Northern Exposure

Northern Exposure (1990–1995) was an American dramatic-comedy television series. Set in remote (and fictional) Cicely, Alaska, the show focused on Joel Fleischman, a big-city physician trying to cope with small-town Alaskan life.

Season 1

Pilot [1.01]

Joel: I don't don't like it - I hate it! And I demand to leave! … Well that is because you are not the one who is supposed to spend the next 4 years of his life in this Godforsaken hole in the wall, pigsty with a bunch of dirty, psychotic rednecks!

---

Maurice: When I heard we had a crack at a Jew doctor from New York City.. well, I don't have to tell you I jumped. You boys do outstanding work.

---

Joel: [to Maggie after a few beers] You're kinda pretty in a like, clean sort of way.

Brains, Know-How and Native Intelligence [1.02]

Chris: Months later, as I sat in a juvenile detention home rereading those poems that had opened up the artist in me, I was blindsided by the raging fist of my incarcerator, who informed me that Walt Whitman's homoerotic unnatural pornographic sentiments were unacceptable and would not be allowed in an institution dedicated to reforming the ill formed.

---

Ed: He is a doctor.

Joel: Oh really? Which kind?

Ed: Witch.

Joel: Which which?

Ed: Which what?

Joel: Which doctor?

Ed: Right.

---

Ed: [to Joel] Indians don't knock. It's rude.

Soapy Sanderson [1.03]

Maggie: All you care about is you, and New York, and your precious career!

Joel: Look, Mother Theresa. I did not get off the plane and say that I am Marcus Welby, kindly physician, and all around swell guy! Okay!?! I was fully prepared to do my time in Anchorage, but I am contractually bound to this tundra under false pretenses and against my will. So if I resort to some unscrupulous practices to right a greater wrong, look, where's Amnesty International when it comes to Joel Fleischman?!?

---

Maurice: "She's Actin' Single, I'm Drinkin' Double"..."I'm The Only Hell My Mama Ever Raised"? Chris, you play this crap at 6:00 in the morning, you're gonna be lookin' down so many barrels you'll think you've landed in an N.R.A. convention. And I'll be leading the pack!

---

Ed: I don't think you should bug Dr. Fleischman because he's from New York, and they have a thing about paparazzi.

---

Chris: Soapy once told me that the thing he loved most about country music was its sense of myth. There's heroes and villains, good and bad, right and wrong. The protagonists stroll into a bar, which he sees as a microcosm of the big picture. He contemplates his existence and he asks himself, 'who's that babe in the red dress?' [turns to Joel] All right. Well, you know the way I see it, if you're here for four more years or four more weeks; you're here right now. You know, and I think when you're somewhere you ought to be there, and because it's not about how long you stay in a place. It's about what you do while you're there. And when you go is that place any better for you having been there? Am I answering your question?.

Joel: Uh, no, not really.

Chris: [laughs] What was your question?

Joel: What am I gonna say to Maggie?

Chris: I don't know.

Joel: It would help if I hadn't had to sleep in a kennel. I-I can't even think straight.

Chris: I think you oughta just be honest. You know, don't skirt the issue. Don't... you know, just deal with it head-on.

Joel: I know.

Chris: I'd tell her she's got great lips.

Dreams, Schemes and Putting Greens [1.04]

Chris: This is Chris In The Morning with a special K-Bear, Arrowhead County welcome to Mr. Okie Masuto and Mr. Vincent Chiba. Ohaiyo gozaimasu (Good morning). O-genki desu ka (How are you)? Howdy, boys!

---

Chris: Hey, there! This is Chris In The Morning and we're on the phonelines. Who am I talking too?

Jules: Jules, up on the Koyuk River.

Chris: Hey, Jules, what's on your mind today?

Jules: I went up to Baker's Point this morning to find Holling. He used to make camp the with the Littlejohn boys...

Chris: Cut to the chase, Jules.

Jules: All I saw was a couple of empty beer can and used condoms.

---

Shelly: [to Holling] You may think that because you're so much older than me you know more about the world. Well in some cases that may be. But I read magazines! I watch TV! I know how people are supposed to treat each other.

