment out of a fear of losing face with his patients. Maggie berates Joel for not being able to fix his toilet, calling him helpless. Joel decides to try to fix his shower when the hot water stops working. Maggie hurts her knee and visits Dr. Fleischman. Chris is fired from the radio station after speaking of poet Walt Whitman’s homosexuality on air.

An old hermit dies, leaving his land jointly to Maggie and Fleischman, who have radically different ideas about what to do with it. She wants to create a nature preserve, while he has been approached by rich natives who want to buy it to use as a tax shelter.

Shelly becomes pregnant and a wedding is arranged, but Holling has a deep-rooted fear - both his father and grandfather lived over a century, while their wives died young, leaving them alone and grieving for over sixty years each. Holling vowed to avoid their fate. Meanwhile, Maurice and Fleischman entertain a Japanese investor interested in building a resort in Cicely.

Fleischman’s fiancee Elaine arrives for a visit, only to have the entire town come down with the flu, ruining their time together. In their delirium, the townspeople blame the helpless doctor. Marilyn takes it upon herself to prescribe a foul-smelling native remedy that cures everyone, but won’t tell Fleischman what’s in it.

Shelly turns out not to be pregnant; it was all in her mind. To further complicate her relationship with Holling, her twenty-year-old hockey player husband, Wayne, shows up, looking for a divorce so he can marry her best friend. As they get reacquainted, they begin having second thoughts. Fleischman finds a growth on Rick’s chest. Mindful of the weird, untimely deaths of all Maggie’s other boyfriends, he becomes worried. It turns out to be a false alarm, but Maggie resents Rick’s belief in the "O’Connell Curse". Ed has trouble picking a subject for his screenplay. He imagines the other residents in scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Midnight Cowboy before finally taking Dr. Fleischman’s advice and writing about what he knows - the inhabitants of Cicely.

Maurice receives word that his brother Malcolm has died, leaving him the last of the Minnifields. He persuades Chris to become his heir and tries to mold him in his own image. Ed informs Holling that Jessie, the bear that nearly killed him, has returned. Holling, Ed and Shelly try to track it down, but get sidetracked. Fleischman has to teach a childbearing class in another community. He charters Maggie’s plane to take him there; in the time they spend together in the air and in class, they begin to bond.

The Northern Lights and the moon induced by them cause dreaming to intensify among the residents. Dr. Fleischman hears about "Adam", the local version of the Bigfoot monster. When his truck breaks down one night on a lonely road, he encounters the mysterious creature, who turns out to be an odd, hostile hermit living deep in the woods. However, nobody in Cicely believes him. Bernard shows up. He sold his condo in Portland, Oregon, bought a motorcycle and rode north without quite knowing why. He and Chris find themselves strangely in tune, even sharing the same dream. They finally learn that they share the same father and the same birthday. Satisfied, Bernard returns to Portland.