---

Chris: It's occasions like these that... my thoughts turn to marriage. I think of the Dalai Lama, The Pope, Mother Teresa; very spiritual people who never took the plunge. Then on the other hand, we have Elizabeth Taylor and Mickey Rooney, who couldn't get enough of a good thing. What do we make of this dichotomy? Well, we're here to wish our friends a long life filled with happiness. Shelly Tambo, do you take this man to be you lawful, wedded husband till death do you part?

Shelly:Uh-huh.

Chris: Holling Vincour, do you take this lovely girl to be your lawful, wedded wife till death do you part? ... Holling? Holling?

Holling: I wonder if I might speak with Shelly for a moment? In private.

---

Ruth-Anne: That's the most beautiful non-ceremony I ever saw.

Sex, Lies and Ed's Tape [1.06]

Shelly: Cuz, if I can't count on you when something as piddly as a husband pops up, what happens when the really big stuff hits?

---

Maggie: Let me tell you something, buster, you might not be dying, but you're gone.

A Kodiak Moment [1.07]

Joel: Listen folks, I hate to cut this short, but we have to fly. So before we go, are there any questions, something you'd like to ask a doctor?

Woman: How will I know when it's time [to give birth]?

Joel: Trust me, all mothers show up.

---

Shelly: [to Holling] Whether you shoot Jessie or he mauls you, I want to be there by your side.

The Aurora Borealis [1.08]

Bernard: Those Northern Lights are some kind of weird psychic, something?

Chris: Yeah.

Bernard: What causes them to do that?

Chris: Well, this is just my guess, but I think that high speed electrons and protons from the sun are trapped in the van Allen radiation belt. Then they're channeled through the Polar Regions by the earth's magnetic field where they collide with other particles and create a brilliant luminosity.

Bernard: What does that have to do with us?

[Chris: I swear man, I don't know.

---

[Bernard: Excuse me.

Joel: Yeah?

Bernard: Where am I?

Joel: You know, I've been asking myself that same question since I got here. I finally figured out we're somewhere between the end of the line and the middle of nowhere.

Bernard: Where is that on the map?

---

Chris: (to Bernard): Jung says that dreams are the woofer and tweeter of the total sound system.

---

Chris: I can see how that can be a problem. You know, it's like Jung says, "The unconscious is revealed through the imagery of our dreams which express our innermost fears and our desires."

Bernard: Jung said that?

Chris: Yeah, I think it was Jung. Or maybe Vincent Price.

---

Chris: Whenever there’s a new moon looming on the horizon, I’ll inevitably get a call from someone saying, ‘Hey Chris, how bout that sucker.’ And, I’ll usually say something cordial like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s a marvelous night for a moon dance,’ or ‘I wonder what old Sun Young Moon is up to tonight.’ But, knowing how we’ve been tossing and turning these past few nights for fear of where our dreams may be taking us, I’m not about to pretend that that man, in that moon, has our best interests at heart. No way, he’s too much of a kidder. So until the big fellow packs his bag and hits the road put away those sharp utensils and stay close to your love ones, if you’re lucky enough to have any. I’ll see you in the morning, folks, or the moonlight, whichever one comes first.

Season 2

Goodbye to All That [2.01]

Chris: It's "Love is Pain" day on KBHR. Music to soothe the shattered heart. Dedicated to you, Dr. Joel.

---

Joel: You are single, you are heterosexual, you are a doctor, you are Jewish. Alaska is wide open for you and I was right. Believe me, I will be out there. I'll have to fight the women off.

Ed: What women?

---

Chris: It was a long-ago winter's day when me and my best friend Greg "The Joy King" George ripped off Sam Blade Records in downtown Wheeling, West Virginia. Back at the Joy King's, safe and dry, we listened all day to that stolen stash. We dedicate this music to you, Joy King, just starting your latest 5-10 in Lompoc. 'Cause the best way out of winter is through it. Like Carl Jung says, "Embrace your grief for there your soul will grow."

---

Maggie: There are other ways besides sex to get a bladder infection, Fleischman.

Joel: Yeah, but that's the funniest.

---

Joel: Sex should be wild. Unfettered and free. We're animals, aren't we? And, basically, we're all wolves in sheep's fur. I always wanted more. Not frequency, I am not talking about frequency; although that would have been great, too. I wanted more intensity. I wanted to be out there, outside myself, outside my skin. I wanted sex to be like robbing life out of the jaws of death!

Maggie: Wow.

The Big Kiss [2.02]

Chris: We all carry around so much pain in our hearts. Love and pain and beauty. They all seem to go together in one little tidy, confusing package. It's a messy business, life. It's hard to figure. It's full of surprises, some good and some bad. Anyway Maggie, if you're listening, this one's for you.

---

One-Who-Waits: There's an old saying that if you go back to the place where you first became a man, you remember all those things you need to be happy.

Ed: I don't remember anything.

One-Who-Waits: That saying never made sense to me, but I thought it was worth a try.

---

Chris: They say dreams are the windows of the soul--take a peek and you can see the inner workings; the nuts and bolts.

---

Chris: After my recent brush with voicelessness, I thought I'd share with you a few thoughts about speech. Don't take it lightly, my friends. If music is the pathway to the heart, as Voltaire suggested, then speech is the pathway to other people. Live in silence and you live alone.

---

Maurice: You know, sometimes when you look back on a situation, you realize it wasn't all you thought it was. A beautiful girl walked into your life. You fell in love. Or did you? Perhaps, it was only a childish infatuation, or maybe just a brief moment of vanity.

All Is Vanity [2.03]

Maurice: You don't know your own patients?

Joel: He wasn't my patient, yet. And I have an assistant, here, who thinks it's unnecessary to take names. She'd rather run my office like a delicatessen.

Marilyn: He's number nine.

---

Maggie: [to Joel] What kind of boyfriend are you? You wouldn't think we had a close, caring relationship; that we've been intimately involved for the past six months. What kind of impression is that going to make on my dad? My dad! Who's come all this way to meet you, my boyfriend, the doctor, who I've written so many wonderful letters about.

---

Maurice: A man should not leave this earth with unfinished business. He should live each day as if it was a pre-flight check. He should ask each morning, am I prepared to lift-off?

---

Joel: Be careful, there's some ice over there.

Maggie: You could offer to help, Fleischman.

Joel: You, our own Calamity Jane? Our torch-bearer of the pioneer spirit? I wouldn't presume to insult you.

Maggie: Why were you born, Fleischman? A mosquito has more utilitarian value!

---

Chris: You've been listening to The Adagio from Beethoven's 7th Symphony. I think Ludwig pretty much summed up death in this one. You know, he had lost just about all his hearing when he wrote it, and I've often wondered if that didn't help him tune into the final silence of the great beyond.

What I Did for Love [2.04]

Ruth-Anne: I feel really bad about Elaine breaking up with him. I can't help but think had she known about the plane wreck, she might have gone ahead and waited until he was dead. I think that would have been the tactful way to handle it.

Spring Break [2.05]

Chris: Wildness, Ed. We're running out of it, even up here in Alaska. People need to be reminded that the world is unsafe and unpredictable, and at a moment's notice, they could lose everything, like that. I do it to remind them that chaos is always out there, lurking beyond the horizon. That, plus, sometimes, Ed, sometimes you have to do something bad, just to know you're alive.

War and Peace [2.06]

Chris: You have to talk to her sometime, Ed.

Ed: Why?

Chris: Well, because that's what married people do. They communicate.

---

Chris: I remember my first foray into the realm of the sensual. I was seven years old, back in the trailer park, but I knew as much about life at that moment as I do today.

---

[Joel stops the duel between Maurice and Nikolai]

Joel: Hold it, hold it, hold it! This is ridiculous! Hey, we play to a very sophisticated television audience. They know Maurice is not going to kill Nikolai, and they definitely know that Nikolai is not going to kill Maurice.

Maggie: Wait a minute, Fleischman. You can't just take it upon yourself to step out of character. Nobody yelled 'cut'.

Shelly: Joel's right. The duel is stupid.

Joel: Can we just stick to the matter at hand?

Ruth-Anne: How about the fifth revision? Where Nikolai's abscessed tooth starts acting up, and, well, he just cancels.

Shelly: Glib and textually unwarranted.

Nikolai: What if Maurice trips and kills someone else by mistake?

Maurice: Oh, great, so I'm a klutz now, huh?

Maggie: Look, if there's not a duel, then what is the point of this whole story?

Chris: What's the point? The point is - man's tendency to war, but Joel here is asking us to step outside of certain events and say enough. Am I right?

Shelly: Listen, whatever, it's getting cold out here.

Marilyn: Why don't we go on to the next scene? It's a pretty good one.

---

Joel: Are you flirting with me?

Maggie: No! I'm just merely saying that beneath that whiny, abrasive exterior of yours I sometimes get a glimpse of the teensiest, eensy bit of something

Slow Dance [2.07]

Maggie: [to Joel] Calling you a moron is an insult to morons. Broccoli has more brain power than you. Cauliflower!

---

Maggie: Are you suggesting that Bill and I have an affair?

Woman: Well, the truth is, Maggie, I can't stand to look at him.

Maggie: You want me to kill him?

Woman: Just date him - let nature take its course.

---

Chris: A funeral is more for the survivors than anybody else. In this case, that's Maggie, who's been a survivor more times than she'd care to count.

Season 3

The Bumpy Road To Love [3.01]

Maggie: Men can only think of one thing. The joystick. Is it big enough, and where can they put it?

---

Maggie: Ok. Sex is fine. Sex is good. Sex is GREAT! Okay, okay, we need men for sex... Do we need so many?

Only You [3.02]

Joel: Do you believe this; have you ever seen a man with this kind of incredible irresistible magnetism for the opposite sex?

Ed: James Bond.

Joel: That's the movies Ed; try reality.

Ed: No thanks.

Animals R Us [3.04]

Grandma Woody: All we are, basically, are monkeys with car keys.

A-Hunting We Will Go [3.08]

Chris: Hey Joel, you ever have had a pure moment? A moment of direct insight into the divine nature? Happened to me once in prison. Guess I’d been in about a month. One night I chugalugged six hits of potato home brew while watching a strobe candle. I separated, man. I drifted up, circled the pen twice.

---

Holling: I'd rather get my brains blown out in the wild than wait in terror at the slaughterhouse.

Dateline: Cicely [3.11]

Chris: Rain usually makes me feel mellow. Curl up in the corner time, slow down, smell the furniture. Today it just makes me feel wet. What is it about possessing things? Why do we feel the need to own what we love, and why do we become jerks when we do? We've all been there--you want something, to possess it. By possessing something you lose it. You finally win the girl of your dreams, the first thing you do is change her. The little things she does with her hair, the way she wears her clothes or the way she chews her gum. Pretty soon what you like, what you changed, what you don't like, blends together like a watercolor in the rain.

Burning Down the House [3.14]

Chris:"The self is in the progress of becoming........." “Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”

The Final Frontier [3.20]

Chris: For that instant, he looked like his own paddle. There was a song in his heart. It crept to his lips but only the water and the wind could hear. You little traveler, you made the journey, the long journey. You now know things I have yet to know, you little traveler. You were given a name a true name in my father's lodge. Good medicine, little traveler. You are truly a paddle person." Reading from Paddle-to-the-Sea by Holling Clancy Holling

Chris: I made you, paddle person, because I had a dream. A little wooden man smiled at me. He sat in a canoe on a snowbank on this hill. Now the dream has begun to come true. “The sun spirit will look down at the snow, and the snow will melt, and the water will run downhill to the river, on down to the Great Lakes. Down again, on at last to the sea. You will go on with the water, and you will have adventures that I would like to have. But I cannot go with you because I have to stay with my father and help with the traps.” That’s Paddle to the Sea, folks. The story of a little Indian Boy who send a toy canoe on a journey that he himself is too young to take. We do the same thing you know? Pioneer, Voyager, Galileo. Our Standard-bearers in the eternal human crusade: exploration. And now we’ve hit the cosmic trail. Why? Because Earth’s played out. You know, less than a hundred years ago Amundsen could’ve been the first human being to reach the South Pole, Falcon Scott could’ve died trying. And now…well, last year, China had to close down Mount Everest. Too much litter. The world’s become a fragile place. It’s not to be conquered, it’s to be protected, coddled, nursed, like a little baby. What do we do now? We launch our surrogates into interstellar space, dreaming of that one fine day when we ourselves can go.

It Happened In Juneau [3.21]

Bernard: As you may know, I spent the last three months in Africa. A wondrous, magical place. But as shadows lengthen across the KBHR window, thoughts turn to homecoming. Journey's end. Because in a sense, it's the coming back, the return which gives meaning to the going forth. We really don't know where we've been until we've come back to where we were. Only, where we were may not be as it was because of who we've become. Which is, after all, why we left.

Chris: "In dreams begin responsibilities", so wrote the poet. So it is, perhaps. Could it be we take our dreams too lightly, those images from places unknown? Could they in fact be angels in flight; our souls aloft? You know, recent experiences have made yours truly take another pass through the metaphysical thickets. As unlikely as it may sound in this rational age, I emerged on the side of those that cannot help but put their faith in that which cannot be easily explained. Be open to your dreams, people. Embrace that distant shore. Because our mortal journey is over all too soon. "Those cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples. The great globe itself. Yea all which you inherit shall dissolve and like this insubstantial pageant faded. Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with asleep."

Cicely [3.23]

Ned: One person can have a profound effect on another. And two people...well, two people can work miracles. They can change a whole town. They can change the world.

---

Mary: I just don't know what men want.

Roselyn: Mary, if it's of any consolation, you are not alone. Women had been asking that same question since Eve and Adam.

Mary: Really?

Roselyn: See, men are confused. They are conflicted. They want a woman who is their intellectual equal, but they are afraid of women like that. They want a woman they can dominate, but then they hate her for being weak. It's an ambivalence that goes back to a man's relationship with his mother: source of his life, center of his universe, object of both his fear and his love.

Mary: Uh, I've never though of it like that.

Roselyn: You see, the question is: do you really want a man? For a man to love a woman, this comes naturally because of his love for his mother, but for a woman to love a man , she has to transfer her natural affinity for the female to the male. It's a very difficult process, and in my experience it usually fails. Fortunately, there are alternatives. Just remember one thing. You don't ever need to make yourself into any man's image. People are like shoes, everybody's got a mate somewhere.

Season 4

Nothing's Perfect [4.03]

Chris: Recent events have set me to ponder in that ontological riddle: life, is it random or systematic? Today I opted for the systematic approach--algebraic, if you will; an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Like most human beings I'm just trying to make sense of things. I don't know if I accomplished that, I--I don't know if anybody can. You know, Isaac Newton, he thought that the universe functioned like clockwork...like a well-oiled machine. That's a comforting vision; it's neat, orderly, predictable. But it's a vision that's pretty much been shot to pieces by relativity and quantum mechanics--all the other bugaboos of 20th century physics... The universe is a weird place. We break our teeth developing theories, equations, and systems...where's it all leave us? "A system is like the tail of truth. But truth is like a lizard: it leaves its tail in your fingers and runs away knowing full well it will grow a new one in the twinkling." I don't know...what're you gonna do? Maybe next time I'll get a blockhead Harley...1340 CCs... Anybody out there lookin' to unload one, gimme a call, huh?

Crime and Punishment [4.10]

Chris: Who is Chris Stevens? Who are any of us? Are we one person fixed at birth or do we grow like a snow ball coming down the mountainside of life? Or can we change? Shed our skin? The caterpillar becomes the butterfly, leaving the remains of his former self behind. I look at my yearbook photo, class 81, and I wonder who that stranger is. Damn if I know, maybe that's the point, maybe we are not supposed to know, maybe that's what this earthly joyride is all about. Like Robert Frost said "We dance around the ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows."

Duets [4.13]

Ed: Pete…I think you should know that I'm…I'm…I'm…I'm…I'm…

Pete: You're what, Ed?

Ed: Uh, kind of thirsty.

Grosse Pointe, 48230 [4.14]

Joel: You're right. You've got yourself a regular looney bin here. It's absolutely incredible that you survived. I guess you're made of something.

---

Elizabeth Stowe: Poor Jane, always getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop.

---

Elizabeth Stowe: Jeffy, why the sour puss?

Pearl McCaffrey: Stephi left Jeffy.

Elizabeth Stowe: Stephi left Jeffy?

Eunice McCaffrey: She forgot her mittens.

Elizabeth Stowe: Oh. Remind me to send her a thank-you note.

Learning Curve [4.15]

Joel: I'll be in my office should a patient choose to darken our door.

Ill Wind [4.16]

Chris: They say it's an ill wind that bloweth no man to good. I think our own Dr. Joel Fleischman will attest to that. For those of you who missed it, Maggie scored a one round decision over Dr. Fleischman last night. Right jab to the old honker. Pow! T.K.O. What better sign that the coho winds are once again upon us… My advice this year, don't fight them, embrace them. Know your enemy.

Love's Labour Mislaid [4.17]

Mike: Sometimes, Maggie, you just have to go for it. Grab for the gusto. Go for the plunge…

Northern Lights [4.18]

Bernard: Continuous unremitting darkness has been known to send some people into an emotional tailspin, so the management here at KBHR radio suggests locking away the firearms. The desire to stick that 45 between the teeth can get pretty strong at times, so why invite temptation?

Family Feud [4.19]

Chris: I know it's short notice, but the bride-to-be is pushing for a quickie. Medical emergency. Nope, it's not what you're thinking. Anyway, I know a couple of us have been down the aisle with these people before, maybe this time, they'll make it to the altar. We'll keep our collective fingers crossed.

Homesick [4.20]

Ed: Thanks for showing me the outside of your house, Maurice. I especially enjoyed the imaginary flower garden.

The Big Feast [4.21]

Chris: Maurice J. Minnifield, our generous host, friend, and employer. I'm sure I join everyone in saying thank you for these very fine eats and drinks. You are a real American. You're an ex-marine and astronaut, you are America. You're rich, you're rapacious, you're progress without a conscience, paving everything in its path. You're 5% of the earth's population, yet consuming 25% of the earth's natural resources. You pay a lot of taxes, you do a lot of charity work--most of it is tax deductible, but your heart is in the right place. One thing's for certain, you have impeccable taste in the booze.

Kaddish for Uncle Manny [4.22]

Joel: You need nine guys on a field to play baseball and ten jews in a room to say kaddish.

Mud and Blood [4.23]

Shelly: Take it from me, H. You, me and the rug rat - it's going to be better than Superbowl Sunday.

Sleeping With the Enemy [4.24]

Shelly: My nips are as big as double-drop chocolate cookies.

Old Tree [4.25]

Chris: What is it about genus arboretum that socks us in the figurative solar plexus? We see a logging truck go cruising down the road, stacked with a bunch of those fresh-cut giants, we feel like we lost a brother. Next thing you know, we're in The Brick, we're flopping money down on the bar. Wood. We're under a roof. Wood. We're walking the floors. Wood. Grabbing a pool cue. That's wood. Our friends in the forest carry a set of luggage from the mythical baggage carousel. Tree of life, tree of knowledge, family tree, Budda's Bodhi tree. Page one of life, in the beginning. Genesis 3:22. Adam and Eve. They're kicking back in the garden of Eden and boom, they get an eviction notice. Why is that? "Lest they should also take of the tree of life, eat and live forever." A definitive Yahweh no-no. Be good to yourself Cicely, go out and plant a wet one on a tree.

Season 5

Three Doctors [5.01]

Joel: Sometimes the mind, for reasons we don't necessarily understand, just decides to go to the store for a quart of milk.

The Mystery of the Old Curio Shop [5.02]

Joel: Excuse me, would you ladies mind postponing your trenchant literary critique so we can continue with our little medical practice here?

Jaws of Life [5.03]

Chris: You know what you are Earl? You're a little, tiny, busy ant. You too, Mike. Both you guys, with your mortgages and your term life insurance and your Weber kettles. Ant. Ant. All of you, you're all a bunch of little, busy, blind ants. All you all. Saving up for your rainy days. Scratching up your acorns for the winter. You look at me and you think, "What a piece of pathetic trash out there in that leaky trailer." No spoon, no fork, no prospects. But, you know why? Cause I'm a grasshopper. Ant. Grasshopper. Ant. Grasshopper. Ant. Grasshopper. Ant. Grasshopper. Ant!

---

Maurice: [Maurice catches Ed talking to his statue] Look, Ed. If you've got something to say, you say it to me. You got that?

Ed: Okay, Maurice. But, uh -

Maurice: But what?

Ed: Well, it's just that he's a little easier to talk to.

Maurice: The statue?

Ed: Well, he doesn't throw my thoughts off like you do sometimes.

Maurice: I don't throw your thoughts off, son! What are you talking about?

Ed: Well, kind of like now, Maurice.

Maurice: I'm not in the business of throwing people's thoughts off! Is that clear?

Altered Egos [5.04]

Joel: Oh God. Oh my God. I'm sitting here eating seeds and having a serious conversation about winter clothing. First my wallet and now this. What is happening?

A River Doesn't Run Through It [5.05]

Kevin: The Homecoming queen is supposed to be a babe.

Birds of a Feather [5.06]

Marilyn: The Eagle wasn't always the Eagle. The Eagle, before he became the Eagle, was Yucatangee, the Talker. Yucatangee talked and talked. It talked so much it heard only itself. Not the river, not the wind, not even the Wolf. The Raven came and said "The Wolf is hungry. If you stop talking, you'll hear him. The wind too. And when you hear the wind, you'll fly." So he stopped talking. And became its nature, the Eagle. The Eagle soared, and its flight said all it needed to say

Rosebud [5.07]

Leonard: The path to our destination is not always a straight one, Ed. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn't matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark.

Heal Thyself [5.08]

Leonard: If you're going to be a healer, it's not enough to read books and learn allegorical stories. you need to get your feet wet, get some clinical experience under your belt.

A Cup of Joe [5.09]

Chris: I think the saying is, "better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all" and if they didn't say it, they should have.

First Snow [5.10]

Chris: Oh the snow the beautiful snow filling the sky and earth below. Over the house tops and over the streets, over the heads of people you meet. Dancing flirting skimming along. Oh the snow the beautiful snow how the flakes gather and laugh as they go. Whirling about in their maddening fun it plays in its glee with everyone. Chasing laughing hurrying by it lights on the face and sparkles the eye. And even the dogs with a bark and a bound snap at the crystals that eddy around. The town is alive and its heart in a glow to welcome the coming of beautiful snow. Bon Hiver Cicely.

Baby Blues [5.11]

Ed: Like Woody Allen says 'It's worse than dog eat dog. It's dog doesn't return dog's phone calls'.

Mister Sandman [5.12]

Holling: I'm my mother. I'm my father. I'm chipped beef on toast?!

Mite Makes Right [5.13]

Maggie: Life is everywhere. The earth is throbbing with it, it's like music. The plants, the creatures, the ones we see, the ones we don't see, it's like one, big, pulsating symphony.

A Bolt From the Blue [5.14]

Adam: You think Nature is some Disney movie? Nature is a killer. Nature is a bitch. It's feeding time out there 24 hours a day, every step that you take is a gamble with death. If it isn't getting hit with lightning today, it's an earthquake tomorrow or some deer tick carrying Lyme disease. Either way, you're ending up on the wrong end of the food chain.

---

Joel: I know Adam is a walking pathology, but the guy's never hurt anybody, not that I know of. I mean, threats of imminent danger are just his way of saying "good morning."

Hello, I Love You [5.15]

Chris: It looks like a fine winter's morning out there at the 63rd latitude. Jack Frost is tagging up those window panes, hot java, english muffins, locked and loaded. The word on the street is that the Tambo-Vincour addition is due to pop out and see its shadow manana. From the safety of the womb to the bright unknown. Hey little one, you got 843 expectant aunts and uncles out here all queued up for a little koochie koochie koo.

Northern Hospitality [5.16]

Maggie: You haven't vacuumed, Fleischman? What's this, petrified corn chips?

Una Volta in L'Inverno [5.17]

Chris: Morning Cicely. 8:00 A.M. muchachos. Time to finish those flapjacks, knock back that second cup of joe, get ready to greet the day. Temperature's creeping towards double digits as the solar drought continues--23 days, an average of an hour and a half of sunlight every day. No relief on the horizon. Which only makes sense cause there is no horizon. Our friends at the weather service are calling for another storm and as we know, they've been batting a thousand lately. Hey, let's check our social calendar. Nothing. Total blank. It's cabin fever season people, that time of year when four walls feel like they're going to come in here and choke the spirit right out of you. Time to lock away those firearms and hang tough. No way through it except to do it.

Fish Story [5.18]

Chris: "Time is but the stream I go a fishing in." Henry David Thoreau.

Ed: "Pass me a sandwich." Ed Chigliak.

The Gift of the Maggie [5.19]

Maurice: The orchid, the aristocrat of the flower family. The most sophisticated plant on earth. Clearly a cut above. But, it's got petals like everybody else. The lowly daisy, the cheap carnation, half-baked azelia. Like these, the orchid needs warmth. It needs care and kindness to get by. These flowers need you people. No, I need you.

A Wing and a Prayer [5.20]

Shelly: Do I get a real priest? No. I get this dud, some smoke-ring blowing, arm-wrestler with a rip in his pants.

I Feel the Earth Move [5.21]

Chris: Marriage. Why do we do it? Everybody knows the stats. One in two marriages end up in broken dishes and a trip to Tijuana. Is it loneliness? Partly. Is it teamwork? Definitely. Things just kind of go easier when there's two of you. One of you can wait in line at the movie theater while the other guy parks the car. Get better seats that way. Better room rate when it's a double. Are you ready to file jointly?...Above you is the sun and sky. Below you, the ground. Like the sun, your love should be constant, like the ground, solid. Are you both OK with that? In that case, I now pronounce you, married.

Grand Prix [5.22]

Little Green Man: Ed, you're dealing with the demon of external validation. You can't beat external validation. You want to know why? Because it feels sooo good.

Lovers and Madmen [5.24]

Joel: First I thought it was numbness, you know, shock. The inability to believe that a just God could allow someone to destroy a gold mine of prehistoric knowledge for a year's worth of Salisbury steak. I feel like I am floating. Like I'm watching myself leave my body. I think about what happened today and I just, I want to laugh. I should be foaming at the mouth like any other normal person. Maybe what I am experiencing is a euphoria you're supposed to feel just before you give up, you know, just let the lungs fill with water. Life is a mystery. One man's life-altering experience is another man's tenderloin. I'm one of you now. I'm a Cicelean.

Season 6

Full Upright Position [6.07]

Chris: Ladies and gentlemen, today we're here to honor electricity, the charge that charges everything from those electrons snapping in our brain to our father the sun. What's the sun It's kind of like a brain. Electromagnetic field, solar flares sparking back and forth from those nerve cells. We're all one, folks, giant blobs of electricity, all of us. Positive & negative, electromagnetic fields just circling each other. Positive, negative, north, south, male and female. Looking for that electric moment. Magnet to magnet, opposites attract.

Up River [6.08]

Chris: You gotta loose your mind, before you can find it!

The Mommy's Curse [6.14]

Walt: Boy, you're some kind of firecracker, you know that Ruth-Anne Miller!?

---

Holling: A man's hat is his pride, Maurice!

---

Holling: A new hat... fun for awhile.. a little variety, change you know, something different. For a good fit, and a comfortable feeling there is nothing like an old hat. You know what I mean?

Maurice: I know that you mean.

Holling: Well then?

Maurice: Well.

Tranquility Base (Our Town) [6.23]

Maurice: Barbara, I owe you an apology. I've been trying to turn you into something you're not. You're no gentle lady. You're a warrior. That's what attracted me. That's what attracts me now.

External links

• Northern Exposure quotes at the Internet Movie Database